Investor · Greenville, SC · Member since 2012 · 269 posts · 187 votes
I'm curious what you use to choose your vacation rental site for each property. I have a few assumptions about what you are using to make the decision (such as airbnb is probably better in cities due to a younger target renter), but I would love to hear more feedback.
It seems like it would be difficult to manage a rental on both vrbo and airbnb at the same time, so I am trying to figure out which would be better for my purposes.
I use both Airbnb and VRBO. I used to be listed on flipkey (Tripadvisor) as well. VRBO has performed well for booking the summer season ,where we have a 7 day minimum Saturday to Saturday. Airbnb has been my bread and butter for spring and fall.
I would suggest you list with both as well. The calendars can be linked to eliminate any double booking confusion. They are the two biggest players in the industry and have different approaches. But that's a good thing.
I'm not in a traditional airbnb market but they have performed and continue to perform well for me. (45% of gross 2016)
So far for 2017, my airbnb listings are generating more pageviews than VRBO/homeaway.
@Paul Smythe we use VRBO for our Kihei, Maui vacation rentals. One of the main reasons we do so is because that's where the majority of the properties in our area are listed. So see which service has the most listings in your area for the type of vacation rental property you are looking to list.
Another reason we chose VRBO is we can add a tax line item in the price quote. AirBnB does not have a line item you can add to the price quote for any tax, so you basically have to work in the tax into the nightly rate.
Is your property in ATL? I lived there for 5 years (2000 - 2005) before moving to CO. I lived down in the Buckhead/ Peachtree Hills area and wish I knew more about investing back then when I was there!
We use Homeaway/ VRBO and AirBnB. Homeaway generates 98% of our reservations. AirBnB is not very popular in the vacation rental arena for my area. I keep an active Craigslist ad that also creates more reservations than AirBnB. I'd check listings in your area for different sites and see what is being used.
@William Leahy I had no idea you can link the calendars. That's awesome.
@Jeremy Baker The property is not in the city. It's in Doraville, so close to the city, but I don't imagine I'd be renting much to people looking to do things in Midtown.
@William Leahy@Jeremy Baker@John Underwood Let's say I set both up with Airbnb and VRBO. It looks like I would get different rates with each one (higher for VRBO). Do you run across that often? What would you do in that situation? Would you keep rents the same for both or would you go with the higher rate for VRBO?
I keep my rate and cleaning fee consistent and dont worry about the listing service fee. I ,like many other homeaway owners, am not happy with the company's new fee structure. I think they are sneaky the way they imposed it. When the guest gets a quote it is tacked on as "service fee" not "homeaway service fee" . I feel it is slight of hand and gives consumers he impression that the host is charging the fee.
However, I am confident that the free market will sort things out. All the more reason not to rely on one avenue for marketing your property.
I also keep the prices about the same. I have over 50 star reviews on Homeaway.com, so I lowered my price a little on AirBnB to try and get some people to use AirBnB and build up my feedback on AirBnB. I also charge a little less for people that find me via Craigslist and pay via check or PayPal sinice we both save on fees when the booking is direct with me. Just see what is working for you area.
Homeaway keeps my place slam full in the summer and surprisingly full in the off season.
My bread and butter is through Homeaway and VRBO, however, my airbnb bookings have been steadily increasing and becoming more of a significant percentage of my bookings over the past couple of years.
No point in not using all the funnels, it's pretty much free to list on all the platforms now so you might as well do it.
Independent studies done on the two different monsters in the vacation rental sector have stated that people on HomeAway and VRBO tend to be more in their late thirties and with kids, tend to book their vacation times 4 to 6 months in advance, while airbnb stats have found they tend to be in their late to early thirties, sometimes with kids and tend to book their vacation times within a couple months of trip.
My personal experience is I tend to notice the airbnb people for some reason tend to expect you to be there and or are for lack of a better word a little more "needy". But that's just my experience.
Jake Miller That assessment makes sense, as I understand it, not only do they rate your property, they rate you as well, in turn you can rate them as well in airbnb platform. So they would expect a little more hands on approach to the process.
@paul smythe I use TripAdvisor and my property manager uses Homeaway to list my property. I would suggest viewing the reviews posted online by a third party review site. Read some of the stories posted about how these organizations handle issues for both property owners and the renters. You will find some rather startling information about how these sites profit by directing consumers to our market however provide little to no support when issues arise. Customer service is seriously behind the curve in this industry. I handle this by paying the flat fee for advertising on these sites, then after communicating with my clients, I direct them to my property manager and finalize the booking with his real estate company, which is local to my property.
I will not let any of these online booking companies touch my money or my clients'. They are middlemen at best with no desire to handle/resolve customer service issues.
When everything goes smooth, these sites work fine, when issues arise, that is when a company proves its worth. Read the testimonials yourself, and from that you can decide which service is best for you.
@Paul Smythe We only list with VRBO, so I couldn't give you any advice on the pricing difference between VRBO and AirBnb.
I think it really just depends on the market you are in. With us, we keep our calendars full with just using VRBO. Even with the service fee they introduced (and they did a horrible job rolling it out!), we haven't seen any less inquiries or bookings. I actually know other VR rental owners in our area that dropped AirBnB, even after VRBO introduced the service fee. However, I know owners locally here in Denver that has by far more success with their AirBnB listings than they do VRBO.
