Importing from Sketchup to Unity

Architectural models from Sketchup have been working straight away when they get to Unity. There is no need to convert them to an intermediate format, the .skp files are good enough. I have this linkedin post (also got a pdf) on importing via .fbx that I didn't try yet cause it wasn't necessary.
Questions to investigate:

1. tried importing in skp format from current Sketchup (June2016) version and it doesn't work, but when trying from older version it works.
2. we need the Pro version to export to .fbx
3. is it better to use fbx or skp?

Unity manual instructions on Sketchuo importing.