Bókun, a Tripadvisor company Bewertungen 291

Where do I start. The platform is simply not fit for purpose. The UI feels decades behind anything else we use. It is genuinely difficult to believe this is a modern system that businesses are expected to rely on.

We were paying around $500 per month. The fee itself is not the issue, it aligns with the pricing model. The issue is value. At that level, you expect meaningful return. In reality, it is difficult to justify even a fraction of that in terms of what the platform actually delivers.

To be clear, the people are not the problem. Every interaction we have had has been polite and professional. However, politeness does not solve problems. Calls follow a predictable script, repeated phrases of understanding, then escalation. There is never a resolution on the call. Issues are passed to a technical team “for feedback” and then disappear. No follow-up, no accountability, no outcome.

The platform focus is completely misaligned. Effort appears to go into surface-level changes while the checkout, which is where revenue is won or lost, remains fundamentally flawed. This is where the real damage happens.

The booking widget is inserted as an external HTML element. The moment a customer enters it, you lose visibility. You cannot see behaviour, friction points, or drop-off reasons. From a conversion and optimisation standpoint, this is a critical failure.

Analytics are equally unreliable. Data is incomplete, events are not tracked correctly, and reporting can be significantly inaccurate. You are effectively making decisions on numbers that do not reflect reality. For a paid platform, this is unacceptable.

The result is misleading abandonment rates, no insight into actual customer behaviour, and no ability to properly optimise conversion. Despite claims that the checkout is optimised, there is no evidence, no session visibility, and no meaningful support to validate or improve performance.

Operationally, the platform is reactive, not proactive. Problems only exist once you report them. System status will show everything as fully operational, even when it clearly is not. This creates a false sense of reliability that does not reflect real-world performance.

The time cost is significant. If you are a small business or solo operator, expect to spend hours every week managing issues. Realistically, you would need someone dedicated to dealing with the platform just to maintain stability. That is not a sensible use of resources.

Pricing adds further concern. The percentage fee may appear low, but when measured against profit, it becomes substantial. In contrast, we pay significantly more to other providers and receive clear value in return through product quality, innovation, and usability. That contrast is stark.

We recognise that we are not the ideal customer profile for this platform. However, the platform also struggles to support businesses that scale quickly. As volume increases, the gaps become more visible, not less.

The final incident, where incorrect tour dates appeared within the checkout and were not recognised as a critical issue, made the decision clear. We are now migrating away. This will cost us time and revenue in the short term, but it is necessary.

If you are considering this platform, proceed with caution. It may function at a basic level, but the limitations become increasingly costly over time. Once embedded, migrating away is a major task.

For us, the conclusion is simple. The platform does not deliver the value required to support a serious, growing business.

I CAN T RECOMMAND AT ALL BOKUN, which is owned by VIATOR. I have been a client for 3 years now. I am extremely disappointed. The setup process was tedious because you have to figure it out on your own. Granted, their customer support was responsive, but Fareharbor, for example, set up all the products on your dashboard for you. I was satisfied with Fareharbor. But I switched providers because my intern wasn’t very proficient in English. So I went with a French provider, Elloha. That was a big mistake because I ended up with double bookings, and customer service couldn’t figure out why. I wanted to go back to Fareharbor, but they couldn’t handle my case because they already had a lot of requests. So I switched to Bokun, believing it was a reliable company since it’s owned by Viator/Tripadvisor. As I said, I managed to set up all my products on my own. At first, customer service was technically competent and very responsive to common issue.
But when it comes to a difficult problem or an unusual situation, don’t expect a response, any help. THEY ARE PLAYING DEAD. No one will call you, and even after multiple inquiries, you’ll receive a form letter—probably written by a bot. I love the way the email ends, implying that they can’t do anything for you, but they don’t say it outright. I lost 80 euros on a canceled reservation (Bokun’s transaction fee plus Stripe’s bank fees charged at the time of booking), and I’ll now have to pay another fee for the bank charges associated with the refund. Total loss, in my estimation: 119 euros on this case and the time spend with a pile of exchanes between Bokun and the client. If only the story ended there. My client purchased insurance through Bokun for approximately $120.

She submitted a claim to the insurer Protect/Refund Me for reimbursement. It’s been three weeks already, and she hasn’t heard back from this insurer, which has a terrible reputation on Trustipilot. How can Bokun work with this kind of provider? The customer naturally turns to Bokun to see if they can intervene. Bokun responds that the claim must be resubmitted to Protect. But the matter doesn’t end there. That would be too easy. Because I can’t cancel this reservation for my two days because then this lady wouldn’t be able to get reimbursed for her other related expenses out of my control, like the museum tickets she bought. So for three weeks now, those two time slots in my booking system have been blocked so the insurer can compensate my client. And the insurer can even take its time because it can reimburse her after the date of the canceled trip.

In the end, I’m going to issue the refund to this customer myself. I’ll lose my €119 because Bokun won’t reimburse me for at least the booking and cancellation fees. With Stripe, that’s obviously not possible. But by doing this, I’ll at least be able to free up my two time slots to put back on sale. So I’m going back to Farehabor. They handle the entire setup process from start to finish. There are no fixed monthly fees, unlike with Bokun ($40), plus Bokun’s transaction fees on every transaction processed through your site—1.5% (except for Get Your Guide and Viator, which have no fees)—and Stripe’s fees of 2.39% for Visa/Mastercard and 3% for Amex. In Fareharbor, no monthly subscription, the transactions fees and bank fees included are 6%.My client also feels ripped off for having paid 100 euros for insurance. My company’s reputation is taking a serious hit. The client thinks I don’t even know how to choose a good service provider for bookings and suspects I’m involved in this matter to avoid refunding her. If you think that you can manage everything on your own (to control your dashboard, implement all your products, the refund of your client and have the time to read all their instructions), you have the good profile for BOKUN.

