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Preferred Partner Programme

To join the Preferred Partner programme it says you have to reach a certain criteria and one of those is to have a review score of at least 7.

 

In Bridlington, East Yorkshire, England - All the guest houses and Hotels are above 7 and slowly they are all joining the Preferred Partner program.

 

How would this then benefit me if everyone in my area joined as well as me - How would i then be more visible?

 

I have worked very hard to get a review score of 9.6 - but what does that mean when others are now paying to be more visible?


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Leandri Klopper 5 years ago

Hi there!

I've recently also joined the Preffered Partner Programme on one of my properties because of everything that I've heard.

A lot of the people on this forum believes it's a Must have. Because it does boost your visibility a lot and also, guests who see the little thumbs up icon feels more at ease booking your property. It's like Booking.com is vouching for you and guests like that.

I hear what you're saying about how will it benefit you if everyone in your area already has it, it still benefits you. Because Booking.com spends effort to ensure you get viewed. My understanding is that you will even pop up in searches where clients wasn't specifically looking for your property but maybe for something similiar.

Let's see what the rest of the forum has to say, but it's a yes from me.

Keep well!

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Ccpddb 5 years ago

I too think that the preferred partner program is worth it. I am curious though Joey stated that it is free?? I thought I was paying an additional 3% to be a part of it, am I not? I am now confused!

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Admin 4 years ago

Some times ago, I sign in to prefer the program. It did heart me. I did not get any reservation. To be in the preferred program you have to agree to a higher commission for the booking. I rase price to cover higher commission and the little thumb did not do any good to us. We are in a very competitive area and in order to get any clients from Booking, we have to keep the price very low. Recently Booking rased the commission and charge us for guests using credit cards. We're paying commission from the total payment which includes taxes and VAT.

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Lee 5 years ago

I have been trying to get into Partner-program but it seems Im still far behind. I have 8.9 guest reviews but Im not sure what else needs to be done...

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Bandara Hotels… 5 years ago

@Nicbritton It depend on where is your property located and depend on how many competitor hotel you have in that area. For some area there is no need to join Preferred partner program if they have a few page of hotel list. Which if your hotel already on high traffic demand you will be on first page properly on top five hotel list anyway.

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Lee 5 years ago

Have you noticed any diffrence when joining the preffered partner program?

I am always fully booked so I don't think it applies to me.. I guess I would put prices a bit higher if joined!

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SaKats 5 years ago

It is very simple why you should join. If they don't see you they won't book you. There aren't many guests who will search multiple pages back to choose their accomodation. Especially if you want early bookings.

I joined it in July and I have seen a very big boost in reservations for this and for next year. My property immediately started showing in top 5 in my area and even showed up in searches for cities near.

For my country Greece it needs a 20% commision, which now that I see that every other country has only +3% sounds very unfair? What's up with this discrimination?

Anyway it is at least much better than the Genius program, which requires a full 10% discount and also from my experience, brings guests of often questionable quality. As soon as I joined I quit the Genius program immediately and never going back.

Unfortunatly it is very difficult to stay in the preferred partner program for long if you have few rooms.

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Lee 5 years ago

SaKats- very detailed and useful information. Thank you

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Akwador 5 years ago

What no one has mentioned, 70% of your inventory needs to be with Booking.com. I have had a 9.4 Review score over 5 years but since taking on Expedia as well - our sales are now:

1) Booking.com

2) Expedia

3) Direct Bookings

The issue now is that Expedia and Direct Bookings combined have reached 40% so Booking.com is writing telling me I now fail to meet the criteria. What am I to do - Expedia monitors our inventory and if we allow more rooms to Booking than them we run foul of our agreement with them - we are suppose to offer same rates and same spread.

What is happening is that Booking.com are failing to sell enough rooms in time and the slack is being taken by an increase in Direct Sales (commission free to us) and Expedia.

I work on the principle that although preferred partner is great, if I cannot be in it and Booking sell less, I will simply have more exposure in their competitor so it is a bit of a own goal by Booking.com in my view.

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Leandri Klopper 5 years ago

Hi Akwador ,

Thanks for posting. Does Booking.com need 70% off all the stock you have??? I didn't know that.

Where did you get that information? Where is it on the contract, or did they tell you this on email?

Hope to hear from you soon.

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Akwador 5 years ago

That information came from a Booking.com communication to me saying I was not meeting the criteria for preferred partnership programme. Not much I could do other than to restrict other agencies - I work on first come first served basis so it is totally possible for Booking to c70% - if they give me the guest bookings faster!

