What is Spread Booking?
This month I want to talk a little bit more about the customer habit sweeping across areas of the hospitality industry, spread-booking. For those of you blissfully unaware of spread-booking, it is the act of booking multiple B & B’s, hotels, restaurants or pubs for the same time period before deciding at the last minute which one to go to and cancelling the others.
Earlier this month a journalist wrote an article for The Telegraph Travel, here in the United Kingdom, encouraging people to book multiple holidays, if they could afford the deposit, and choose which one to go one when the time arrived before re-scheduling the others. He pointed out the travel industry was desperate and those wanting to book could take advantage of this. I wrote an article in response to this irresponsible attitude that you can find here.
As B & B owners you are more susceptible to spread-booking if you do not charge a deposit or pre-authorise a card payment. I know many owners have changed their policies to give guests more flexibility should they be affected by the impact of COVID-19.
What we do not want to see is a rise in spread-booking because of the understanding nature of business owners. It is important we work together to stamp out the last minute let downs caused by spread-booking. We need to talk about it more to raise awareness and help stop it impacting the wellbeing of both a business and the business owner.