I will reconsider my position if my transactions fees will je refunded or not.

Very helpful and highly professional service. I spoke with Mohammad, who consistently followed up and supported me in resolving all my synchronization issues.

Imagine if you had the most entitled people with the worst possible software and the highest limitations, paired with terrible support. Everything broke all the time, you lost money, and then they would blame you. They made every small thing that should be easy difficult for no reason and randomly locked you out of your account for no reason.

We lost so much time, money, and effort that it ended up being better to literally build our own reservation system.

My experience with this platform has been frustrating. The interface is not particularly intuitive, and I encountered several recurring errors that complicated routine tasks.

Customer support response times were slow, and the assistance provided often consisted of generic help-center information rather than effective troubleshooting for the specific issues raised. As a result, resolving problems required significant additional time and effort on my side.

From my perspective as a European business user, certain processes and workflows did not feel well aligned with local operational requirements, which added further complexity.

Based on my experience, I would not recommend this platform.

Estoy verdaderamente agradecida con el trato y la ayuda que recibí en Bókun, especialmente a Zakariya Mubeen K, que me ayudo en pocos minutos a resolver un problema que tenía con mis tarifas después de muchos días, él hizo un trabajo magnifico y muy eficaz, y amable, gracias.

Mohammad Ayan, was Top!! Very Knowledgable, Very Smart; He deserves a pay raise, bro helped me with all issues I had and regained my confidence with bokun!!

Well done!

I opened a support case on October 23, first days they were replying saying they are investigating and blabla, but since november 6 they dont reply anyomore. Even if I was emailing them about some update..they decided to ignore me. Support case 00311958

Bokun and basically every Viator company really makes the effort to disappoint you every chance they get.

My first experience of using Bokun is to accidentally make a double booking in the system, ask customer service how to delete it while making sure there's no auto email sent to the customer. The advice they gave me of course ended up sending an auto email to the customer saying the tour was cancelled.

This wasn't even booked through Bokun, it's a booking I manually imported so I have no idea why Bokun would decide it has any kind of authority to send auto cancellation emails in this case. 600+ euro booking at risk immediately, one that would have paid for Bokun for the entire year.

When I then reach out to customer service again to understand why they gave me such bad advice, they try to wash their hands from their mistake and tell me to reach out to customer service whenever I need help, as if I'm now meant to trust any advice they give me.

I then sign up to join a demo session to learn about the basics of using Bokun, I join at the right time and of course no one from the Bokun team decides to join.

I was looking forward to using Bokun but my experience so far has just been shocking. It's a shame that I have to use this because of how prominent it is in my city.

THE Worst experience and platform you can imagine , awful and useless customer support , if you have an ability to work with another system- DO!

I had the pleasure of talking with Mohammad Ayan during the creation of my Bókun platform. I can’t recommend him enough. He helped me with many aspects of the setup and configuration, always with great professionalism, patience and deep knowledge of the system. Thanks to his support, I was able to get everything running smoothly and efficiently. If you’re looking for someone reliable, knowledgeable, and genuinely helpful, Ayan is the person you need. Thank you again Ayan!

We have been with Bokun for around 6 months now. On paper, the system looks great. The problem is that it doesn't work as it should.

The first issue was when we were 'guaranteed' that the system could do the resource management that we needed. Weeks later we were told that it could not.

Then, for 6 months we have encountered multiple issues, and the main problem is that the technical support team is totally and utterly incompetent. We have contacted them on dozens (!) of occasions, and on most occasions it is like talking to a 5-year old who actually doesn't know how to use a computer. How these people are working in tech support is beyond baffling.

They always manage to misunderstand the issue, and always manage to find a 'solution' which either does nothing or doesn't address then issue. On one occasion, the brilliance of the technical support team actually managed to block us off completely on Viator during the height of the Christmas season, so we lost a ton of money.

Absolutely useless company, useless support team, bad product.

This has got to be the most user unfriendly travel bookings management interface I have ever encountered.
I run an online based tour operator start up in Nairobi, Kenya and I have been using hospitality systems for 17 years. The niggles, ambiguity and technical jargon on this site is depressing.

I now understand why trip advisor has been left behind as other OTAs snap up the market. I will not be using this platform

Great service, follow ups and information provided. I felt like Bokun wanted me to be part of their team as opposed to just wanting to make a sale. Every question I had was answered quickly and efficiently. The system works great and is easy to navigate and if I need any help I reach out to Will who is the gentleman who’s helped me from start to finish. I highly recommend them.

The biggest issue I continue to have is double bookings. I’ve contacted customer service regarding this over six times and was told that it was fixed and should not happen again. After being on chat with them for 30 minutes yesterday, guess what happened today: another double booking! I’m so frustrated. This ruins my guests experience and makes me look bad as a company. Highly disappointed.

Based on my experience, Bokun is one of the best booking engine.

I can’t recommend Will Bird highly enough! He’s done an absolutely fantastic job for me, completely revamping my online presence to help me promote my business. Thanks to his efforts, it now looks amazing and is perfectly set up to drive new bookings through Bokun, which is very helpful for managing my bookings. His skill, dedication, and proactive approach made the whole process a breeze. If you’re looking for someone to elevate your online presence, Will’s the guy—he’s been a game-changer for my business!