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M Adamopoulou 5 years ago

I have also joined recently the preferred partner program as soon as I had five excellent reviews from my guests. My property is showing on the top when searching and expecting more bookings.

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Leandri Klopper 5 years ago

Oh I see Akwador , thanks that makes sense. I nearly had a small heart attack. I understood something else.

Well done M Adamopoulou ! You will not regret it. I've recently met with my account manager and he has advised that it really is a good program, and not just because he works for Booking.com and he has to say it.. but because he says it really does make the Performance difference.

Super congrats again! May it keep going well

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M Adamopoulou 5 years ago

Thanks Leandri Klopper for your comment. I hope my reservations go up because my property is located up in the hills away from touristic areas

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Leandri Klopper 5 years ago

Pleasure M Adamopoulou !

It should. Our one property is really far off, it's also up in the mountains (literally built on one) and is a hectic drive. But people LOVE it there. Funny enough, that resort is not on the Pref. Programme. Our quite, close to the city, resort is on the programme and has seen an increase in bookings.

Our account manager has explained to me that it's not just about appearing on the top part of the list that generated the bookings but people likes booking something that looks like it has some sort of "special" or is "valueable to obtain". So that little icon makes your property look Special, like Booking.com itself prefers your property. LOL okay I'm a bit excited by this, but I finally understand what the fuss is about.

Have a great weekend!

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M Adamopoulou 5 years ago

Leandri Klopper thanks again for your support and incouraging suggestions, very helpful indeed.

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fluff 5 years ago

Hmmm, preferred partner seems to be a double edged sword. On the one hand we are being charged more for qualifying....erm, what? We have, however, seen our listing storm up the "charts" for general searches.

On the other hand, we've also seen a decline in BDC reservations with Expedia and Agoda both overtaking in recent months, since joining PP. Seems a bit screwey.

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fluff 5 years ago

Joey

I will use a reasonably specific search because of the dense packing of hotels where we are.

Therefore, if I pop in the resort town (528 hotels up to a medium price bracket, we are budget), in private mode on the BDC customer search, I've risen from page 12 (from memory) to page 2.

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Leandri Klopper 5 years ago

Hey all,

You can see how much your property showed up in searches etc on the home page on the Extranet. And PP really did an excellent job of making those numbers soar. I'm struggling with the actually Bookings still. My property is currently showing up in 5600 search results, out of those I get 4265 property views, but the bookings are not so high. That means about 4 thousand people see the place and book somewhere else. . . which is discouraging.

I'm hoping the Genius programme will get more people to actually book. Doesn't matter if they have booked once of twice to get the status of Genius guest, as long as the Noddy Badge works to get people to book.

The way it was explained to me is, would you rather buy a Coke or the Coke that comes with a noddy badge for cheaper? It's supposed to be a marketing strategy.

Keep well

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Paul Johnston 5 years ago

I find the preffered program very inflexible if you only have a few rooms. Even though my propoerty has a 9.5 star rating and is almost exclusivly booked through BDC they took me off the program because the conversion rate was "not high enough". This is the algorithm wagging the dog if you ask me!

Does not really work for vacation rentals.

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Ccpddb 5 years ago

I used to believe this program helped! It does!! It helps BDC, lots. As for the rest of us it does absolutely nothing unless you are in a very large city where there are many, many pages of places. For the rest of us we simply pay more money to BDC. I have had a 10 now after a year in business it is a 9.9. I had some lovely guests who stayed and loved it yet nmarked me down for things that I never claimed to have! Anyway Booking just kept harassing me to do this and that, which I did, to no avail! I have only one room and the algorithm does not like it because you are either 100 percent full or empty. The algorithm is set up for a business to maintain a certain percentage of occupancy. Most of us smaller places will not benift.

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Leandri Klopper 5 years ago

Hey Ccpddb ,

Thanks for sharing. You see our properties are large and have many competitors so the PPP works wonders. I wonder if BDC is looking into a programme for properties like yours?

I sincerely hope you sent this feedback to them, and perhaps suggest a program for properties like your own. This might help a lot of people.

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M Adamopoulou 5 years ago

Leandri very good suggestion for us having only one property. It will certainly help me.

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Leandri Klopper 5 years ago

Helloes M Adamopoulou ,

Sure!

Are you on the Preferred Partner programme yourself?

Wondering if it works with a single 'smaller' property like it does with larger ones ...