@Paul Smythe I would list on as many as you feel comfortable maintaining and also operate a private site and even a Facebook page so that you are not beholden to corporate whims (maybe pick up some good urls while you are at it). I currently just list on one site but used to list on three. I wouldn't necessarily just do what other people in your area do because you would just have more competition. And while there is a differences in city v. country demographics, I think it's more to think about who your listing appeals to and where they will find you. So even if your areas is mostly listed on VRBO your listing could be completely different and appeals to a younger crowd who would be found on Airbnb or the reverse. As far as making prices match I wouldn't worry too much about that do what you think is best.
just the last year we began listing a property in a historic area on Air BnB.
We also listed on VRBO. Fees and the price we charge is higher on VRBO due to no review /vetting process on VRBO. You have no real idea if the person requesting the booking has had issues in the past, and you can add whatever review you want for your property (personally I'm not very trusting of a site that allows you to add your own reviews)
Air BnB seems to have lower fees and a better vetting process. You only have 14 days to leave a review after a stay, they can't be added or deleted by the user, and I feel like you get a much better "view" of prospective guests. So far we have had a better response through AirBnB in our small city (Cheyenne, WY) and I have been pleasantly surprised at the frequency of stays. We already have our rental Year paid for by current& booked stays for this year, so everything from here on out is just profit!
Paul Smythe Airbnb is the only way to go. VRBO's interface is old, outdated, rudimentary, leaves too much discretion to you as a host, and can land you in some legal troubles.
Airbnb is backed by a $1 million insurance policy for the host. If anything goes wrong at your house at all, they are there for you. 100%.
I used to list with both, but then soon realized 90% of all my traffic was coming from Airbnb anyways. And on top of that it was so much easier to communicate with guests, I trust the verification of the guests more, and they had a better rating system.
Overall I see no reason, absolutely no reason, to use VRBO. It is more costly for the guests because of their strange insurance policies, it is more costly to list, and they do not have the absolutely incredible Customer Service that Airbnb provides.
@Jonathan Safa You are absolutely right about VRBO. I've listed with them for the past two weeks and it's a hassle. You can pretty much run your Airbnb rental from your phone. VRBO has an old interface and it takes forever for the calendar to sync from other sites. You can end up with a double bookings due to VRBO's slower interface. The best one outside of Airbnb that I use is Tripadvisor. It syncs right up with your Airbnb calendar but I get most of my bookings off of Airbnb. Airbnb's instant book feature with the background check is awesome. My personal suggestions are Tripadvisor, Airbnb, and rentalspot. Rental Spot is great because it's free advertising and you can link it to whatever vacation rental spot that you want.
@Paul Smythe as you can see, it all depends on your market and how you use your listing site. As I mentioned earlier, VRBO is by far the best platform for the market I'm invested in and for how I use it. Whereas others like @Jonathan Safa and @Myka Artis absolutely hate VRBO!
@Paul Smythe Ahh, the old VRBO vs. Airbnb question. It's been debated on here numerous times, so if you're looking for more info, use the search function to find other threads. As @Jeremy Baker and @Blair Russell and others mentioned, I think it depends a little on your market. Broadly speaking (really broad), Airbnb appeals to urban listings with younger crowds. VRBO has more rural/suburban listings and appeals to older guests. But don't listen to that. I'd put your listing on both and see which is getting more traction.
For me, I put my smaller urban listings on Airbnb and VRBO. For the VRBO listing, I jacked up the price. My thinking was this: I knew I could get booked as much as I wanted at my sweet-spot price on Airbnb. So I figured if someone wanted to pay more to book through VRBO, then great, that's just icing on the cake. And as with a lot in real estate, this comes down to your comfort factor. Do you feel alright charging more on one site for what they could get for cheaper on another site?
And as others have said, definitely sync your calendars. There's nothing worse than double booking.
Paul Smythe One downfall to using TripAdvisor is they don't have an export calendar feature. This is a hassle because you are forced to manually update your calendars on other sites.
@Paul Smythe Where is your vacation rental? How many beds and baths, and square footage? Higher end, or lower price point? Different listing sites work better for different property types, but you'd probably want to do both Airbnb and VRBO/Homeaway regardless.
Robert Soto No they didn't. You can adjust the security deposit in the price settings on Airbnb. I seen a lot of people do away with asking for a security deposit since Airbnb announced that they cover all hosts with some type of insurance plan.
Myka Artis Thanks, I did see that info on there website, which is why I questioned the whole security deposit setting in the first place. Basically, I'm trying to set up a listing, and there is no setting for security deposit any where. I've tried setting this up from my laptop, iPad and iPhone. Also, I can't set up a cancellation policy either, just defaults to flexible, and that will not fly. Also, I can't set up the penalties for bringing extra people. I'm hoping this is just a temporary bug they are working out for new listings.
I just noticed someone in our building charging in some cases $300-$400 more per week than I do, and they own a lesser unit. I'd like to get exposure to the airbnb folks if they are willing to pay more for less. Hence why their signup process leaves me with some frustration at the present time.
Robert Soto No they didn't. You can adjust the security deposit in the price settings on Airbnb. I seen a lot of people do away with asking for a security deposit since Airbnb announced that they cover all hosts with some type of insurance plan.
I was under the impression that airbnb's insurance only comes into play, after your own insurance has covered their end or something like that.
Michaela G. I'm not sure how it works. I wasn't going to trust it either. I just went out and got STR insurance through my regular home owners insurance. I've heard people say it's just a selling point for Airbnb. I'd be interested to hear any success stories people have had with it.