Ideas for a day out?

[whole diary]

[ChrisB]

Turning to my decision to extend the trip to more than one day: it is not particularly easy to find somewhere to stay overnight (varies by location and budget). It is much harder when you are looking for somewhere that is easily accessible by train. Many websites are catching on to the idea of searching for "dog friendly" but I've yet to see "near the station" offered as a search option.

I have stayed in some fantastic B&Bs over the years, which I prefer to the more impersonal hotel experience. Not many could be described as "easily accessible by rail". In Dawlish, with a bit of effort, I found three (can you do better? without using AirBnB). I have also tagged B&Bs in Lymington, Yarmouth IoW and Sway for future reference.

I use a combination of Booking.com to locate (but not book) potential places near a specific location by using their map facility. Having located suitable places scoring ideally above 8.0 (but higher the better) using their map, I will check reviews there & elsewhere before looking up their website & making contact direct - the vast majority of places these days have learned that they can offer cheaper rates direct than on Booking.com by not paying the latter's comission fee of around 9%. Hasn't let me down yet.

[grahame]

Turning to my decision to extend the trip to more than one day: it is not particularly easy to find somewhere to stay overnight (varies by location and budget). It is much harder when you are looking for somewhere that is easily accessible by train. Many websites are catching on to the idea of searching for "dog friendly" but I've yet to see "near the station" offered as a search option.

I have stayed in some fantastic B&Bs over the years, which I prefer to the more impersonal hotel experience. Not many could be described as "easily accessible by rail". In Dawlish, with a bit of effort, I found three (can you do better? without using AirBnB). I have also tagged B&Bs in Lymington, Yarmouth IoW and Sway for future reference.

Not sure about Dawlish ... but just today I have been booking hotels that need to be stations for next week.   These days, outside the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), I tend to search on booking-dot-com, find something that looks vaguely suitable, then click on the map, find the station, and navigate around hotels nearby.   It's a formula that typically words, just with the proviso that in big cities what looks close to the station may not be. 

[Trowres]

Talking with a B&B owner in Scotland, that class of accommodation's very much in decline for reasons you can imagine. Information being online is a mixed blessing too, as the number of deceased web sites, deceased email addresses, unresponsive email address owners, is legion.
 

Yes, I have come across a number of dead links. One thing that irritates me is the large number of websites that, for want of a better term, seem to be parasitic; that is to say they appear to have scraped details from elsewhere and often offer to "check availability" for places that have long-since ceased to exist.

Something that's gone and that I'm not sure was valued even when it was running was the Tourist Information 'Book a bed ahead' service, which for a 10% commission was pretty good at finding somewhere to stay and often provided a voyage of discovery too. It was UK^▸ (United Kingdom)-wide so I once visited the tourist information in Bath and within a few hours they booked a B&B for me in Stirling. Compare and contrast with the present day and Bath has no tourist information office.

It was probably the early 90's when I used Tourist Info to obtain a long list of B&B in North Cornwall and worked my way through the telephone numbers until I found one that was suitable and had space. Although not the most streamlined of processes, it had the advantage of being, probably, a comprehensive list of accommodation - in one document.

One memorable time, before the service was centralised, and for Gairloch, the tourist information person completely ran out of options but had enough local contacts to go on the grapevine and find someone who was very content to put us up in a spare room. Evening sun, a small house with an extensive view a mile or so to Gairloch, and on arrival having taken a quick look at us, she handed us the house keys, apologised that she was out for the evening and with that we were beyond reach of the midges and had a roof over our heads.

Brings back memories. I stayed one night in Inverness. The proprietess didn't have space for the following night, so asked her neighbour.  I stayed with said neigbour several times over the years. She was a fantastic host and was there with tea and sandwiches to welcome me at about 02:30 after the Taunton-Inverness train* was delayed by 5 hours.

Still as a student, I booked into a B&B opposite Balloch station. When my friend and I arrived, the door was opened by a girl rather younger than us. She looked rather hesitantly at us - nobody else was in the house - but let us in. The same girl cooked breakfast the following morning, saying very little. We enjoyed the meal in what was rather smart surroundings and then went on our way.

* Yes there was a Taunton-Inverness train in those days (probably 1980s).

