Warning notifications and Rategenie implementation

[Alojsia Guerra]

Hi there, those are some vital improvements you should really implement:

1. warning notifications: we do not get any warning in case of overbooking and channel disconnected. In the last years I had at least 10 overbooking, especially with homeaway, and I never got an alert about that. The only thing you see is a yellow line on the calendar. However most of my HomeAway bookings are in yellow because of an issue with the iCal calendar. Furthermore if one of my channel disconnects, I don’t have any warning other than the notification on the website. The only way to have at least a push notification is to pay for Automata and it is not fair to make us pay only to have warnings. You should really set push notifications for calendar and channel related issues. Something like “overbooking from …/…/… to …/…/… - check your calendar” or “Airbnb channel disconnect - take action” thru push notifications on the app.

2. channel adjustment rule: the adjustment should not be limited by the maximum rate set. Let’s take an example: adjustment of 5% for airbnb and 20% for booking.com, maximum rate set 100€. My rategenie calendar set 100€ as default price for a specific date; as a result I would have 100€ for default, 100€ for airbnb and 100€ for booking.com. With that said booking.com price will result cheaper for guests but more expensive for me (100€ for guest and 80€ revenue for me or 70€ if they choose a non refundable rate) and airbnb would be penalized (around 115€ for guest with their commissions and 95€ revenue for me). If we want to equalize the prices on all channels, we should be able to set the min and max rate for the default price but the adjustment should be capable to go even above. In that way, I would have with the same settings a default rate of 100€, an airbnb rate pushed of 105€ and a booking.com rate pushed at 120€. All price will be the same at the end and no channel will result cheaper.

3. gap night rule: I’m not a fan of single nights rental, I prefer to keep the house empty and give a late check-out to my guests. However, if I can set a higher price and someone is willing to pay for it, I can consider it. Let’s say I have set a max rate of 100€ on my calendar, I have a single gap night and I would like to set a fix price for this gap night at 140€: I cannot do it because my max rate is 100€ So I don’t get the point of having a gap night rule if it doesn’t overwrite my max rate.

4. stripe payment fee: sorry but this is ridiculous! you won’t make a dime with it because we will all process our payments directly from stripe dashboard. It’s longer but it worth the 1% fee you are asking. I’m pretty sure that you know that apps like paga.to or payment do that for 0.50% but they allow you to send requests thru sms or link which is not your case. Just trash that ridiculous fee!