I have a small B&B in Pennsylvania and began listing my property with booking.com last July when they solicited my business - it was free and commissions were only charged on reservations made and kept. I also have a business listing on Trip Advisor which cost several hundred dollars but does not charge a commission. Both websites have brought significant new business to my B&B.

TA brings mostly new US visitors. Booking.com brings many new USA guests but also has increased our foreign visitors from less than a handful a year to about 20 in the 9 months since our listing went live.

The difference in Trip Advisor reviews and booking.com reviews are that only people who have made a reservation through booking.com and actually stayed at a property may post a review to booking.com which is solicited by booking.com after the guest stay - whereas, anyone can post a review to Trip Advisor. There is NO mechanism to determine if the reviewer ever set foot on the property they are reviewing making their system subject to artificial manipulation from competitors or supporters both - though TA says their software prevents most fake reviews from appearing. However, as a counterbalance to fake positive or fake negative reviews, TA allows management to respond to reviews and booking.com does not.

As for deposits....let me weigh in from a small property owner's point of view. In twenty years of running my B&B I had never required a deposit to make a reservation. But after a few months of receiving reservations through booking.com I began to understand that some people making reservations with "no skin in the game" treat the reservation as if it was made with huge hotel chains - reservations casually made and just as casually discarded. Several people reserved one of my 3 rooms many weeks in advance of their stay. I turned down multiple requests to hold the room for them, only to have them cancel on the last day to do so without a charge. I now require a 20% deposit for the first 3 days of a reservation.

In the 9 months since listing with booking.com, I have had 56 reservations of which 14 were cancellations....but only 1 cancellation since I instituted the deposit requirement. The reservations made are somewhat fewer....but those making them are not doing so frivolously so the number of reservations that actually take place has remained steady.

As to nacho's rejected review....TA has some funny guidelines and it could have been something quite innocent that caused your review to be rejected. On one occasion I submitted a management response to a very positive review a guest left for me on TA. I mentioned in the response my appreciation of the information the guest had shared with me about their hometown of Williamsport, PA and the Little League World Series. The response was rejected because apparently the mention of that (even though the event is in the guest's hometown and not near my B&B) was considered promotional.

The comments about not trusting small properties really makes me smile and shrug. In twenty years we have hosted thousands of guests from all over the world and have loved doing so. Based on reviews from our guests, the feeling is mutual. Do your homework in checking reviews but don't be afraid to try a smaller property - you will likely be very pleasantly surprised.