[Trowres]

I use a combination of Booking.com to locate (but not book) potential places near a specific location by using their map facility. Having located suitable places scoring ideally above 8.0 (but higher the better) using their map, I will check reviews there & elsewhere before looking up their website & making contact direct - the vast majority of places these days have learned that they can offer cheaper rates direct than on Booking.com by not paying the latter's comission fee of around 9%. Hasn't let me down yet.

I avoid booking.com for probably similar reasons (reinforced by its irritating presence on the National Rail journey planner).

Here, search engine algorithms are not our friend, as the "native" website of the B&B can be well down the list.

[Trowres]

Not sure about Dawlish ... but just today I have been booking hotels that need to be stations for next week.   These days, outside the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), I tend to search on booking-dot-com, find something that looks vaguely suitable, then click on the map, find the station, and navigate around hotels nearby.   It's a formula that typically words, just with the proviso that in big cities what looks close to the station may not be. 

Amazing how many maps used on accommodation / booking sites don't have a scale bar.

[Mark A]

**snip** Booking.com **snip** commission fee of around 9%.

Scottish B&B person who had had a portmanteau career before running a B&B business that having husbanded its reputation had grown along with the old stationmaster's house there - and now also included a freestanding holiday home constructed in part on ground that he'd cleared by removing a scoop into the long-abandoned railway embankment that bordered his land. He indicated that yes, the booking sites took a substantial bite out of the transaction, and for the holiday cottage this was 22%.

[grahame]

**snip** Booking.com **snip** commission fee of around 9%.

Scottish B&B person who had had a portmanteau career before running a B&B business that having husbanded its reputation had grown along with the old stationmaster's house there - and now also included a freestanding holiday home constructed in part on ground that he'd cleared by removing a scoop into the long-abandoned railway embankment that bordered his land. He indicated that yes, the booking sites took a substantial bite out of the transaction, and for the holiday cottage this was 22%.

Booking Agency Commissions ... indeed, that 9% quoted was low, and the 22% is high from my (historic) memory. Sounds a lot - ranging from "high" to "profiteering" perhaps?   But yet, I'll give you a modified view, increasingly historic but not totally replaced.  We paid, in commission, somewhere between those quoted figures when we ran Well House Manor. We did so with full prior knowledge, and willingly. How do you reach people from far, far away to come to your little B&B in an obscure town in Wiltshire? 

The days are gone of advertising in magazines and holiday brochures, the walk ins to the TIC^▸ (Tourist Information Centre) have faded to zero, and money spent on advertising and a commission to the TIC are no longer paid.  So the move to the online booking agencies can be viewed as a changed cost and not a new one. 

Whilst we preferred the commission rates to be lower rather than higher (who wouldn't?) we did not resent the agency payments.  Worth it for a good, easy to use and secure service that sold rooms only at times we otherwise had a surplus without having to field loads of enquires for rooms when they aren't available (negative marketing effect). We had control over what and when we offered, and indeed "Late Rooms" only offered them quite close to the date, required payment up front / not cancellable, and sometimes applied a minimum stay; Saturday night only available as part of a stay of 2 or more nights.

Potential direct customer question "We know you pay a commission to Late Rooms - will you take our booking, please, at a slightly lower rate than is offered there?"  Suprisingly, no, not if you're looking for just a night or two as a first time guest.  Our agreement with Late Rooms was that we had to offer the lowest rate there. But there was much more to it; the agency booking with "no cancels" reduced our no-shows and late drop outs.  And it secured payment ahead of time and saved us the admin that was done by the central agency.  And a "can you do it cheaper / direct" request was a flag of a potentially "squeaky wheel" customer - double edges sword there, since it could also indicate a thoughfulness on the part of the potential guest.

Are there are parallels, these days, in taxi bookings and Uber, and in split ticketing, where the obvious / rack rate price can be bargained for / undercut as we look to save money?

[Mark A]

Thanks for those insights. For a while, my go-to check on the performance of the online booking engines was a quick search for rooms in the closed and derelict for some time Glenfield Hotel in Ullapool. Some site or other would usually have something on offer even after its site was redeveloped for housing.

Mark