FAQ - All the answers to your questions

You have questions, we have answers. Please find below the answers to the most common questions.


What are the fees? How does the pricing work?

The first thing you need to know is that there is no monthly subscription payment.

We only charge a commission when you receive a booking. If you don't get any bookings, you don't pay anything.

Our Smily team works hard to provide the best management system in order to help you increase your bookings, and we are confident that our product will help you increase your bookings.

The Smily service fees are 9% + VAT or 10.8% with VAT (based on a VAT rate of 20%) on each reservation (compared to 15-20% commonly charged by traditional agencies, which generally doesn't include payment fees). With Smily, our commission is ALL INCLUSIVE (payment gateway fees included, which are generally between 3 and 5% on each transaction). As for the fees charged by each booking platform, commonly called OTAs (Booking.com, Airbnb), the fee amount will be added onto your prices for you automatically, so these fees are covered by the guest.

Still a bit unsure? Here is a breakdown of the fees that apply on your Smily bookings to clear things up:


 How much for me ? How much for my customer? Applies on
Smily Fees 9%+ VAT or 10.8%*
 0% All bookings
Payment Gateway Fees 0% 0% All bookings except bookings from Airbnb, as this platform handles their own payments.
Service Fees of the booking platforms 0%** ~20-25%, depending on the platform All bookings received from a booking platform.

* Based on a VAT rate of 20%

**The fees of each booking platform are automatically added onto the prices that you configure in Smily, to cover this commission. So your prices will appear up to 30% higher on the booking platforms than the prices that you enter into Smily

Take a look at this example of the pricing and fee breakdown for a 100€ booking from Booking.com to help make sense of it all:


 How much will I receive? How much will my customer pay?
Nightly price entered on Smily 100€ 100€
Smily Fees 9% ht = 10.8% ttc
 0€
Payment Gateway Fees 0€ 0€
Booking.com Service Fees 0€ 27.55€
Total (inluding VAT) 89.20€ 127.55€

In this example, you would enter a nightly price of 100€ in Smily. The price sent to the channel would be 127.55€, which is what your guest would pay. After the Booking.com commission, there would be 100€ left, out of which we take the 10.8%, leaving about 90%. So, from your price per night of 100€, you would receive 89.20€.

With which channels are you connected?

All of the rentals that you create on Smily will be published on Airbnb,Booking.com and the HomeAway family of websites, including Abritel.fr and Vrbo.com. To date, more than 1000 portals publish our rental offers, which allows us to be the leader in our sector.

We will keep you updated of new partners who will join us very soon to distribute your listings and thus give you even more visibility.

How are the payments collected?

For all bookings except those received via Airbnb, payments are handled through Smily and our payment gateway.

You can track the payments received for your bookings in the Smily interface.

Smily will automatically send reminders to your customers to pay the balance and will inform you if the balance is not paid by the due date. You can check this article to know more about this.

You will then be transferred the booking amount less any fees due (see previous section) - for each booking, the money will be transferred to your bank account t pay on between 1 and 8 days after the check-in date. Bear in mind that the funds can then take several days to reach your account after the transfer is made.

Airbnb handle their own payments and make a transfer to your bank account 1 day after the check-in date of each booking.

How are damage deposits handled?

You can configure the damage deposit amount that is required for your properties in Smily. For bookings received via Airbnb, the damage deposit is handled directly on the platform : if damages occur, Airbnb manage the resolution and any deductions to the damage deposit. For bookings recevied from other platforms, this deposit is due on arrival - you can use the Smily payment link to take payment of the damage deposit online upon arrival. However, you will need to manually refund the amount to your guest. Unfortunately, It is not currently possible to take a pre-authorisation for the damage deposit on your guest's card.

How can I see my listings online?

Our goal is to make the management of your rentals as easy as possible. With that in mind, we don't want you to worry about the listings on the channels. Smily becomes your main source and main platform, and everything you need to do to handle your bookings, listings and guest communication can be handled directly from Smily. As such, we do not provide the links to the channels. However, our onboarding team will confirm the publication of the listings at the end of your onboarding.

What will my rental prices be on the channels?

Each channel has a different commission percentage. If you configure a price X on Smily, we will apply a price increase in order to cover the channel commission.

