Kacey and Stephen George own Burnside Cottage, a very successful bed and breakfast business on the Caithness north coast. Since buying the property in 2018 they have totally refurbished it and added their own touches to make Burnside Cottage a delightful and welcoming place for their guests.

The consistent positive reviews and feedback they receive is a testimony to the quality of service they provide and ensures that booking levels remain high all year round.

With the objective of enhancing their online presence and effectively promoting their excellent new facilities Kacey approached MacKenzie Business Solutions regarding a new website for the business which would enable visitors to book their stay with them online.

Kacey also wanted these direct bookings to automatically and effectively synchronise with the booking system they already had in place with three of the major online travel agencies, booking.com, Expedia and Airbnb. She also wanted a single resource that could manage all the bookings for her business.    

As accommodation providers will be well aware, the benefit of these online travel agencies is that they offer a global booking resource which is boosted by the comprehensive digital marketing activities campaigns they undertake. The downside however is that commission levels on bookings generated have become more significant and this is an issue that has become a cause for concern amongst many operators in the hospitality sector for a variety of reasons.

To be fair to the booking agencies, they do facilitate a procedure where booking calendars can be synced with external booking resources which is more often than not their competing booking agencies. The reason they do this is if they were to insist on exclusivity arrangements with their accommodation providers, they would more than likely experience a detrimental impact on their turnover.

As mentioned above, booking calendars can be synced with external resources, one of these could be the booking calendar on your own website and through MacKenzie Business Solutions, this is what Burnside Cottage did with their new website.

The basic theory is that the more direct bookings generated, the less would have to be paid out on commission fees.

So, if you currently take bookings through booking.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor, Airbnb, cottages.com or any other OTA (Online Travel Agency) using the iCal system, why pay more commission to these organisations than necessary when you can minimise your commission payments by accepting direct bookings on your own specially configured website?

If you are a hotel, guest house, bed and breakfast or self-catering accommodation provider and want to find out how your business can benefit from a custom-built website integrating

• a property management system
• a booking engine
• a channel manager
• online payments

please complete and submit the form below

To see the website created for Kacey and Stephen George incorporating the above features please click on this link Burnside Cottage