We thought it might be a good idea this year to elaborate a little bit more about what happens when you send your rates into us each year, the amount of work The Green Spot Team and our offshore agents do to promote your product and ultimately deliver you our wonderful Dutch, German, Belgian and British guests….
So you’ve sent us your rates, what happens from here?
When we come to you asking for your rates this is the first step in a series of events that occurs once we receive your rates. From here we take the following action:
- Check that we have all information, your cancellation policy, payment policy, maximum/minimum numbers of people
- Check that we know the net rate we will pay you, sometimes a nett rate is clearly detailed, other times you might show retail rates and say we can deduct a commission. If you do this please be sure to state on those rates or the accompanying email what the commission level we can deduct is. This is an important part of forming the rates contract and we do need this stated each year.
- Check the rate against what we had last year to assess the increase difference
- Load the rates into our system for our team to be able to easily book
- Create packages with pricing – including rental car, accommodation and activities and distribute them all over the world to our agent network
- The agents then put together advertising in print and digital media, some print brochures and invest in marketing campaigns based on that pricing
- We are all bound to honour that pricing once it is advertised
Why is it important to stick with these rates for the duration stated?
As you can see from the above there is a long and involved process with what happens once you issue rates. Our agents operate within the laws in their respective European countries, most countries require them to honour any advertised pricing, our contracts with our agents also require us to honour pricing provided. So it is not an option to change rates once they are issued, we need you to think carefully and set pricing for us that you are prepared to stick with for the duration of the contract. Please make sure you are prepared to do this.
If you change rates once they have been set, it is not simply a case of honouring existing bookings and saying the new rates apply to new bookings. You can see that there is a lot more involved than that and has legal ramifications for both us and our overseas agents. Please ensure you take a little extra time to fully consider your pricing and understand that you are entering into a contractual relationship with us when you set pricing.
Thank you
Now the stern parts of this message are over, we would like to thank you for working with us and for providing fantastic experiences for our clients. We are a small company and we take pride in knowing each of our clients and love sending you some wonderful guests. We truly value working with you and the diligence that goes in at your end to ensure that our clients have a fantastic time while on holiday here. So a big thank you from us, and here’s to another great year ahead.
The Green Spot Team