Non-Refundable Hotel Bookings Are The New Flexible: The Flipbookings’ Promise
Imagine
booking your dream vacation, but ended up not being able to make it. How
disheartening would that be? In addition, and most importantly, what degree of
financial loss will such trip cancellation cause you. Well, we do not like to
leave people disappointed, so we thought to tell you about a web application
that will give you control and help you reduce the costs related to such trip
cancellation. That tool is Flipbookings and is available at https://www.flipbookings.com. Before we jump right into it, we
must bring it to your awareness that; the first stage of Flipbookings will focus
only on the hotel segment of your trip.
Now
getting back to the probability of you having your trip cancelled, you might
say, it only happens to others or it is not likely to happen to me. To that, we
say “Yea, right!” If you take a few moments to think about it carefully, then
you would come to agreement that last-minute vacation cancellation is an
eventuality that is very likely to occur however, we fail to acknowledge it
adequately. You still disagree? Then just do a search on Twitter using
“cancellation” and “vacation” keywords. You would be shocked by the number of
travelers, who are just like you, but complaining about trip cancellation.
Oftentimes, they blame service providers, airlines and hotels, for either
causing their misfortune (misrepresented hotel or flight delay and
cancellation) or for lacking human compassion and decency, since they refused
to refund or even compensate for a service that customers are no longer able to
enjoy.
Now,
let us take a step further and list a few situations that can lead to trip
cancellations:
·
You
could be heading to the airport to catch your flight, but ran into an
unexpected traffic jam, had flat tire or had car accident
·
You
could leave your passport behind at home
·
Your
flight departure could be delayed
·
You
could fall ill
·
You
could have a relationship breakup not long before a previously planned couple
vacation
·
Cancellation
of the event (e.g. Concert) you were travelling to attend
In
effect, there are countless reasons to why one would end up having to cancel
his/her vacation, but we will not go through all that. Instead, we strongly
invite you to watch this interesting animation video from Flipbookings; it is
about a traveler, who was forced to cancel his hotel reservation
following a baseball injury.
Now
that we are wary about the likelihood of a vacation plan getting cancelled,
let’s talk more specifically about hotel reservations’ cancellation and explain
how Flipbookings will make travelers’ life easier in that regard.
We
can all agree that making a hotel room reservation presents multiple dilemmas,
of which one of the most preponderant is the choice of selecting between a
flexible and a non-refundable rate. Non-refundable rates tend to be better
deals than the alternatives, considering you are solely looking at the monetary
aspect. Assuming you were someone who understands and accepts that the
unexpected is very likely to occur when it comes to planning a trip, then you
would certainly choose to pay a premium to protect yourself against a possible
unfavorable outcome. You might find it expensive, but as long as it gives you
peace of mind and flexibility, then you would have made the right call rather
than going for the lower price but bearing the risk of forfeiting the entire
value of your purchase, should you not use it; irrespective of the reasons
preventing you from doing so. With that said, we observe here, two problematic
behaviors that are so common now that their importance have been played down,
but Flipbookings intends to provide solutions to those issues. So let us talk a
little bit on this.
Firstly,
many rational users happen to be passing on great deals because; they are
implicitly buying insurance to hedge against any potential change of plans
including cancellations. Though we said that trip cancellation is probable, a
greater proportion of hotel bookingsend up being fulfilled. Therefore, a
greater number of travelers, out of rational fear, are paying a premium for
insurance they will generally not use.
Secondly,
the travelers that are more prone to taking their chances or that just cannot
spare the extra dollars for the premium will conversely go for the cheapest rate,
which to a certain extent, can be considered as the best offer. However, when
the worst scenario occurs and the takers of the best deal see themselves having
to Cancel Hotel
Reservation.
In that particular case, the loss incurred would surpass multiple times the
value of the premium that was being demanded for the flexible rate.
Furthermore,
forfeiting a non-refundable hotel reservation means nothing less than losing
100% of the amount paid. The funny fact is that there is more non-refundable
rate offered by the major online travel agencies (OTAs) than the alternative
rates.
Consequently,
it is safe to say that, we have many travelers at risk of losing their
hard-earned money, for a service they might not use. That opens an opportunity
for hotels and online travel agencies to double their profit on the cancelled
hotel rooms. This is exactly where Flipbookings will come into the picture.
Basically, this startup is planning to act as an online booking platform and
offer the best hotel deals at very competitive rates, if not the lowest.
However, the innovation will come from the functionality enabling you to post
your hotel reservations on the platform for travelers to buy it back from you.
In other words, instead of losing 100% of the non-refundable hotel booking that
you are about to forfeit, you will rather find yourself in a position to
transfer it and recuperate your money back. To empower you even more, the
application will let you set your desired price. The benefit to this is, if you
are close to the check-in date with very little time left to find a buyer or if
you simply want to get rid of your reservation as soon as possible, you will
have the liberty to set a price of your choosing that looks appealing enough
for travelers to quickly jump at it. Let’s also highlight that the fact that
this is also a benefit for the hotel industry since people buying more
non-refundable rates means crystalized revenue for them. Additionally, though hoteliers
and OTAs have the opportunity of reselling cancelled rooms, that could
sometimes become a challenge due to multiple factors. So it is better for them
to get sure revenue from the start rather than a speculative one
In
summary, here are three key benefits of Flibookings that we discussed in this
article:
·
Gives
you the confidence and ease of mind to choose the cheapest non-refundable rates
·
Gives
you the means to hedge against a 100% loss, when cancelling a non-refundable
booking.
·
Enables
you to list and transfer your reservation to another interested traveler.
·
Enables
you to set your selling (ask) price to favor a faster sale (transfer to other
travelers).
·
Will
drive a trend for more predictable cash flows for the hoteliers.
On
that note, we encourage you to :
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