Frankly, I am being more and more fed-up with the likes of AirBnB, VRBO, Booking.com, and TripAdvisor, charging in the region of 25% fees on a booking, collecting the money 8-10 months ahead, and paying me after check-out with more add-on fees on top (each year, new surprises). I really do not see this as fairness, but as an abusive behavior being exerted by those rental marketplaces, to extract easy money squeezed-out of both home owners and renters.
Let's review a recent example (offer dated mid-october 2023) for a booking at Villa Panorama via TripAdvisor for first week of September 2024. This is a week that I would normally rent directly to 12 guests for €4,500 at most. In this particular case, the guests declined the offer and did not find me directly.
As can be seen, the guest is asked to pay upfront €7,762.45 for the week, 10 month ahead of their holiday. I will never see the first Euro of this money until mid-September 2024... But this is not the end of the story, as Trip Advisor will automatically declare every quarter to the Spanish Tax authority, the total amount of booking taken at Villa Panorama, including their fees, on which I pay a fix 24% rate of tax. In this example €7,762.45 is declared, trigerring a tax of around €1,863. My earnings from this booking now becomes €4,055. Then, there will usually be extra charges for making the payment to me (in general 2 or 3%), which means that the final gross income before any expense incurred (employee, bank, electricity, local taxes, etc...) will be less than €4,000. Yes, the guests would have paid over €3,800 just into taxes and fees!
You would think that no guest would accept to pay this amount of fees for the same holiday they would have if booked direct, but in more than 50% of the cases, you would be wrong. Those platforms have managed to create a convenience of booking and a fear of missing-out coupled with a fear of getting scammed, so strong that more than 50% of guests will pay those €3,800 for this false convenience and fake security.
If you would like to book next year's holiday at Villa Panorama, I would really urge you to weight with a clear and cool mind the pro/cons of all alternative ways for making the booking. You will see that I have been forced to bump up my rental prices on those platforms, to amounts that I myself feel are ridiculously high. But I feel my choices are limited, when around 50% of the amount paid by the clients are vanishing into taxes and fees even before they check-in at Villa Panorama.
If you book direct with me, I am happy to take the booking in your own currency (GBP, USD, CAD, NOK, or other) at the exchange rate of the day. I am also happy to take the booking in Crypto money. I would favour BTC over all others, but would also accept USDC, USDT, ETH or ADA. And of course, all clients booking directly with me have a full package all inclusive (no extra for pool heating and jacuzzi heating, short stay cleaning, etc...), which I am forced to add as an extra on top of those bookings made via AirBnB, VRBO and the likes.
In conclusion, you always have this choice: pay an insane amount of extra fees for a sense of convenience and security, or book direct with me for the best price, paid in your own currency, or in Crypto money.
Thank you for your support. We are looking forward to meeting you all at Villa Panorama in the next few months / years.
Eric.