Customer Questionnaire Summary 2024

Client feedback is a key element in shaping our development roadmap. Our goal is to create tools that enhance your holiday lets by attracting bookings, managing guests, and managing your reservations.

This year, we've received more feedback than ever before. Thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts, experiences, and suggestions.

You can see how your feedback influenced our past developments in our monthly Change Log.

We carefully review each response and share the results here.

We acknowledge that we're not perfect, but we are committed to continuous improvement.

So, get comfortable and read our 2024 summary. 

Summary of Customer Feedback 2024

Bookster has created 3 main goals:

• A great experience for you through quality Customer service
• Easy to use system
• Stable and reliable system.

Some of the highlights:

• "Bookster has made our lives so much easier and has reduced the risk of double bookings to nil."
• "Keep it up you guys are great."
• "You are a very responsive team, which is great."
• "I find your service very helpful."

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Common themes for feedback 2024

Let's dig into some specifics. 

1. Charges

Q. What could be better in Bookster and our services?

A. "Not taking [a percentage] for third party site bookings (eg Airbnb). They already take such a high percentage anyway which makes it incredibly difficult for holiday let owners to break even. Also Bookster already take a monthly fee it seems unfair to charge twice."

Whilst it may not be clear from a client side, the connection process and the management process of Direct Connections to channels like Airbnb is hard. It requires a significant amount of our Technical Team's time and effort. 

To reflect the work of maintaining the channel connections, we apply a charge for these services. Our Channel Manager charging structure is a % of bookings revenue. We don't charge if you don't receive any bookings.

We have clients who do not use the Channel Manager and we don't feel it's fair to charge these clients for services that they are not using. 

So what can you do?

Many holiday rental owners choose to increase the nightly or weekly prices on channels. This increase could cover the fees associated with working with channels.

This increase helps you to earn a higher income as your channel manager revenue would not be affected by any fees, from Bookster services, or the channel fees. 

2. Advertising support 

Q. What could be better in Bookster and our services?

A. "More help with how to advertise my accommodation."

We've taken note of this, and will be working to improve the support we provide you.

We've started with a blog post on Naming, describing and tagging your photos, which helps your visibility. 

We'll keep working on this so keep your eyes peeled on our blog and newsletters.

In the meantime, there are a number of places where Bookster provide information on how to advertise your accommodation. 

In the Bookster Blog, there is a section for Attracting bookings. This provides posts, interviews and videos with advice on how to attract guests to your holiday homes. 

We have a podcast 'Smashing your goals with holiday rental software' which provides information on the techniques to grow your holiday rental business using holiday rental software.

3. Guest messaging

Q. What could be better in Bookster and our services?

A. "Guest messages" and "If emails from and to customers were visible in Bookster that would be perfect."

Guest messaging is an area that we are actively reviewing and improving. 

In recent months, we have added guest messaging to Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com channel.

This means that within Bookster you can respond to guests messaging you through those websites.  

4. Email notifications

Q. What could be better in Bookster and our services?

A. "Email confirmation of each booking."

There are different ways that you will receive notification of your bookings, depending on how you have set up your account.

1. For full connections with channels and all Direct bookings:

All bookings received will trigger a confirmation email to the guest and to you, the account holder. 

You can additionally choose for these emails to be sent to other members of your team - such as your owners, or your guest liaison. 

This applies to all bookings from channels using the direct connection, or through your own website. 

You can subscribe to arrivals and departures ical too, which will put the booking into your own online calendars.  If you add the iCal to google calendar, you can create a 'notify me' to notify you when an event changes.

2. iCal connection

If you only sync availability to channels (eg Airbnb) via iCal, you will receive a message from the channel confirming that a guest is booking.

5. Guest reviews

Q. What could be better in Bookster and our services?

A. "Guests reviews on basic subscription."

There are different options for adding guest reviews depending on the package, and the type of Bookster website that you have;

• Add guest book and professional reviews, e.g. from newspapers:
  • Available on all packages. 
  • Reviews show on Bookster websites.
• Show channel reviews via Revyoos
  • Available on all packages.
  • Guest reviews left on channels will automatically show on your Bookster instant website, with the option to show on Bookster custom websites.
• Show Feefo (Max) and TripAdvisor (Pro) reviews:
  • Available on Pro or Max packages.
  • Reviews can show on Bookster custom websites.
• Collect Guest reviews via your Bookster custom website
  • Available on Max packages.
  • Reviews can show on your Bookster custom website.

6. Service hours

Q. What could be better in Bookster and our services?

A. "It would be great to ger a 7 day help service or out of hours. Sometimes we need help outwith office hours."

Whilst this would be useful, at this moment we cannot provide a 7-day / out of hours service. Our hours are 9am-5pm UK. We'll let you know if this changes. 

However although we can't provide out of hours service, we do focus on being very available during the working hours. You can contact our team by phone, email or using the Chat button on the Bookster pages, and you'll find a real person here to help. 

7. Regional issues in Wales

Q. What could be better in Bookster and our services?

A. "Understanding of regional issues in Wales regarding law differences from Scotland and England."

You've very accurately identified our heavy slant to Scotland, the birthplace of Bookster.

It's been especially prominent in the last few years as we've been actively supporting The Association of Scotland's Self-Caterers (ASSC) and the team of petitioners in Scotland. They have been working hard to influence policy for a better outcome for many Scottish operators. 

In response to your feedback, we've now started to publish more material from the experts over in The Professional Association of Self caterers UK (PASC UK). You'll see this on our social media, and you'll see us working more to highlight issues and insights that affect our clients in other countries. 

Bookster developments

We appreciate everyone who suggested improvements to our processes.

These suggestions are incorporated into our annual, six weekly and weekly planning sessions.

Here are a few of the suggestions we received...

• "It doesn’t pull through details of pets booked via Airbnb."
• "An at a glance view to see all properties with price and availability on one page."
• "Filtering of bookings ... automatically in arrival date order."
• "Dynamic pricing included in the Pro level."
• "Just keep taking onboard user feedback to enhance the product, maybe ask every quarter if there was anything that users found difficult/frustrating."
• "More instructions/guides on certain elements to the software."
  

We actively review and discuss these suggestions, along with the other feedback in our 6 weekly planning sessions. The outcome of these discussions will feed into our development plans.

For updates on our developments, check the monthly change log. 

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Thank you to everyone who responded, your feedback is very much valued.

Customer feedback is essential for us to plan future developments and provide new services throughout the year - making a better service for you.