Most popular booking portals

Digitization and globalization have influenced tourism. Holiday apartments and hotels are now booked online via booking portals or the websites of the providers. The selection of holiday apartments and hotels has expanded due to globalization.

Companies can create personalized travel experiences by analyzing customer preferences. Popular booking portals are Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia, Tripadvisor and Hotels.com.

Holiday apartments, temporary apartments and other types of accommodation are now mainly offered via websites or booking portals. More than every second trip booking is made online these days.

These booking portals (OTAs) are an important sales partner and are intended to bring guests and landlords together. Not being represented on the well-known platforms is actually no longer an alternative these days. Those who refuse would miss out on too much visibility, reach and booking volume. But it is worthwhile for landlords and hoteliers to take a close look when choosing the booking portal.

Advantages of booking portals

Price comparisons

Booking portals in particular offer the guest the opportunity to find out about possible accommodation in advance and to compare the offers of different hosts. Unlike travel agencies and hotels, they are open 24/7.

In particular, landlords with a successful apartment advertisement and many positive reviews can set themselves apart from the competition if they also offer good value for money. If there is also an up-to-date allocation plan, the chances of a good place in the listing increase.

Lower cost per booking and greater reach

However, portals offer other advantages for the host. Compared to individual homepages, you usually have a much greater visibility and reach on the Internet, since you actively advertise the accommodations in search engines and various partner websites.

The more holiday apartments and hotels are listed on a platform, the more users visit the portal. This reach is not possible with your own sales channels.

This often results in considerable cost advantages, because the costs per conversion (booking) decrease as the size of a booking portal increases. This enables landlords to develop new target groups in an affordable and targeted manner.

Free marketing with no risk

Landlords receive free marketing for their properties. A commission is only due to the booking platform if a booking has actually been made and the guest pays for it.

Last Minute Quotas

In addition, booking portals help enormously in marketing the hotels' last-minute contingents at short notice. Up to 25% of hotel bookings are made the day before check-in.

Ongoing update

With leading booking portals, the individual advertisements can be updated at any time manually, via an iCalendar or very conveniently via a so-called channel manager.

Complete booking process is taken care of

Last but not least, booking portals offer quick and easy customer communication as well as secure booking and payment options.

Disadvantages of booking portals

Some high service fees

On the other hand, it should be noted that booking portals sometimes demand considerable service fees from landlords and guests in the event of a booking. If the landlord has not booked a fixed annual subscription, the fee will be calculated depending on the mediated turnover.

Depending on the selected portal, the service fee can be up to 25% of the turnover, with the fee often being split between the guest and the landlord.

Enormous price war

The high number of hotels that can be found on the individual portals leads to an enormous price war within the industry, as guests are often looking for tempting bargains. Hoteliers are forced to offer cheap room rates to be competitive.

In addition, of course, a commission must be paid for each successfully brokered apartment. The consequences are financial losses or empty rooms. Commissions of up to 15% are therefore no longer appropriate for many hoteliers.

Monopolies, market power and problematic business conditions

Platforms like Booking, Airbnb and Fewo-Direkt have enormous market power. This can be reflected in the commissions paid and the sometimes problematic terms and conditions (e.g. best price clause, price pressure, withholding payments, unfair listing, etc.).

In the event of problems, the operators of the platform can withhold payments from guests. Hoteliers and landlords may then wait a long time for their money or, in the worst case, get nothing.

If the landlord offers cheaper apartment prices elsewhere, the portal can penalize those accommodations with a poor ranking.

Risk spreading (diversification)

In order to reduce the risks of monopoly market power of some platforms, it can be opportune to commission several portals.

Which booking portal?

Depending on the preferences of the landlord, the choice usually falls on one or more global players such as e.g. E.g. Airbnb, Fewo-direkt, Booking.com, Expedia or Tripadvisor.

In addition, it can make sense to hire a well-known local provider in Germany - e.g. E.g. Alloggia - to commission. Local providers often have the advantage that they are often better connected to local institutions, target groups and companies in the region. Regional needs, peculiarities and laws (e.g. the Housing Strengthening Act) are often better taken into account than with global providers.

In order to reduce the risks of monopoly market power of some platforms, it can also be opportune to commission several booking portals.

Service Fees and Commissions

Basic rule for commissions: The greater the reach of the portal, the higher the commission.

When asked which booking portal suits you best, the service fees should be given special attention:

Airbnb

Airbnb is an American company founded in 2008 in Silicon Valley, California. According to its own information, the website has over 5 million advertisements worldwide. Around 160,000 of the advertised accommodations are in Germany.

With this provider, guests pay service fees of up to 20% of the total booking. As a host, you pay an additional 3-5% transaction fees, which may vary depending on the country and the host's cancellation policy. The ads are free.

Booking

Booking.com is an online travel agency for booking travel accommodation, flights and car rental based in Amsterdam. The company has access to brokering over 28 million accommodations worldwide.

As a guest you pay no booking fee. As a host, you pay a commission per booking in the amount of 10-25%. No subscription or listing fees.

Fewo-direkt

At Fewo-direkt guests pay 6-12% on the booking amount. As a host, you pay an additional 8% of sales, unless an annual subscription for €299 has been booked.

Expedia

At Expedia there are no service fees for guests. Hosts pay a commission depending on the location i.H.v. 15-20% per booking. No subscription or listing fees.

Alloggia

Target group

The portal is aimed at commercial and private landlords of holiday homes and furnished apartments in German metropolitan regions.

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Commission, subscription and service fee

There are no service fees for guests. Hosts usually pay a sales commission of 10% No subscription or listing fees.

Telefonic consultancy

There is telephone and individual advice for guests and landlords.

Range

The range is not as large as that of the global players, but local marketing and networking with local market participants is considerably more advantageous.

