VRBO prohibits contacting guests before booking
Los Angeles, CA · Member since 2016 · 565 posts · 391 votes
Bad news announced today. The new release is removing the ability to contact guests by hiding their emails and phone numbers and filtering them in the messaging.
Given the fact VRBO is awful in vetting the guests, this is going to make them less desirable.
I guess I was lucky to use my last "long stay" (3 weeks) out of vrbo just 2 weeks ago for this August. Now longer stays are going to be hurt, since the fees and %s become unacceptable on longer stays and bigger amounts. New opportunity for those "corporate housing" websites? Maybe.
There are other changes, but this one seemed the most important to me.
Thoughts?
Peter R. you were spot on!
VRBO keeps rolling out "new coke" moments since the Expedia takeover. Airbnb innovates, VRBO copies.. poorly.
They are moving to onlne booking only, which makes sense. But I am sure the next push will be for instant booking. I love the explanation for restricting communication. It is all for the sake of "protecting users from phishing". Insert big belly laugh here.
VRBO keeps rolling out "new coke" moments since the Expedia takeover. Airbnb innovates, VRBO copies.. poorly.
They are moving to onlne booking only, which makes sense. But I am sure the next push will be for instant booking. I love the explanation for restricting communication. It is all for the sake of "protecting users from phishing". Insert big belly laugh here.
Thanks for the heads up @Kevin Lefeuvre. I will have to contact Evolve to see if they get around this limitation with their partnership with them. Could you provide the link to this info by chance? Thanks!
I have been using Instant booking for a long time. I require a drivers license from the person renting so I don't have a big problem with this.
VRBO gets me 90% of my bookings, Airbnb 1%. So I love VRBO. I still have 8 % bookings via craigslist and I get a check or PayPal well ahead of their stay.
I also get a $300 deposit and I have never had to keep any part of it.
@Jon Crosby it was an email blast today. The text below:
| Important updates to the VRBO Booking Platform Last year, we transitioned from an advertising venue to a booking platform. Since then, we have continued to evolve and improve to support the needs of travelers, owners, and managers. Here's what you need to know about recent and upcoming changes we are making to support this transition. |
| • Online booking requirements: Online booking will be required to list or renew on VRBO. Owners and property managers who have not yet enrolled in online booking will need to do so before they can renew. • Messaging through the VRBO platform: All pre-booking inquiries and responses will be facilitated through VRBO’s secure messaging platform. You can message back and forth with travelers as you do today, but phone numbers, links, and emails will be redacted from messages. Contact details will be provided to both parties after a booking is accepted. Keeping communications and bookings on VRBO helps to protect you and travelers from phishing and other fraud. • Auto-declines hidden from search results: If a booking request for one of your properties is auto-declined because a traveler has not received a response in 24 hours, we may proactively hide the property from search results to help preserve your search ranking. You can easily un-hide the property when you are available again. • House Rules for your property: A new House Rules feature allows you to set policies for what is permitted when someone stays in your property. Travelers will be asked to agree to your House Rules before they can send a booking request. • $1M liability insurance: When a traveler books and pays through VRBO checkout, the reservation automatically includes $1 million USD in primary liability insurance. This new program helps to protect you against claims related to traveler injury or damage to another person’s property. There is no added cost to you. |
| What’s coming next We’ve heard your feedback about wanting to know your travelers. We’re working on enhancing traveler profiles, and we will continue to keep you posted about these and other updates. In the meantime, we’ve scheduled a Town Hall to answer your questions. |
| Kind regards, Team VRBO |
@William Leahy I agree they are following airbnb with a long delay and bad-copying. That said I thought the last few changes were in the right direction (calendar editing, replying more flexible), etc... I hope they'll implement the easy price editing by just clicking the days like in airbnb.
As @John Underwood mentioned though, the instant booking is there and I have it on as well. Unlike John I do have undesired instant bookings though that I cancel. They have not hurt my ranking though (yet?).
@Kevin Lefeuvre Disturbing indeed and as @William Leahy stated they are now a "me too" Airbnb site but doing a very poor job. Most of my long term bookings have been through VRBO in the past (2 weeks or more) but I suspect this is being affected by their guest fees as it has indeed quieted down. They are already pushing instant booking but I am leery to turn this on just yet. Would be interesting to learn Evolve response to this @Jon Crosby. If it's true in the last paragraph of their announcement that they are working to enhance traveler profiles, then it might fly, but for now Airbnb maintains the brunt of my business and my rates at VRBO remain higher. Maybe another question might be... what site is successful in landing longer terms guests now that VRBO/Homeaway fees have increased?
Mike
@Kevin Lefeuvre, I use the Homeaway app and it does easliy allow for changing daily rates. I find it much more user friendly than the Airbnb app, that might just be because I don't get many bookings through Airbnb and I don't use it very often. The auto pricing that Airbnb tries to get me to use is half the rate I have and get on Homeaway. That makes me think they are trying to change to Airbnb market rates. If this is true then only value shoppers are using Airbnb in my area. I have a more mature renter that is going on vacation with their family and don't mind paying $30 or $400 a night and Airbnb keeps suggesting I lower my price to $150 a night. No thanks as homeaway id keeping my house full at the higher rates.
