Book Direct for the Best Accommodation Rates in the Blue Mountains

Dick Smith has been speaking out about a big issue affecting small accommodation businesses like ours.  Some of you might have seen some press last year about third party accommodation booking sites.  In case you didn't, here's his video.  Please watch!:

As a family-owned and run small accommodation business in Australia, we can't agree more!  When we first started doing holiday rental at our beautiful Blue Mountains property back in the beginning of 2015, the majority of our bookings came directly or via Stayz (at that time an Australian owned company who charged a small are reasonable commission for bookings).

In the past few years however, we have noticed a marked increase in the amount of bookings via foreign-owned websites (Airbnb, booking.com, HomeAway - as they have now bought out Stayz).  Also, we are now paying up to 20% commission on these bookings.  I took a booking via booking.com just last week where the commission payable for one booking was a whopping $750!  

You'll also notice that when you search for our website, that these big businesses have the SEO power and advertising budgets to position themselves above our own website.  It's a vicious cycle that just continues.  More people click and book on their websites instead of ours, and the money keeps walking out the door offshore.

We have purposely made our rates more expensive on these third party websites, and are doing our very best to get the word out to always book direct.  You'll always get the best rates, and you'll get the warm fuzzies knowing that you're keeping your money here in Australia.  The only people who are losing out are these mega-wealthy company executives living it up on a yacht somewhere in the Bahamas.

So please... book direct.  And vow never to use these third party sites (including Menulog for our friends doing it tough in the restaurant business!).