HouseTrip for Owners
As a dot com company, we believe that continual refinement is important and necessary (Google, for example, is rumoured to change their search algorithms daily!). We’re constantly evolving, as we respond to feedback from our users and the data we see from our web analytics. And as a start up, the pace of change is pretty quick! We hope that the changes result in consistent improvement to the platform. But we recognise that changes can be hard to follow: so we thought it would be helpful to clarify, as simply as possible, how HouseTrip works.
Introduction
HouseTrip is a very different way for holiday apartment owners to advertise their properties. We’re not a managing agent, an online travel agency or a classified listing website. We simply connect people who want to book holiday apartments with the people who own or manage these apartments, providing both parties with a safe and easy-to-use platform to conduct mutually beneficial transactions.
No Listing Fees
There are no listing fees on HouseTrip. It’s absolutely free to advertise as many rentals as you like. Instead, we operate a win-win payment model: HouseTrip takes a 10% commission from the bookings that we generate for our owners. This is how the online hotel industry operates, and we are convinced that the holiday apartment industry will increasingly go the same way. Compared to the standard commission rates of 20-25% for hotel booking websites, our rates are very reasonable.
Unique contact between owners and guests
HouseTrip utilises a unique proprietary messaging system to ease the communication between owners and guests. When guests are searching for a holiday apartment, they send availability enquiries to owners in a very special way. They enter the dates of their stay and the number of guests, and this generates an automatic message, to which they can add a personalised message.
Owners then confirm whether the requested property is available for the requested stay. If it is not, they can propose a different price, dates or even a different property for the requested stay, and they can add a personal message to the information relayed to the guest. By relaying the necessary information to the guest with just the click of a button, the owner saves lots of time; the system is far quicker than phone calls or emails.
Direct Booking and Payments
When an owner confirms availability for one of their properties, the guest can then book directly by entering their credit card details on our secure payment page. At this stage the full payment for the stay is authorised. Once the owner confirms the booking, the card is charged. The payment is transferred to the owner (minus our 10% commission) by bank transfer or PayPal after the guest has arrived at the property.
I hope that’s helpful! Please give us a shout on support@housetrip.com if you’d like any further assistance.
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