Also I thought the service fees that homeaway started recently would hurt me. They haven't and no one has complained to me about them.
@John Underwood I tried the smart pricing by airbnb back in January when introduced and it was a disaster. I agree. But some time in the future I'll try again, maybe it was new and since it's supposed to be AI driven, it needs to learn more.
I also agree that airbnb clients are more "value driven" (you said it so nicely) :) That said, there seem to be a practice of "asking for discount" more on vrbo. But again it could be because terms are longer on vrbo (at least this is what I experience).
The HA app: Wow I didn't know. It was awful last year when I tried, so never tried again, but I definitely will. THanks for the tip John.
and of course there is a generation gap for guests between airbnb and vrbo as well. Millennials are on airbnb only. That may also explain the value driven aspect as well as not asking for discount compared to vrbo where they are wealthier and ask for discounts :)
@Kevin Lefeuvre I didn't expect them to move this quickly! But I think I agree with a few other posters in the thread, instant booking is going to be forced next. But hopefully not anytime soon as I think the majority of the Homeaway hosts are not ready for that.
But the Airbnb model of "if it's available, you should be able to book it instantly" is coming to Homeaway at some point.
The 24 hour penalty is interesting too, although they're calling it a protection measure, lol. I see a lot of hosts with sub 70% response rates, I was never sure how those hosts actually made money with that kind of customer service, I wonder if this is aimed at those hosts to clear them from the playing field and reward hosts with high communication rates.
In general, to speak to some other comments, my Airbnb bookings tend to be very much tech-oriented travelers. Millennials are a good portion of that for Airbnb. Homeaway does skew older and they do tend to ask for discounts more often. But Homeaway is also 100% of my bookings that are 30 days or more, I've never even had an Airbnb inquiry for that long, let alone a booking.
@Kevin Lefeuvre I didn't expect them to move this quickly! But I think I agree with a few other posters in the thread, instant booking is going to be forced next. But hopefully not anytime soon as I think the majority of the Homeaway hosts are not ready for that.
But the Airbnb model of "if it's available, you should be able to book it instantly" is coming to Homeaway at some point.
The 24 hour penalty is interesting too, although they're calling it a protection measure, lol. I see a lot of hosts with sub 70% response rates, I was never sure how those hosts actually made money with that kind of customer service, I wonder if this is aimed at those hosts to clear them from the playing field and reward hosts with high communication rates.
In general, to speak to some other comments, my Airbnb bookings tend to be very much tech-oriented travelers. Millennials are a good portion of that for Airbnb. Homeaway does skew older and they do tend to ask for discounts more often. But Homeaway is also 100% of my bookings that are 30 days or more, I've never even had an Airbnb inquiry for that long, let alone a booking.
@John Underwood, I understand that HomeAway and VRBO are the same company, but do I have to set up a separate listing for HomeAway, or does it just connect with VRBO?
I did get a 2-month booking within 24 hours of listing on VRBO, but the fees are really ridiculous. The guest and I decided to just start with a 1 month booking to make sure it will work for her. My fee was almost $50 and hers was about $100 for the 1-month stay. That's just ridiculous. There should be some up-front amount for the booking, but then the percentage should be much lower for longer bookings.
@Kevin Lefeuvre, so should I set my price higher on VRBO to leave room for the inevitable discount request?
@Leigh Ann Smith, VRBO and Homeaway are connected as far as searches go. I am on Homeaway but I get bookings from VRBO all the time.
@Kevin Lefeuvre, I rarely get an request for discounts, when I do I often get them to pay outside the website and we both save fees. That will be more difficult in the future. You could say find me on CL and ask via CL in the future.
@John Underwood, AirBnB blocks you from doing this, so I wonder if VRBO will do it in the future. I haven't tried CL or Craigslist, but they block the words "Facebook" and "Google". I need to tell guests that Google maps may not show our address correctly, but AirBnB blocks the word "Google". 😑
@Leigh Ann Smith I've gotten pretty good at natural language instructions for guests who I need to speak with outside of Airbnb.
@Leigh Ann Smith I don't markup my prices on VRBO because of the request for discount. I just refuse them when they are far in the calendar and negotiate when they are close.
Vrbo.com , Homeaway.com , vacationrentals.com and few more websites including some international sites (like abritel.fr in France or another one in Italy), they all belong to Expedia and share the same listings database. You don't have to do anything for your listing to appear on the other sites. It's automagic. You can go on them and search for your listing if you like :) (maybe just avoid unchecking the box at the time you create your listing but it was long time ago dont recall). Also if you get a lot of inquiries you can see the origin of the inquiry under the guest's name in the Inbox in the vrbo dashboard.
@John Underwood btw, I checked the HA app. Not impressed :( You are right you can change prices daily, but ONLY daily, not weekly or several days at a time. And then for each new price it creates a "rate" in the desktop UI which soon becomes a mess.
