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Ilaria - Community Manager

Question of the Week: What’s your number one extranet tip?

Hi everyone,

For many of you, the extranet is your go-to tool for running your business with Booking.com. So we’d love for you to share any extranet tips you have with the community.

Have you found an even more effective way to organise your bookings? Have you worked out a way to turn your performance data into business goals? Are you finding it easier to update your availability?

Whatever your top tips are, share them in the comments below – and hopefully they can help out your fellow partners!


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pibomarco 4 years ago

Set your prices higher and activate GENIOUS program for their valued bookers who receive 15% discount.

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M Adamopoulou 4 years ago

Pibomarco Very tricky way...I like the way you’re doing business...
Wish you a happy day....

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Jeff Ransley 4 years ago

Dont use Booking.com to collect your payments. The money doesnt come to you. It disappears into the ether

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M Adamopoulou 4 years ago

Hi! Jeff-Ransley and welcome to the forum. I am sorry but I don’t agree with you. Booking.com facilitates my payments and so far have no problems. My account is credited always on the 15th and sometimes even earlier.
Wish you a good day.

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Anthurium Apartment 4 years ago

Maria,

i have a problem,i need your help please.

i just noticed that my rooms have been closed with red lines from July,is the first time i am seeing that.Can you or any other patner assist me,as to what i should.

Alitha

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M Adamopoulou 4 years ago

Hi! Alitha, love your name. In Greek Ali this means true...
So truly I am so sorry this has oti your rooms. Have you tried to click on them and open them???? I had similar problems in the past. I called my BDC local office and they fixed on the spot.
Hope I’ve been of help. Give us feedback if possible...
Wish you a great day...

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Captainsquarters21 4 years ago

ONLY PUT ROOM ONLY PRICES ONLINE AND CHARGE BREAKFAST IN HOUSE, SO YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PAY COMMISSION ON BREAKFAST AND YOUR PRICES LOOK MORE COMPETETIVE.

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Anthurium Apartment 4 years ago

Thanks Adam,i hope you do not mind i am shortening your name. you made me smile,because i love my name so much,especially since i looked up the meaning in the past and found out it meant goddess of truth,and it is no lie,i hate a liar with a passion,laugh out loud.

ok, great,so how do i go about trying to fix that a d what does BDC , mean if i may ask thank you .

Alitha

any direct number,i can call,although,it may be different for me

of interest,you are from Greece,i am from the Commonwealth of Dominica,in the Caribbean,you can look us up,small nature island in the Caribbean,between the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique

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M Adamopoulou 4 years ago

Alitha I now your beautiful country. My cousin who lives in Canada visited your magnificent country and send me lots of incredible pictures.

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Anthurium Apartment 4 years ago

oh great,i have had guests from Canada and i have seen Greece on the map,alot of history,well one day,u may choose to make us ,your holiday destination.

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M Adamopoulou 4 years ago

Yes of course it’s one of my dreams in line waiting...
Keep well....

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Anthurium Apartment 4 years ago

Great,i just woke up,while u are going to pick up your grand daughter,i am preparing my grand daughter for school,will talk to you later,it is 6 in the morning

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M Adamopoulou 4 years ago

This is our world...Why do you wake up so early???

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Marie van Rensburg 4 years ago

I find B. C pays a day or two later after a booking has been done, and having activated the virtual card payment option too, you get paid on the date the guest arrive! Make use of the opportunities that are provided, that work for your particular establishment, and hey presto, a bit of 'elbow grease' a warm and friendly attitude, and you're booked up quickly! Keep your prices competitive and don't try and 'get rich quick'... Treat people the way you want to be treated, and present the establishment the way you would like to have an establishment be, when you get a chance to break away!

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Merch Gymreig … 4 years ago

We process our own payments, notify the guest via Extranet if it is invalid or has insufficient funds. We contact BC if guest has not responded and request that the booking be cancelled, so far so good. Always take the first night's stay as a deposit and the remainder on departure, it seems to have worked well over the years.

