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OTA and Book Direct Prices

Le Touquet Holid
Jul 12, 2020 5:58 AM
Joined Nov, 2018 113 posts

I'm looking for some thoughts on dealing with book direct pricing.
If a guest comes from an OTA and then gets in touch to book direct there is an opportunity to increase the payment.
Typically I want to charge the guest 50% of the ota mark up. The guest is happy as they are paying less than the ota and I get a bit more revenue, all good and we both win.
But how to deal with this in owner rez?. Currently I adjust the price in price labs, sync with OR and generate a quote.
The website would need to show the same price as a quote for consistency so I cant really just add a line item to a quote.
How do others deal with this?

Chris L
Jul 13, 2020 3:38 AM
Joined May, 2017 199 posts

I add a 9% "Booking Service Fee." It's usually less than the ~12ish% that the OTAs charge. I would have made it 10%, but then it would have looked too obvious to the guest. ;) You add it as an automatic surcharge and then only apply it to "None" as the listing site (there's also a way I read about recently to define your website as a channel using a custom setting, but I haven't gotten around to changing everything).

Le Touquet Holid
Jul 13, 2020 5:01 AM
Joined Nov, 2018 113 posts

Thanks i'll have a play around.

BlueMtnCabins
Jul 14, 2020 11:52 PM
Joined Jun, 2016 1115 posts

Chris L said:

I add a 9% "Booking Service Fee." It's usually less than the ~12ish% that the OTAs charge. I would have made it 10%, but then it would have looked too obvious to the guest. ;) You add it as an automatic surcharge and then only apply it to "None" as the listing site (there's also a way I read about recently to define your website as a channel using a custom setting, but I haven't gotten around to changing everything).

consumers (including myself) hate the litany of fees. You may be shooting yourself in the foot. Maybe better to raise your rate a little vs have a "fee" line item.