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Paul Johnston 5 years ago

I have found that if you have a single property it is very difficult to maintain a place on the preffered partner program. It's virtually impossible to meet the conversion rate criteria demanded by the algorithm, and so eventually you will be thrown off the program.

Despite several attempts to reason with BDC they would not change their position. My property remains off the program, however it is consistantly busy both with BDC and others so I guess it didn't matter?

either way BDC are completly inflexible.

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M Adamopoulou 5 years ago

Hi! Paul-Johnston and welcome to the forum. I have also joined PPP but as you said it’s very difficult to maintain in.

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M Adamopoulou 5 years ago

Leandri yes I have joined the PPP and my appearing has improved but my property will be closed for winter and I don’t think it will remain in for a long time.

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k2u 5 years ago

Hello

Where can I post a new question ? I am also a preferred partner, within less than a month of joining.. But now I am reading about the genius program what exactly is that and would it benefit me in the US

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M Adamopoulou 5 years ago

k2u you’re doing a great job. Go to your profile in the forum. Underneath you will find the tab bar “Get points create a new post “ Write your post and submit it.

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k2u 5 years ago

Thank you M Adamopoulou :) I will check the genius program out

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M Adamopoulou 5 years ago

Massive pleasure. Have a nice weekend k2u....

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pibomarco 5 years ago

I've just deactivated preffered program, also my property is ranking quite high without the program so I guess it is not worth it. I think you gain more with activating genius program/extrass...

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The Culture Na… 4 years ago

Hello Sir I had a question for you on the ranking dashboard it shows that my property is performing 99% than all the other properties in the city and I am in the PP and genius platform. Unfortunately their has been a huge booking.com bug regarding the page views and property views for January 2020 and Feb 2020 and I am at risk of getting removed from the PP programe. Will this removal impact my property a lot or will it be negligible because it is already at 99% as compared to other properties.

Reply soon thanks

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M Adamopoulou 4 years ago

Dear Partner,

Since this is only a Partner Community, I think its better if you contact BDC directly to support you.

Have in mind that some partners have noticed the bug you are referring to....

Wish you well..

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pibomarco 4 years ago

I think this bug is not affecting actual vies, just statistics is not shown properly for JAN and FEB to us - yet. 


If you are reffering to 99% (Property page score) you can see in extranet which data is missing for you to achieve 100%. This should not affect PP programe. 

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The Culture Na… 4 years ago

No Sir I am referring to the Page views in the opportunity center for my hostel which shows 2.56 % for me as compared to 9.38% for similar properties which seems incorrect to me.

Keeping in mind that in the ranking dashboard my property shows that it is performing 99% better than all the other properties in the city and is number 1 in terms of number of bookings. I also have a high conversion rate too and Ranking 1 in my competitive set ( which includes all the other hostels in the city )

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pibomarco 4 years ago

This depends on which 10 properties you selected as a competiton. I performed 80% better then competition (third place), but recently I selected (replaced) other properties and now I am ranking on 7th place and performing better then 30% of current competitors. My conversion is 0,64% Area average 1,54%. My search result score is better then 89% of properties within my city (439 properties in total).

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M Adamopoulou 4 years ago

Good point...I think you are right about selected properties....

 

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k2u 5 years ago

Thank you pibomarco !!

You as well M Adamopoulou

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fluff 5 years ago

The PPP is still running here with no immediate view to change. However, the Genius programme is being lined up for the chopping block, just trying to time it with killing off another OTA's similar system.

We find these programmes attract more time wasters than genuine guests (most especially from BDC) and also interfere with any of our own promotions.

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Land House Deva 4 years ago

I  have a other question, it would be very nice if there was a printable page what you could print out and hang on ur reception that you are enrolling in  booking.com partner program.

Do we have something like this? some printable page?

 

please advise.

thanks

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k2u 4 years ago

Hello to all.. It's been a very long time since I was on last. Extremely busy !! 

Land House Deva ~ That is a great question. I would too love to hang something like that in our reception area. I believe it would be great for guests to see this. 

Hope everyone is doing well !! Glad to be back on.

Bye for now... 

k2u

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Aitsa Nicoline 4 years ago

Hi to all.... This is my problem!

With all due respect to all concerned, especially Booking.com, I really do not have time to sit in front of the computer all day and chat! I really, truely, dont mean to be rude, but i have a full day, everyday and cannot do this all the time. Please forgive me!

Keep well, Kind Regards

Nicoline

 

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