Booking System

For small holiday property owners, keeping the booking calendar full whilst delivering a great customer experience to guests can be challenging. It demands ‘around the clock’ attention and constant focus. Attracting new customers and convincing them to book your property is particularly tough in a crowded holiday-let market. Increased competition forces holiday property owners to increase customer satisfaction and minimise costs to succeed. As well as enticing guests to stay at your property through compelling property listings and a great website, there are the logistical challenges of busy changeover days, lost keys and guests communication prior to their arrival. Keeping up with all of this can easily become overwhelming for holiday property owners, especially when they do not live locally.
Holiday rental owners can spend between 5-8 hours a day marketing and managing their holiday properties. It can be very cumbersome, on occasions stressful, and the work never stops. Nowadays, some of those painful tasks can be delegated to experts. We can free up your time by assisting with any and all aspects of your holiday let management. This would give you time to concentrate on things that really matter to you. Work smarter and not harder by outsourcing the holiday rental management tasks to the experts, South Devon Holidays. Our primary objective is to maximise your profit.

CREDIT / DEBIT CARD

South Devon Holiday Lodges is an established holiday rental property management company. As such, we have negotiated very low fees with online payment merchants for taking online credit and debit card payments. If your guests chose to pay via credit/debit card, you would be charged only 1% of the transaction fee (pass-through cost), which is highly competitive.

Credit Cards Offer Increased Security

We all know that credit and debit card payments are much more secure than bank transfers. In addition, guests paying by card receive additional protection from their banks and/or card providers. Following the recent pandemic, holidaymakers have become more aware of the risks associated with booking holidays privately. Some holiday homeowners refused refunds for holidays cancelled due to the government lockdown, which was widely published in the press. As a result, many holidaymakers now look for accommodation accepting debit or credit card payments.
Since the #Staycation boom, also many scammers have been posing as holiday homeowners taking bookings and payments for fictitious properties. As a result, people lost thousands of pounds, and it has been widely publicised in the media. The main word of advice to holidaymakers is to always pay by credit or debit card via the property’s website. However, scammers are unable to offer this payment method due to the checks completed by card merchants. From our perspective, accepting card payments is the quickest way to secure a booking, as the payment is made instantly upon placing a booking. Booking is confirmed and paid at the same time. No chasing, no follow-up hassle.
An added benefit is that many credit/debit card providers offer zero per cent interest on spendings over a period of time, allowing the holiday owner to afford a breakaway. In addition, it improves the chances of your property remaining occupied throughout the year.
* 1% is charged by WorldPay per credit card transaction, this is cross-charged to property owners as a pass-through cost (South Devonshire Holidays Ltd do not charge for this service), we simply pass on our corporate savings from our merchant to the owners

THE SERVICE

  • Fully hosted booking system with flexible functionality.
  • You retain full control of your guests and their engagement.
  • Payments taken by South Devon Holiday Lodges, allowing credit/debit cards
  • The advantage of low credit/debit card transaction fees whilst with the South Devonshire holidays booking system.
  • Monthly statement of completed bookings and accounts.
  • South Devonshire Holidays to manage guest breakage deposit refunds.
  • Your property will be added to the South Devonshire Holidays agency page, adding free marketing for your lodge.
  • Yearly update of your lodges pricing, ensuring you have at least 12 monthly pricing.

STANDARD

£29.00 PCM + 1% per transaction (via worldpay)

  • Hosted online booking system.
  • Once yearly property pricing addition to the bookalet system.
  • Monthly reconciliation of completed bookings
  • Refund of guests breakage deposits
  • Provide iCal details for Airbnb, HomeAway, Holiday Lettings, Independent Cottages web pages.
  • Addition of your property in South Devonshire Holidays agency web page / social media
  • Ability to take credit / debit card payments with all bookings with no hidden fees.

GOLD

£39.00 PCM - + 1% per transaction (via worldpay)

All items in the standard package with the addition of:
  • Monthly price check and reconciliation in line with the market trends.
  • Monthly price updates to the booking system, according to the market trends, with approval with the owner.