Bed & Breakfast News Sept-Oct 2016 (#42) | Page 14

14 | Bed & Breakfast News | Sept-Oct 2016

After seeking members’ views about
working with online travel agencies
(OTAs), we have been struck by the
strength of feeling out there – and
some typical responses are below
(and on p4-5). We start with a letter
from a longstanding and awardwinning member, which seems to
perfectly sum up the changes to
how B&Bs market their rooms over
the last 15 years:

B&Bs an
an unequal

The OTAs now dominate Google –
we have lost control
I have read recently a lot about
accommodation providers’ displeasure
with OTAs, especially Booking.com.
However, very little - as far as I can see is being done about it.
I am impressed with the actions taken by
the B&B Association to curb OTA excesses however the power they have is greater
than possibly a small nation! They will
simply carry on, regardless of regulation,
as they have the muscle.
Talk is of a ‘back-lash’ in some online hotel
blogs, and companies like Trivago selling
lame alternative solutions. Tiny OTAs with
smaller commissions try all the time to wean
our guests off the larger operators from
America. But we – mainly I – do not want
OTAs. They are impersonal, complicated to
manage and, above all, expensive.
When we first started in this business 15
years ago, we thought we would have
retired by the time we had to get our hotel
registered on an OTA. Online bookings from
our websites were quite novel then. We
were very advanced with our computerbased booking manager called CaterBook.

I understood it – just – it was very easy for
guests, especially from abroad, to book. 68% of
our bookings came from Sawday’s costing us
about £800 a year. 27% came from VisitBritain,
affiliated to our local TIC (costing about £300 per
year) and the rest by Google searches because
we were able to keep ourselves at the top of the
first page. We were inspected and checked by
VisitBritain and The RAC – again at a cost of
about £400 per annum. With advertising in
magazines we kept the total of our advertising
budget well below 5% of our turnover.
We have had to not only withdraw from all
these traditional forms of advertising because
our advertising budget is now well over
13.5%; 12% going to Booking.com!