Booking Customer Service

Booking.com

Booking.com is a part of Priceline group which is responsible for operating booking accommodations through online. This online service everyday reserves more than 950,000 rooms. The app and website attracts customers from both business sectors and leisure sectors all over the world. Their services were established in 1996 offering best prices for any property along with breakfasts and luxury suites. However, Booking.com is also available in 40 languages which are spread in 223 territories and countries. It is also registered with Chamber of commerce in Amsterdam, Netherlands with the proper registration number and over 10,000 people are found to be working as employees in the company along with booking.com customer service.

Wide Range of Services

Booking.com provides many services to its customers in wide range of aspects like apartments, villas, hostels, B&Bs, guesthouses and resorts. It also provides all these services at best and affordable prices serving every customer in the nook and corner of the world. Moreover, the multilingual Booking.com customer service is dedicated for the customers. With all these services, it provides many benefits to its customers like no reservation fees, secure booking, lowest rates, and benefits for property-owning partners. Its main mission is to help business travellers in providing services in their own budgets.

Best Booking.com Customer Service

Customers can directly change requests from the customer’s reservation page and it is easy and secure too. With just a single click, customer can change dates, edit guest details, contact property, upgrade room, cancel booking, request an extra bed, request late-checkout etc. They also provide FAQs on their official website and claims to resolve, almost all the basic issues of the customers. Even if those questions are not answered through FAQs, customer can fill the online form which can be submitted directly through their booking.com customer service website. Customer can call anytime to international number: +44 20 3320 2609.

All Time Customer Service

Booking.com Customer service is operates 24X7 and hence customer can be contact anytime when the customer needs to find solution for their issue. Through emails, customer care responds to all the emails quickly and also pickups phone within seconds which can be considered as the best customer service. With its service in many languages because of its services in many countries, the employees of customer service talks in the customer’s local language and also in English if the customer wants it. Hence, it is the best service that any company can ever provide to its customers.

Booking.COM FAQs

• How to get the freebies and perks on the Booking.com ‘Genius Program?’

After booking five trips with Booking.com, you get a “genius” status. And, there are several perks to having a genius program.

• You can get an Extra 10% off on selected properties.
• Some hotels provide early check-in and late check-out facilities for geniuses.
• Dedicated customer helpline number and sometimes, welcome drinks.

The Booking.com has done with few properties which are listed as genius properties on their website. Such freebies and perks are available only on those properties. This freebies and perks differ from property to property.

• Once you become Genius on Booking.com, you would get to see a ‘Genius icon’ on the properties which are Genius.
• In the search menu as well you get an option to sort your search by ‘Genius’ properties first.
• Now when it comes to freebies once you click on the hotel page on the left side, you would see a list of genius freebies which that hotel is providing.

Important Information: All ‘Genius Bookers’ gets 10% off the standard room rate!

• How does Booking.com make money?

Booking .com actually makes money through charging hotels for selling their inventories. Booking .com is a giant OTA, and they have millions of travelers who visit their site to find a hotel to live in. And to help out those travelers, they come up with a list of available hotels.

Moreover, when someone finds a suitable hotel and reserves it through their site, only then Booking .com makes a profit.  But they don’t charge their guests to make money. Instead, they take a percentage from the sellers/hotels.

So, if you are a guest and in need of booking a space, then feel free to use Booking .com. They will not charge you anything to make money.

If, however, you are a host/hotelier, then you should get ready to share your profit with Booking.com.

Remember: They will never compromise with regards to taking a part of your revenue.

• Does Booking.com offer the cheapest rates?

Booking.com offers the best deals for 885,073 hotels worldwide. And consequently, it has the highest number of hotel bookings in a month, which makes it very powerful leverage when negotiating with the hotel owners.

The matter of the fact is that; we as regular buyers would not be able to negotiate better terms than them, even when counting their 15% commission.

So, if you want to make sure you seize the best deal you should take the following steps:

1. Compare the prices with the official site that sells rooms in the hotel
2. Compare with other comparison sites like Airbnb, Agoda etc.
3. Search on Google for “hotel name plus cheapest rate.”

TIP: This idea always works best as Booking.com always comes out as the cheapest option.

• What payment options does Booking.com use?

Booking.com does not charge anything from the guests. They have 2 payment methods;

1. Pay At A Hotel: Guest makes the bookings give CC details to guarantee and pay at the hotel. They do not even save CC details & transferred directly to the hotel.
2. Pre-Payment: In the case of pre-payment, again CC details are directly passed to the hotel and are charged by the hotel only.

