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Transferring your listings to a new owner

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2020 6:06 pm
by limousin-cottage
Hello, and Happy New Year! We expect to complete on the sale of our property in mid February. My question is, would the new owner be able to take over my listings on AirBnb, Home Away and Trip Advisor, or would they need to start from scratch with a listing of their own, in which case they would lose 10 years of good reviews? Has anyone any experience of this please?

Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2020 3:27 am
by LotBoy47
Sadly, from our terrible ‘waste of time’ experiences, you will lose reviews on booking.com and Airbnb.
We spent hours/days updating listings to be told that we were in breech of their contracts; as we had taken over the listings, and not created them as the new owners.
We then had to create new listings, under our names, with our bank details. Booking.com have to send in the post, a confirmation of address code as well.
With Tripadvisor, as we only had reviews and not the ability to book through that platform, we were able to keep the previous owners reviews.
Sadly, after spending more hours completing details with booking.com, after being badly instructed by them ..... we lost two reviews that were posted against a wrongly publicised property, with the wrong code 🙄
However, we had our first year last year, with excellent reviews across all three, having not ‘inherited’ any bookings from the previous owner. We are extremely pleased with that, as it is all down to our own hard work and persistence.
NB - all platforms need you to inform them you are changing ownership.

Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2020 8:26 am
by SPJ
At the end of the day, they have to earn their own good reviews. The reason you have 10 years of good reviews is because of all the hard work and attention to detail you have put into the property and into taking care of your guests. There is no guarantee that the new owners will do the same. (We've noticed this can happen when prestigeous restaurants change hands, where the reviews for new owners are nothing like as good)
However, if they would like to give a feeling of continuity, there is no reason why they can't copy those reviews (or some parts of the reviews) into a "guest book" on their own website. I've done that over the years. My 5-star reviews on Homeaway I copy onto my guest book page on my own website, in case one day I leave Homeaway. I've also copied reviews into the body text of another listing (Holiday France Direct) when I first joined them, before I had any reviews on HFD.
Your purchasers just need to be thinking about this now, rather than after the sale and when the old listing is taken down and the reviews have vanished.
Happy New Year to you too. May it be a good one for you with your change of circumstances.

Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2020 10:05 am
by newtimber
SPJ wrote: However, if they would like to give a feeling of continuity, there is no reason why they can't copy those reviews (or some parts of the reviews) into a "guest book" on their own website. I've done that over the years.
Legally you are not allowed to copy them as you don't own them and the copyright rests with the original site. It's exactly the same as if you copied data from any other website and incorporated it into yours. I'm not sure copied reviews are worth anything anyway, if a guest cannot verify they are genuine - or even worse they go to the original site, find they aren't there and so think you've dishonestly made them all up.

Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2020 1:58 pm
by limousin-cottage
Thank you everyone. I did suspect that was the case, and, in fact, it will make my life easier, as I can just close my accounts on completion of the sale. I just wanted to make sure for the new owners. :)