Bókun, a Tripadvisor companyReviews of bokun.io

They get you in their system for 0.1%, then after a year raise the price to 3% and now they raise the prices again to a monthly fee. This all in times of Corona when nobody books a tour and they are promoting this as more value for money. Using the system for 2 years and we got a lot of bugs, problems with connections to TripAdvisor and Viator, guests who booked and never got into our systems etc etc. For our other company we started using FareHarbor, and the service they offer is so much more than Bokun, less bugs, faster and your own account manager. For us the reason to leave Bokun.

Just like another reviewer mentioned below, Bokun doesn’t have the authorization and capture code written for third party credit card processing companies. Most other booking engines (Peek, Fareharbor, etc.) have this code that enables you to authorize fund availability but delay fund capture. This is very important for cancellations so you don’t get charged the ~2.9% processing fee. However, we’ve been talking to Bokun for over 1.5 years about this and they still won’t prioritize this matter, which shows us that they don’t really care about their customers and how much this hurts us. During the Covid19 crisis, many customers have to cancel their bookings and although we have to refund our customers fully, we’re penalized with the fee on Bokun’s side just because they won’t hire programmers who can write this code that everyone else seems to have. This is really not fair to their customers and Bokun shouldn’t be operating until they fix these fundamental and basic issues.

Fairly many bugs in the system and exploitative terms & conditions. For tour operators: If a tour gets cancelled by the customer for whatever reason (sickness, travel restrictions due to covid 19, change of travel plans etc.) Bokun keeps all fees paid for the bookings if it is cancelled later than 1 month after the booking was placed by the customer. In total our company has lost about 10k NOK due to this policy, and we are expecting to loose quite significant amounts due to all the covid 19 related cancellations. While we refund the customer, being an understanding company that treats our guests with respect and doesn't take money for a tour that the guest cannot attend due to the world being in a crisis, bokun still takes the fees leaving the tour operator not only without income but with the burden of having to pay a fee for a booking that was cancelled!! At the same time their marketing strategy is trying to make them seem understanding and helpful to its users. Hypocrisy and lack of solidarity during an international crisis situation. After having used bokun for quite some time now we have decided to look for an alternative booking system with less technical issues, provided by a company that values its customers and treats them fairly.

Worst Customer Service. Period.

We already have products on Viator and trusting Bokun is backed by TripAdvisor and considering the 2.99% commission rate we thought this is the right software whereas others charge monthly fees. The customer service beyond terrible and keeps passing our connection problem to someone else. Each time we had to tell the same problem to different agents. They cannot even solve a problem with their sister company and we wonder what sort of problems we will have to deal with other OTAs. Yes, it seems a much cheaper option but the customer service is very poor. We don't think they fully know their own system. Very hardcoded, when you need to make changes, you need to do all those changes manually with OTAs you make a contract with. If you have high volumes of online bookings consider using a software that charges monthly fees.

Bokun is truly the worst booking company I have ever encountered. I will never use your service for my company, way too risky. First of all, your location is in Iceland, not the United States. Reaching you guys is completely impossible. You are not providing your customers with a toll free number to contact you, and you do not have a answering service. I never heard of a booking company that works Monday through Friday 9am to 5pm with Saturday and Sunday off. Since you are located in Iceland, and we are in the United States, our times are different. So contacting you is completely impossible. In order for you to operate properly, you should have a live 24 hour customer service. Without all of this, it’s completely pointless to be dealing with you. Considering that most of the negative reviews are about the same problem that I have gone through, I refuse to believe any positive reviews on your page. Most of them are most likely false anyway. I'm truly disappointed that TripAdvisor has even agreed to work with your company. People like you will ruin TripAdvisors reputation one day. As a Trip Advisors affiliate, I would like TripAdvisor to review you guys closely. I’m sure after my negative review 10 positive reviews will magically pop up. Since you already have a pattern going on.