Foreign Perspectives

We’re listed on a number of instant-booking websites which are quite different from the usual “drop us a line and we’ll get back to you” type of site that the majority of B&B type places (and many hotels) are listed on in that once the guest has clicked the “book it” button, they are guaranteed to have the room available.

Now obviously when there’s an automated process like this, the system needs to hold information about various aspects of the room and, in particular, the number of people that the room will hold. So, for example, if you book a double room through a system like this, then it’ll sleep up to two people.

So what do people start doing around this time of year? Well, they book a double and in one case turned up with five people for the room. Why? Well, on another site (not the one that they booked through), we say we don’t charge extra for children so they figured that they could book the cheapest double room and turn up with an unlimited number of children.

This, despite the site saying, “the maximum number of people (including children) is 2” for that particular room.

We’ve just received the first of these bookings for the Summer season… there’ll be many more. Actually, the current family are quite lucky in that we have a room available: I think that the 2 adults plus 3 children ended up sleeping in the car as they arrived on the busiest day of the year last Summer.