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Lyn Morgan
I run Jean-Lee B&B together with my husband, Des. We opened the B&B in 1996, making us one of the oldest B&Bs in our City & country. I grew up in a home where we always had people staying with us, so hospitality was in my blood. My husband & I form a team, with my main responsibility being the needs of guests whereas Des does the admin side and marketing. Des heads up the regional B&B Association and has served on the Board of the local Tourism Board.
Maybe I am missing something here. Why have they not respected the law up to this point? An explanation may be that previously they paid the VAT from the commission charged. That is to say it was 15% [VAT inclusive], and now they have made it 15% [VAT exclusive]. This may well pose a legal problem for BDC. In our country, the law is that if a price doesn't specifically indicate it is VAT exclusive, it is presumed to be VAT inclusive. Despite the claims by BDC, the VAT legislation has not changed according to accountants consulted.
This may become a AirBnB versus BDC debate. We do not get many AirBnB bookings but we like the feature of being able to review the guests & we've had no issues with anyone from AirBnB. We have however had some issues with the BDC Customer Care Centre. But this is not the issue under discusion here.
Yes, but some of the other OTAs include the VAT amount in their 15% and also process the full transaction so you get an amount excluding the commission deposited directly into bank account - a very simple process. With BDC, we will receive only Credit Card details which you have to find, & process it and we pay effectively an extra 2.3% commission to the Credit Card company, making the commission in real terms 19.55%. And then there is a good chance the CC details are invalid/fraudulent which creates additional work to sort out, plus possibly losing out on bookings while this done.
In terms of the AirBnB story, it is helpful to know that they effectively charge the guest the commission. This was never made clear to us when we registerd with them.
The saying goes - "Time is money" - and so for the most part, that is our cost. We are registered with several OTAs all on a commission basis but the commissions are generally lower. We have a website & we promote that extensively, most of which doesn't incur a cost. There is some cost to that including a hosting fee plus the cost of building the website. We do pay for Google pay-per-click but the commission amount with BDC still remains an issue. As we only get a limited number of bookings from BDC, so generally the actual amount paid is not huge. But our time does cost & this should be factored in.
There are several comments above. We get less than 10% of our booings from Booking.com and although we appreciate any bookings we get as it fills in the gaps, we are not dependent on BDC to survive. We market our business extensively. We are listed with AirBnB & don't get a great deal from them but the commission rate with them is considerably less. We certainly don't blame a country for this increase as the tax legislation they make referewnce to is almost 30 years old.
It is again an example of them believing we are dependent on them for business. They do access guests for us & that's great. However without the hospitality businesses, they would not be in business. They never suggest reducing their commission to assist you in getting guests and yet they make suggestions for you to provide a discount to get more guests. It is only when they reduce commissions that I will believe they are truly interested in promoting your business.