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I Gusti Ngurah Awan 4 years ago

The payment though booking.com is good to avoid any cancellation but the money we got bit longer for a small company who has not much working capital

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Sitges Villa A… 4 years ago

For me I have my apartment with 3 agencies plus Booking.com, Airbnb and Homeaway, Its a nightmare to run it all and the multi calendar never works properly. I absolutely detest the Booking.com system to be honest, Its set up for hotels or where you have a lot of rooms to rent like a guest house. It does not allow me to write my own description to sell myself, it uses algorithms to represent you, totally wrong, for me it said I had a restaurant and bar in the hotel and a front reception desk, rubbish, I said we had bars nearby with restaurants and that we are able to let guests stay 24/7. I have complained and complained but they wont remove the false remarks, I feel they are not doing a good job at representing my property and saying it has some things when it doesn't. I just don't understand why you can not write your own property description. I find the whole site to be dreadful for managing your booking and it is overbearing and difficult to navigate, they don't use the 3 click method to get you where you want. Anyway rant over,

What I do is I print off a paper calendar that shows a month to a page and every booking goes in that. as well as online. I have also downloaded another browser for my computer and every agency and help system we use is on the menu bar as tabs with all passwords saved and built in, you just click the tab and youre away. This browser is only ever used for the apartment so all the information is only a click away either on the menu bar or as a separate bookmark folder like Museums, Theaters, Beaches and so on. I find this a much better way to deal with the apartment and if guests want more information I can send them our Interactive Map or they can print from their devices straight to our laser printer for tickets etc. It works really well. The only problem I find is when i get a booking I have to go to every site and block out the dates as the calendar syncing just does not work at all well and I can not trust it. So that is how I use the extranet and it is IMHO the only safe way is a paper backup at all times and a seperate browser for your building, house, apartment or whatever, all computers are capable of using as many browser as you can download. Its very easy to set up and I would recommend Mozilla Firefox or Safari as Firefox works very well with their Email client called Thunderbird which I use in place of Apple mail which is dreadful. Always back up your Data, I have seen so many hard drive crashes, if you have Apple use iCloud if you have Windows use Microsofts options and keep yourself safe with a paper copy of your calendar showing when and where your bookings are from and how much, you can not beat the real pen and paper as your master copy guys and gals!!

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pibomarco 4 years ago

Easy solution = Chanel manager. It even beats pen and paper.

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Bev2steadman 4 years ago

To change calendar go into calendar and click edit and click on dates you want to open or show as not available.

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Sitges Villa A… 4 years ago

Please. What is channel manager??

Re other comment I am aware of that thankyou I just do not like the entire site that’s all.

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Bev2steadman 4 years ago

I do not use a channel manager but they charge a fee and they handle all your bookings from all the different sites you advertise on like BDC Airbnb TripAdvisor etc

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Stringybarkhills 4 years ago

yes Stiges villa apartments, i too am frustrated about the inability of BDC to change the description of our rooms. despite the fact there is the ability to request the changes every attempt has been met with NO, and "guests look at the pictures more then read the description". BDC if you dont want to change description then why offer the ability to do so?? Particularly if we are willing to write a more appropriate description and all that has to done is approved and dropped in by BDC.
Have not had any problems with getting money (fingers crossed!);

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pibomarco 4 years ago

Stiges villa apartments
With Channel Manager you can manage rates, availabilty, minimum stay ect from one spot to different online agencies (BDC, Expedia, AirBnB (API),...) at the same time. When you receive a booking, on all other portals avaialbity closes. Also if you receive a cancelation, availabilty then opens, same goes for modifications, and many more features...

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SteveMarshall_UK 4 years ago

pibomarco,
Is there just 1 Channel Manager ? what is the cost/percentage ?
You got a link ?

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fluff 4 years ago

We are small enough to do everything manually, it really is not much work at all if you keep on top of it.

There are many channel managers, it's down to the one you think fits you best or just recommendation from those that have experience of using them.

My top tip for using extranet generally;

Run through the entire site, open everything in turn, have a good look around, open all drop down menus, make notes of what is where until you can remember. Would you open a room for availability without checking it through for everything? NO! Extranet is the same. Granted, you won't find everything on first scan and may need help for a particular issue but all the basics should become far more obvious.

