By: Tim Kottek

Tim Kottek — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:16:51 +0000

Here is our experience:-
This is written from two perspectives – Wattle Court Retreat a micro accommodation business and Experience Torquay a geographically focussed, web based accommodation booking serve. Wattle Court Retreat had the good fortune to be an early adaptor of Wotif and used Stayz as it’s second booking agent.
Experience Torquay came about when Wattle Court Retreat decided to create a presence on the web that permitted visitors to book on line. The presence was to be a number of accommodation establishments around Torquay to give visitors choice of a range of properties. The properties were chosen on the basis of owner operated, prepared to pay commission for bookings, and having some individual character.
The aim was to find “back office” software that was effective and affordable.
V3 through Book Victoria was chosen because:-
1.For 1 to five rooms the monthly fee was $ 0!
2.Book Victoria provided support to becoming an Internet Merchant – ANZ Bank waived their $ 127 Establishment Fee and their $ 27 monthly fee.
3.The bank charge at 1.1% was reasonable
4.Use of the V3 system costs 6% paid for transactions, and there is an 80 cent transaction fee for the use of the gateway.
5.Distributors are available ranging from 0% to 15%.
Wattle Court Retreat’s focus was to develop bookings for Partners and thus allocated it’s inventory manually to Wotif. Wattle Court Retreat kept Stayz as that was e-mail based “negotiation” with visitors, no double booking risk.
A commissionable link for each property pointed to their V3 data which at that time unfortunately included full contact details. We don’t know how much non commission business we sent to our partners.
One morning in the mail was a letter from ANZ announcing that the monthly fee would change from zero to $ 35.-! We took two actions, frantically contacted Book Victoria and resurrected an offer from RACV (AAA) that had recently arrived offering Roam Free Advanced at no installation cost and $ 10 per month. As this package handled Wattle Court Retreat’s business critical Wotif connection the decision to change was a no brainer.
Roam Free through it’s Global Accommodation Service provides distributors with properties world wide. For Experience Torquay moving to establish a presence along the full length of the great Ocean Road that solved a problem – the properties were available without having to “sell” the concept to the property. The distribution commission was reasonable, 10% out by more than 30 days and 6 % for those bookings in the next 30 days.
The additional web visitor benefit was that the Roamfree properties show a calendar.
In conclusion Experience Torquay will continue to handle properties from both V3 and Roam Free. Wattle Court Retreat will stay with Roamfree as it handles the mission critical link to Wotif, and will sign up for last minute sites that are covered by Roamfree that work on commission only,

Comments on: Liquid Inventory: Online Bookings and Distribution for Small Tourism Operators

By: Tim Kottek