The BedBooking Price list allows you to manage many Booking.com rate plans, including the automation of this process thanks to "Commission and Availability". It is worth remembering how Booking.com's rate plans work, as described in the article Does BedBooking allow you to add multiple Booking.com rate plans?. This is needed to understand the possibilities offered by BedBooking and Booking.com.
If your Booking.com rate plans are dependent on another standard plan and their prices are based on the prices of this plan, such plans are not visible in the BedBooking Price list. The management of these plans is automated, because all you need to do is manage the prices of the standard plan in BedBooking, and the prices of the other, dependent plans will be converted by Booking.com. However, if you would like to see the prices of all plans in the BedBooking Price list, you must change the settings of the dependent plans in the Booking.com Extranet so that they are independent plans. Automation of plan management will be able to be set thanks to “Commission and Availability”.
All rate plans that are independent of other rate plans are visible in the BedBooking Price list. When connecting a Booking.com property to BedBooking, their prices and availability restrictions are downloaded to BedBooking unchanged. From the moment you connect, you manage these plans in the BedBooking Price list. By default, “Commission and Availability” is not enabled, so you have complete freedom to set prices and availability limits on each of these plans. This freedom, however, involves a lot of work in customizing your offer, as you have to change prices and restrictions separately in each rate plan. To streamline and automate the management of multiple Booking.com rate plans, it is worth using "Commissions and Availability".
“Commission and Availability” is designed to help you manage multiple Booking.com rate plans. To learn the basics about this functionality, read the article How does "Commission and Availability" work?.
“Commission and availability” with one Booking.com rate plan
If you do not use multiple Booking.com rate plans or you only have one independent rate plan and the rest of the plans are dependent on it, the global "Commission and Availability" should be a sufficient solution for you. All you need to do is set the commission amount for Booking.com, and the rates for the rate plan will be automatically calculated from BedBooking prices.
Example of using “Commissions and Availability” with one Booking.com rate plan
Let's assume that the commission that Booking.com charges you is 15%. You offer accommodation for EUR 200 and you want to sell it for this amount directly in the BedBooking Reservation System, which does not charge a commission. If you sell accommodation on Booking.com for 200 euros, you would have 170 euros left. If you want to receive EUR 200 per night sold on Booking.com, you must compensate for the commission charged by Booking.com. You would think that it would be enough to increase prices using the global "Commission and Availability" by 15%. However, in this case, you will be offering accommodation on Booking.com for 230 euros. Booking.com will then charge a 15% commission on EUR 230, or EUR 34.50. You would have 195.5 euros left. To be more precise, you need to calculate the compensation percentage, which can be written as:
compensation percentage = 100 / (100% - Booking.com percentage commission) - 100
In our case, the Booking.com percentage commission is 15%, inserting it into the formula we get: percentage of compensation = 100 / (100% - 15%) - 100 = 100 / 85% - 100 ≈ 117,65 - 100 ≈ 17,65 [%]
If the global "Commission and Availability" amount is 17.65%, then in the case mentioned above, the price on Booking.com would be EUR 236.
The 15% commission that Booking.com charges would be €35.4, so you would have €200.60 left.
If you want to calculate the compensation percentage, use the calculation sheet. Just make a copy of the spreadsheet and then change the amount of the portal's commission which you are charged.
“Commission and Availability” with many Booking.com rate plans
Using multiple rate plans, independent of each other, involves setting different rates for the same rooms on the same days, e.g. we want the non-refundable offer to be cheaper than the refundable offer. For this reason, you cannot use the global "Commission and Availability" option, as it allows you to set one global commission amount for all rooms and all rate plans. Booking.com prices would be calculated from the same BedBooking price and the same commission amount, which will not allow for rates to vary between rate plans. For this reason, when using multiple independent Booking.com rate plans, you should use the individual "Commission and Availability". To learn how to use it, read the article How to set individual “Commission and Availability”?.
Individual "Commission and availability" allows you to set different commission amounts - each room and each rate plan in it can have any commission. Moreover, individual "Commission and availability" allows you to set the commission amount as a percentage or a fixed amount.
Example of using “Commissions and Availability” with multiple Booking.com rate plans
Let's assume you have three rate plans - a refundable offer, a non-refundable offer and a breakfast included offer. The refundable offer is to have your standard rates, the non-refundable offer is to be 5% cheaper and the offer with breakfast is to be 30 euros more expensive than the refundable offer. Typically, you offer accommodation for 200 euros by selling it directly in the Reservation System, which does not charge a commission. If you want to receive EUR 200 per night on Booking.com, you have to compensate for the website's commission, which, for example, is 15%.
A reverse offer rate plan offering standard rates should have increased rates by 17.65% via individual “Commission and Availability”.
Accommodation in this Booking.com offer will be offered for EUR 236, so deducting the 15% Booking.com commission, you will be left with EUR 200.60.
If you want to calculate the compensation percentage, use the calculation sheet. Just make a copy of the spreadsheet and then change the amount of the portal's commission charged to you.
The non-refundable offer is to be 5% cheaper than the refundable one. Using the mathematical proportion, the following formula can be derived:
compensation percentage of cheaper/more expensive plan = (100% + compensation percentage) * (100% ± percentage difference) * 100 - 100
By inserting the data from the example we get: non-refundable offer compensation percentage = (100% + 17.65%) * (100% - 5%) * 100 - 100 = 117.65% * 95% * 100 - 100 ≈ 1.1176 * 100 - 100 ≈ 111.76 - 100 ≈ 11.76%
When we set the individual “Commission and availability” to increase the non-refundable offer rates by 11.76% from BedBooking prices, then converting the BedBooking price of 200 euros we will get a rate of 224 euros.
This is 5% less than €236 (the slight percentage difference may be due to Booking.com rates being rounded up to one unit by “Commission and Availability”).
If you want to calculate the compensation percentage for a cheaper or more expensive Booking.com plan, use the calculation sheet, where there is a sheet called “Compensation percentage of the more expensive/cheaper plan” Just make a copy of the spreadsheet and then change the amount of the portal's commission that you are charged and the percentage difference between the rate plans.
The offer with breakfast is to be 30 euros more expensive than the refundable offer (BedBooking prices increased by 17.65%), therefore we have to increase the prices of the offer with breakfast by 17.65% using an individual "Commission and Availability". Additionally, you must set a commission amount of EUR 30 using the “Additional charge for a night” field.
For example, the BedBooking price of 200 euros will first be increased by 17.65% and then by 30 euros. This will bring the nightly rate for this offer to €266, which is €30 more than the €236 rate of the refundable offer.