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pibomarco 4 years ago

There are many providers with different rates.
Prices range depends of your location, how many units you have ect...
I use MyAllocator (Cloudbeds) for two years now (almost three), didn't get overbooked since then and they have great customer service. Also they have fixed monthly/anual rate, without comission.
Search the forum, it was a lot of talking about Channel managers..
https://partnerhelp.booking.com/en-gb/community/consigli-e-suggerimenti/channel-manger-recommendation

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Torrdarach 4 years ago

Hi there,

We are finding the Extranet homepage very confusing regarding: Most recently booked & todays arrivals etc. Why can we not have a better overview of our business?

Sorry for the rant but we think that the BDC Extranet Homepage has been better!

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fluff 4 years ago

I must agree the new layout is a backwards step. It follows the current trend of PC apps being made to look like their mobile siblings. This is not a good move. Mobiles are limited by their screen size and necessity for constant scrolling, PC screens are best with more informative full pages.

Each should be designed from the ground up, not one aping the other which is lazy mediocrity in programming.

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pibomarco 4 years ago

To me homepage is better organized now. An old homepage was more "chaotic" all over the place.
Well I rarely visit home page anyway.

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Tartanlounge 4 years ago

I use SWITCH.CM as my channel manager and I find it brilliant, the only thing that I have found recently is Airbnb have dropped off as they say the channel manager has to be the owner of the business for them to allow the channelling, has anyone else had this problem?

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pibomarco 4 years ago

And who is the owner of your Channel Manager?
I guess that you should contact your Channel Manager admin / support.

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fluff 4 years ago

flymya.com are the parent company, if that's what you mean.

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Ester Vastarella 4 years ago

Buonasera, Non trovo, al momento, difficile la gestione dei calendari. Ma quello che trovo davvero snervante è che, ogni volta che apportano qualche modifica all'extranet, il dashboard della posizione si blocca impedendo di esaminare i cambiamenti se hai precedetemente fatto delle modifiche. Insomma non ti consente di verificare il mercato. Ho chiamato tante volte per segnalare, ma è terribile incontrare "Sì uomo". Ti dico che hai sempre ragione, sempre con gentilezza, ma non risolvono nessuno tuoi problemi. Anche per quanto riguarda la descrizione. Ho fatto notare sia per telefono che per lettera che ci sono delle incongruenze assolute. Che non si può vendere una casa facendo un elenco di distanze per di errate. Persino il nome della struttura nella descrizione era errato. Solo quando ho parlato di pubblicità fuorviante per il cliente, hanno deciso di modificarlo. MA SOLO QUELLO. NON SIA MAI DETTO CHE SI CAMBI UNA SOLA PAROLA DELLA DESCRIZIONE ANCHE QUANDO NELLA STESSA PAGINA SI DICE CHE IL LUNGOMARE CARACCIOLO E' A 3,5 KM DA UNA PARTE, E DA UN'ALTRA E' AD 1,1 KM.

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Ilaria - Commu…
4 years ago

Ciao Ester Vastarella,

Grazie per il messaggio.

Ti consiglierei di postare in Inglese o di visitare la nostra Partner Community Italiana e condividere l'argomento con altri partner Italiani. Questo forum è esclusivamente in Inglese.

A presto,

Ilaria

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The magic of L'viv 4 years ago

Hello guys, I've just started renting this winter, and haven't got an experience with any of Channel Managers, yet. Does it still make sense using some Channel Manager when you have just one apartment for rent? Does it help attracting more quests, or is it just more as an organizer for your listing placed in several websites? If it does attract more clients, how does it do that? What can it do for us, what the basic booking platforms don't? Does it anyhow improve the rating of your apartment on some booking platforms? I don't get overbooking or administrative errors but attracting clients is really tricky

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pibomarco 4 years ago

It makes sense if you use several booking portals. But if you rent only one apartment calendar syncing (iCal) should do its main job. If you would like everything to be automated you will achieve this with CM. Channel Manager does not attract more clients.

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The magic of L'viv 4 years ago

I so thought but since they were so popular, I decided to ask. Thank you, Mark, for helping me clearing this