@Peter R. there are several techniques. Everyone needs to be creative there :) I was expecting some of them coming up when I posted this yesterday. But since vrbo developers maybe reading these posts, I would recommend not to help them too much :)
The reason they are blocking guest information is to prevent you from booking directly with the guest outside of the platform. That's exactly why Airbnb does it and they are just trying to copy that. They must finally realize that many hosts just simply circumvent their platform and book with the guests directly. That is also the same reason that almost a year ago they removed the contact information from hosts from the page. They didn't want would-be guests reaching out to hosts directly via phone or personal email and just making reservations without VRBO involved.
@Michael Greenberg if you're looking to attract long term guests you almost have to shift to being exclusively 30 day + rentals. The reason being that if I am a guest looking to book a 2 month stay and I search for my dates and you have just 1 day of that blocked, you will not show up in my results. The small bookings as you take them over time are hurting your chances of getting booked long term if your calendar is filled up already. It hurts your SEO if you have sporadic blocked dates.
@John Underwood @Kevin Lefeuvre I agree that the Airbnb "smart pricing" is terrible. It reminds me of Zillow's zestimate in that it has no way to take into account the condition of your home - decor, photos, etc. It also doesn't track higher price drivers like events nearby (this is a big one), the clientele you are attracting, etc. It has a long long way to go before becoming even remotely useful IMO.
@Ariel Smith, you are right about the reason these sites block the contact info. And, while the blocking is annoying, I totally understand them doing it. Although I think the fees to the guest are too high (which means we have to lower our rates accordingly), I do feel that it is only right that the booking site gets their cut. They provide a service to us, and they should get paid for that. AirBnB also provides some protection in the form of guest reviews, dispute resolution, etc. If a guest stays once through a booking site and then wants to book directly with us after that, I have no problem with it. but the first time, we require them to book through a site.
That's good info about only doing 30+ day bookings. I'll have to think about that for sure.
Hi Ariel,
I'm not at all looking for 30 day stays, only during certain seasons as my homes are in Scottsdale which is quite seasonal (if you call 117 degrees today seasonal - LOL). I understand the calendaring functions of the booking sites. In prior years I have receives monthly requests from what we call "Snowbirds" looking to get away from the frosty northern states in the winter time. All of these requests come from VRBO/Homeaway. Thus far, it has been quiet. I'm not blaming it on any booking site, but I believe the fees they are now imposing on guests (on top of our increased annuals fees) are likely steering a number of them away. If I'm correct, where are the Snowbirds turning to now? Most of my daily/weekly's do come from Airbnb, many are millenials, but not all. At one point I used Flipkey (Trip Advisor) which was a waste of effort, and Booking who's technology makes VRBO look like the creme de la creme. So is it time to start paying Google because my Snowbirds are web searching and skipping the booking sites? My website is up and running, but I still would rather pay a "reasonable" fee to the booking sites and I believe new guests feel better, at least for their first booking, to use a site like Airbnb, VRBO, etc....
Mike
@Leigh Ann Smith I totally agree! I used to work for a leasing platform (HomeSuite) and we worked as an intermediary to the transaction so we never had to worry about that. However, when tenants would extend their lease we found they would sometimes go direct to the landlord and no one would inform us. Our approach in general was just not scalable so they moved towards a direct host to tenant type platform of communication as well and with that comes finding a way around them connecting off of the platform.
Personally as a host myself, I would never do a deal with anyone outside of the platform. For me, unfortunately, guests who ask for discounts or work arounds are the ones who end up causing me problems or damage later on. I also like the protection I have with Airbnb and booking through them. I actually recently just removed my listing from VRBO because I got 98% of my bookings through Airbnb and I hate their interface and lack of guest vetting. That has just been my experience but to each his own!
@Michael Greenberg oh gotcha so you are referring to seasonality as opposed to longer term bookings year long. I do agree that the fees can add an insane amount on top of the nightly rates that are advertised. It could also be that there is simply more competition in the market now so you are seeing fewer inquiries. Vacation rental popularity has grown exponentially in recent years.
BTW, talking about the changes, airbnb made also a very minor change a few days ago, which has been debated for years: the shown nightly price, in the initial search now includes the cleaning fee.
For those who didn't follow the details : in the very first screen they used to show the gross nightly rate without any fees. The averaged real nightly fee would show only later in the booking process. This way higher cleaning fees wouldn't be "visible" at first, and be subject to comparison to other listings. Now they add it, average it, and show it right from the first search result page.
I consider this as yet another pressure to reduce our prices, as if we have not heard them :)
@Kevin Lefeuvre, I think I might not mind them adding the cleaning fee since they'll be adding it to everyone's listing. I can see how it would be frustrating to guests not to be able to compare apples with apples.
The pricing tips are really ridiculous. They want us to charge less for our cute little tiny house on the pond than you'd pay to stay at the No Tell Motel down the street. I don't think so.
Oh, and I got the email today from VRBO that they're rolling out instant booking. 🙄