Trust basis

All landlords are personally known to the portal operators.

Online Marketing and Visibility

Alloggia takes care of the marketing and thus ensures high visibility of your holiday property in the search engines and social media. Different target groups and living concepts can be presented.

Apartment ads

Individual apartment advertisements are checked by the team using uniform quality standards and can then rank in the search engines.

Entire booking process

In addition, the portal takes over the entire booking process up to the conclusion of the contract. In contrast to other portals, however, the brokerage takes place in the name and for the account of the landlord. This means that landlords bill their services themselves and payments are made directly to them by guests.

Current prices and availability

Apartment advertisements are updated via well-known channel managers or iCalendar updates (iCal). A free API interface is also available. This enables prices and availability to be updated daily.

You have to earn trust

As the operator of a booking portal for holiday apartments and temporary accommodation, an important task is to create trust among our potential guests and landlords.

In order to become the booking portal you trust, we have taken a number of trust-building measures:

Verifying the identity of landlords

The identity of all landlords on our booking portal is checked. In most cases we know our landlords personally or have regular telephone contact.

New landlords have to overcome a number of hurdles before their ads can be activated on our booking portal. The processing, quality check, activation and classification of apartment advertisements is carried out by us according to the "four-eyes principle". Accordingly, at least two employees are involved in the publication of advertisements.

As a rule, a technical connection to our booking calendar is also required in order to determine the availability of the apartments.

It is therefore not possible to spontaneously post unchecked apartment advertisements on our online portal.

Verifying the identity of guests

Booking requests from our guests are also checked for plausibility. In the event of doubtful personal information or address, as well as other queries, we will contact the guest by telephone and try to resolve any ambiguities as far as this is possible by telephone.

If the doubts about the identity cannot be eliminated after a telephone conversation, we ask the guest to send us a copy of his identity card. In addition, in these cases, a deposit i.H. 20% of the booking amount to be paid to the landlord.

Telefonic consultancy

If you have never booked with Alloggia as a guest, we recommend a telephone consultation before you make a binding booking. On this occasion we can discuss details of the booking and create mutual trust.

Quality guidelines

No matter in which German metropolis you are looking for apartments for the medium and long term. Our guests can expect to feel at home in their second home.

That is why we have defined a quality standard for the apartments we broker, which our landlords must not fall below. In the event of multiple or serious violations of our quality guidelines, we will consistently end the cooperation with the landlord concerned.

Google reviews

Google ratings and reviews are particularly relevant for local searches, as they reflect the experiences of other buyers/tenants. According to the study, 87% of guests read online reviews about local businesses.

Trustpilot

Trustpilot is a customer review management platform that helps online businesses build a trusted brand. Simply check which ratings Alloggia has already received.

Reviews from other guests

If there are reviews from other guests, you should read the critical reviews first. Honest reviews tell you what problems there have been in the past.

Alloggia 3-star system

In addition to the above minimum criteria for holiday apartments and furnished apartments, we award a maximum of 3 stars on our portal, depending on the quality and equipment of the apartments. The test criteria result from our quality guidelines.

Rental price traffic light

Our rental price traffic light can give you an initial orientation with regard to rental prices in the desired city.

This is a statistical algorithm that determines an offer with the average rents of comparable apartments within a city and draws attention to deviations.

Our rental price traffic light distinguishes four apartment groups: Apartments with up to 39 square meters of living space, 40 - 64 square meters of living space, 65 - 89 square meters of living space and furnished apartments with a living space of more than 90 square meters. The algorithm determines the average rent for each apartment group as well as the deviations within a city.

In this way, there are four possible price groups for the overnight stay prices of individual apartments: very good rent, good rent, fair rent and higher price.

"Top Host" award

Landlords who have been renting out successfully for years and without serious complaints via our booking portal receive an award as "Top Host". This award will appear on all listings under the information about the landlord, if the host has already received it.

Contact with the landlord

Before you book an apartment on our online marketplace, you can contact the landlord. On the individual apartment pages you will find a section "Ask the landlord a question". Ask your questions here and leave your name and email address.

If the landlord is online, he can answer there immediately. Otherwise, he can answer your questions later via email. Many questions can also be answered immediately by the support of our portal.

Reviews from other guests

Landlords who have been placing apartment ads on our booking portal for a long time have often received some reviews from other guests in the past. Credible reviews will tell you what problems there have been in the past.

Technical security measures

Even if 100% security on the Internet cannot be guaranteed, extensive technical measures have been taken to protect our booking portal against criminal activities such as e.g. For example, to protect against hacker attacks or similar. Our portal has modern methods for encrypting data.

The communication connections with the booking portal are also exclusively encrypted. This makes it much more difficult to eavesdrop on data. As part of a penetration test, the booking platform was also examined for known vulnerabilities (bugs and exploits).

Our tip

If you want to assess the price-performance ratio of a holiday apartment or a temporary apartment on our portal, you should also take into account the number of stars and the ratings of other guests.

If a landlord has received an award as "Top Host" or at least two stars from Alloggia, this can also justify higher rents.

When booking a holiday or temporary apartment, there can always be minor defects. But if you book an apartment with at least two stars from a "top host" with good reviews from other guests, the likelihood of any complaints decreases significantly.

Conclusion

Of course you can book a holiday apartment, a holiday home or a furnished temporary apartment via the Internet. However, you should carefully check and compare the housing offers and contract conditions of reputable providers.

If you have any questions or problems, you should contact us or your landlord by phone or email. If you would like to book a temporary apartment, you can also ask the landlord to arrange a viewing. Depending on the technical equipment, some landlords also offer online viewings.

If you consider the above points before you book, you can book your holiday home or temporary home with Alloggia.de safely and with a good feeling.