For example, if your nightly price is 100€, and the commission on Airbnb is 22%, we would send a price of 122€, so that the amount post channel commission (and pre Smily commission) would be 100€.

Here are the default increase rates for the current channels:

  • Booking.com: 27.5%
  • VRBO: 22%
  • Airbnb: 22%

Please note that there can be variations depending on the listings themselves, so it may be slightly higher or lower. However, the important point is that the commissions will be covered by the price increase, so the only thing you need to handle is choosing the price you want before the Smily commission of 9% + VAT or 10.8% is applied, and the price increase is handled automatically.

Can I send payments directly to the owners of the rentals?

This is unfortunately not possible at the time. All payments will be sent to your own bank account, and you will then need to send the amounts to the owners. However, we are planning to have such feature available in the future. Once implemented, you will be able to send the payments directly to the owners.

How should I collect the city tax?

The host always has to collect and pay the city tax to the local administration. The only exception is with Airbnb where the channel will directly pay the local administration so you don't have to. For all other channels, you have to: calculate the city tax and collect it on your guests' arrival (if it wasn't already charged together with the booking payment) and pay it to your local administration.

How can I contact you if I have a question?

To contact us, you can simply send us a new request via this link: https://manual.bookingsync.com/hc/en-us/requests/new, or by going to the manual and clicking “submit a request". We will get back to you as soon as possible via email.

We unfortunately do not have a direct phone line available, however we can call you directly if the case requires more assistance.

Do you have a mobile app?

Our website is responsive and is accessible from a mobile. We unfortunately do not have a dedicated mobile app yet, but we are working on its development, and plan to release it as soon as possible.

Who is Smily for? What is BookingSync? What are the differences with Smily? Which one is for me?

Smily:

This "simpler" version of our software is ideal for individual owners who want to optimize the management of their vacation rentals with an intuitive tool. The functionalities are simplified and you will be able to handle our software immediately!
Note that if your volume of properties becomes more important (around 20) and you want to move to the pro version Bookingsync our platforms are linked so simple to migrate ;-)

BookingSync Pro:

This software is for conciergeries or property managers who usually have more than 20 rentals to manage. It is optimal for the professional management of your activity since its features are relatively advanced and a training session is planned at the beginning.

Why would I use Smily rather than manage things myself?

Here is an overview of the main features and benefits you will enjoy with your Smily account as soon as your account and property are fully created:

- Automated sync of all your bookings, rates and property information (photos, description, etc) with all the channels connected to Smily. This means that all your bookings and properties will be visible directly on Smily, and you only have to make a modification once on Smily to have it updated everywhere. No more double bookings, and no more waiting for your calendar and information to get updated. Only one place to handle it all.

- A centralized inbox, where you can communicate with all your guests from all channels. That will help you avoid having to check your messages on each platform, will ensure that no message is missed, and will help you provide a better experience to your guests.

- Automated notifications sent to your guests. Whether it is sending them the booking contract, reminding them to make their payment in time, sending them the check in details, or asking them to leave a review, all the important communication is fully automated so that you can save time and have the peace of mind of knowing that everything is handled for you.

- An integrated payment gateway that automatically processes your payments. You won't have to manually charge your guests anymore.

What it means concretely:

- Save time by delegating the work to us. All the tasks you used to handle manually will now be automatically handled by us.

- Get more bookings and increase your revenue by having your rentals published on over 1000 websites.

- An automated system that gives you a new "hands-off" approach to managing your rentals.

- The peace of mind of knowing that you will avoid double bookings and that all important steps are handled for you.

- Grow your business by optimising the management of your rentals.

- A one-stop shop where you can handle everything. No more running around to all of the different channels, you can do it all from your Smily interface.

In other words: Smile to your guests and we'll handle the rest! 😀

What happens if I don't want to use Smily any more? Can I have access to all of my accounts on the booking platforms again?


There is no commitment with Smily, and you can stop using our service any time. If you wish to do so, we will give you access to your Airbnb account, migrate the Booking.com listings to your own Booking.com account, and will deactivate the HomeAway listing (HomeAway unfortunately does not offer to migrate rentals to another account, however we can transfer the reviews back to the listings in your own account).

As such, you will be able to keep your Airbnb and Booking.com listings (with all bookings, reviews, etc), and will keep the HomeAway reviews as well.