Booking.com only charges the commission from the hotel. Hence they are not required to have any payment platform. However, while transferring commissions to the affiliates, you can use PayPal among other to get the commission.

• Who are the founders Booking.com?

Booking.com started as Bookings Netherlands in 1996 in Amsterdam, and Geert-Jan Bruinsma founded it.

Then, Bookings Netherlands merged in 2000 with Bookings International which was founded by Sicco and Alec Behrens, Marijn Muyser and Bas Lemmens.

Stef Noorden was appointed CEO. The international hotel reservation business was sold in July 2005  to Priceline for $133 million.

• What is Booking.Com’s business model?

Booking .com actually makes money through charging hotels for selling their inventories. This means that they are solely making money out of Hotels. Basically, it charges hotels for premium listing memberships to list and promote the hotel according to the user’s search parameters and the hotel’s package.

Moreover, Booking and other companies face a problem such as the “Chicken and Egg” problem, which is a sever problem that two-sided market products face. In simple words, the issue raises a question of whether you should start with attracting the consumer side of the product or the producer side of the product. The consumer side won’t find anything to consume unless producers existed. Producers, on the other hand, will not get the encouragement to produce unless consumers exist. The solution to that is to start with some encouraging answer to one or both ends to get going.

Booking addressed this problem by only offering their service to Hotels for FREE (Producers content). Having said that, once they made sure they generated enough content to consume, they started building the website on the consumer’s side and then after succeeding at this, they went on and started charging these Hotels for traffic.

• How are reviews verified on Booking.com’s official page?

It only accepts reviews from actual guests that have used their system. They typically send out a survey to fill out after 3+ OR 5+ days from checkout, asking about their stay. Thus you can assume that all reviews are legit, but since no system is perfect, most of the people attempt to play with the reviews and they carefully look into the submissions and if ANYONE or ANY HOTEL  is guilty, the hotel will be DE-listed from booking.Com.

• How to cancel the hotel booking without incurring charges?

You can cancel your booking under the following conditions;

• If the confirmation voucher says free cancellation & your booking is not under cancellation, you can cancel it without incurring any charge.
• If you don’t get the visa approval or somehow you cancel your flight or the airline cancels your flight without any prior information, you may get a refund.
• In case, there is any miss-happening in your family & there is a genuine reason to cancel, it can be taken up.
• If you as a traveler are not keeping well, & is unable to travel, you may be refunded.
• And, if your travel is postponed & you can revisit the hotel, it can still be considered.

However, in all the above scenario’s, the hotel takes the final call. You need to understand that at Booking. Com the hotel manages the terms & conditions.

First of all, speak to Booking .com customer service & make them understand your situation, please do not bluff, they are doing it day in & day out, It’s easier for them to catch it.

Also, we suggest you that their customer service is more effective than any other web portal. Be polite. If required speak with the hotel directly too. This also makes an impact. Document everything by writing an email. You would be able to get a refund or avoid a cancellation charge for sure!

• How to increase your score on Booking?

Here’s how you can increase your score on;

Setting up the property: Listing and setting up your property is the first step and you need to ensure you make it right. Here’s what you should accomplish:

• Minimum 25 images of your property
• Put category thoughtful room details
• Enable ‘Pay at hotel’ payment option
• Update content to get 100% content score
• Display a clear check-in and check-out time
• Display complete information about rooms
• Put the cancellation policy of not more than 24 hours
• Clear pictures of the interior and exterior views of your property with photos of all room types

All-Time Best Practices

• Update your inventory availability and prices at least for next 12 months. (You can do it on all connected OTAs in one go, using a channel manager)
• Create new offers frequently
• Give competitive rates
• Check frequently for rate disparity and solve if any. (You can keep it at bay using a channel manager)
• Check OTA rankings daily and keep a record of it
• Ensure all bookings enjoy the honor of without having a single bounce
• Activate Performance linked bonus schemes
• Update inventory and rates daily. (Manage it quickly through a channel manager)
• Respond to reviews daily
• Request and get as many reviews as possible
• Maintain average review ratings of 4.0 and above
• Map room rates daily after checking the competition
• Do rate intelligence every alternate day

Promotions

• Offer higher commission to Booking and other OTAs.
• Furthermore, activate last minute booking deals
• Activate app offers; offer an extra 5% discount on all booking through apps.
• Activate offers for extended stays and create them for different ranges every week or month.

Note: A channel manager would be of great help in managing your OTA operations like rate and inventory updates. Moreover, it empowers you with centralized monitoring of all OTAs. Search on Google for the best Channel Manager!