• PSD2 (Payment service directive)
What is it?
This where properties charge guests without them being physically present. Example manually charging a deposit on the guest’s card without ‘swiping the actual card’, the bank calls it CNP or ‘card not present’ transactions.
What have changed?
Online sellers (us hospitality operators) selling our rooms to channels such as bookings from Bcom (Booking.com) will now, by law require us to use a forced authentication or SCA ‘strong customer authentication’ required a 2FA (two factor authentication) on payments received from customers. In other words if a card is not present and we cant to charge it, the guest would need to grant authorisation in the form of a code received on their phones or another connected device like a wearable biometric scan or separate PIN (personal identification number). Think 3D secure pin in the form of a of a extra box on the sreen from card providers branded with: ‘MasterCard SecureCode’ or ‘VISA Secure’ or ‘American Express Safekey’.
It could be that bank no longer allow their merchants to do offline or CNP transactions. It is expected to have a big impact on businesses who doesn’t comply as they would need to modify the way they process these payments.
Anyhow just google ‘PSD2’ or contact us how to help!
(The deadline is 14 September 2019)
• Stats SA show slight increase in foreign arrivals
June 2019 (yes their ‘latest’ report) shows R3.35m arrivals through ports of entry/exit (the officially declared ones anyway). The pie indicates Europe being 41% , North America 26%, Asia 18%, Australasia 7% and remainder an even mix between Central and South America and the Middle East. The 5 leading countries were US 24%, UK 13%, Germany 6%, India 5% and China 4%. Between June 2018 and June 2019, 4 of the 5 top countries increased (India had the largest increase and France the largest decrease year on year. From the total, the majority being 97% were on holiday.
• Agoda and its discount coupon
We have been struggling daily for months on end with Agoda:
The challenge we face is that Agoda offers discounted coupons(instant discount coupon/24hr coupon/weekend coupon) to the properties. We find the during our daily parity checks. After us requesting the coupon to be halted; and receiving confirmation thereof, the coupon is applied back after a week or two
Agoda’s response is that they apply a discount coupon when searches are done and they find properties in the red/disparity, which is caused by wholesalers offering B2B rates/packages (hotelbeds and affiliates). Agoda notifies the property of disparity found and when nothing is done, Agoda strikes back with the coupon. Agoda shops 100 times more and spends money on traffic for the properties and finds 100% loss when shopping on Trivago according to them). When disparity(drama) is found again after 7 days, coupon gets triggered and all based on how the partner behaves, if they are aggressive or not. Agoda applies the coupon when they find disparity or 3rd party channels with lower rates. Agoda advised to liaise with the account manager as they can assist more in detail for the days Agoda finds disparity(drama) for the properties. (which we do daily)
Even though the above is ‘unfair’ in my few as we offer B2C rates and thus they cannot compare their agreement says ‘the lowest available online rate regardless of occupancy, room type or meal plan’.
Anyhow our single biggest concern is that B.com penalises us when Agoda’s coupon appears (even though its their sister company) and thus revenue received from Agoda vs Bcom I feel we should disable Agoda. More than often Agoda’s revenue is less than 3% of the Bcom total revenue received over any given time frame
We have disabled Agoda at our property and 2 other clients and this problem have gone away, and the price score on Bcom improved due to zero disparity. (Agoda also shops ridiculous dates so far in advance at time and we found results as far ahead as Feb 2020)
If you have the same issue we suggest just cancelling the agreement until they put an end to this underhanded tactic.
any queries on questions? contact us now
