I'm a huge fan of Airbnb over VRBO. The website is cooler looking and works 1000 times better than VRBO. I never handle money and I get a 1099 from them. They're 100% pro-host and insure damages up to $1m. They provide (or did the last time I listed a property) free, professional photography and don't charge a sign-up fee.
I have the same question. I have heard that high end or luxury homes tend to rent better on VRBO, and AirB&B are better for regular houses. I have no idea why they say that. I will monitor to see what advice you get.
@David McErlean - great question and from my own experience it appears to be somewhat location specific. I use both platforms and the majority of my bookings come from Airbnb, however I know others who are more successful with VRBO. I would recommend trying both and seeing how it goes. You don't have to pay the $399 to VRBO out of the gate to test market your property (they will take a higher percentage of a booking fee) so you can see how well their platform will perform in your area.
@David McErlean - HomeAway/VRBO used to use a tiered pricing structure for listings with the most expensive being around $1800/yr. They changed about 2 years ago and went to the much lower listing price ($399/yr currently), but they at the same time started charging the renters a service fee to offset the lost income. I list short term rental vacation homes on both HomeAway/VRBO, Airbnb and FlipKey/TripAdvisor. The listings are 3 bedroom homes and larger, and the majority of the rental inquiries come from HomeAway/VRBO. However, I have seen an increase coming from Airbnb. I recommend listing on all three in most cases. Keith
What @Michael Greenberg said. I had all of the main three - Airbnb, Homeaway/VRBO, Flipkey - going at one point. Now I'm down to just Airbnb (which fills up the calendars) and my own webpages. Flipkey just wasn't useful enough and their website was really bad back in the day. Homeaway/VRBO was nice and brought in a lot of rentals too but I cancelled when they implemented 'best match' search results and $399 subscriptions and wouldn't refund my now useless $1800 subscription, the renter fees are just another nuisance. Honestly it will be property and location specific but you can't go wrong with an Airbnb and Homeaway listing. I'm sure people will have totally anecdotal experiences that say otherwise but it doesn't cost anything to try either.
The platform usually depends on your area. I would list on all platforms and see where most of your reservations are coming from. I list my properties on all platforms and notice most of my reservations come from Airbnb. Airbnb is usually good for urban areas.
The best results I've experienced have been from Craigslist. With AirBnB I've had probably 3 inquiries in the last 2 years, and they just wanted to stay for the weekend. My minimum rental is 7 days. Probably get 6-7 calls a month from the Craigslist ad. I keep 3 ads on Craigslist. Today, yesterday, the day before yesterday. Tomorrow I bump up the ad from the day before yesterday and it shows up in todays results. Repeat every day.
I have been advertising on VRBO for over 10 years and have literally hated working with them the whole time. Recently when VRBO announced that advertisers had to process all bookings through VRBO, I did not renew the 11+ properties advertised. I began listing on Airbnb within the last year and have had a very positive experience. My observation of the two is VRBO is greedy, very corporate minded, very difficult to work with, whereas Airbnb is really working hard to create a community based platform of cooperation. How refreshing!
@Andrew Wong I also use Tripadvisor. I don't get much traffic through there though. I think it's mainly used for vacation spots such as Hawaii, South Padre, etc.
The only incentive I see with paying VRBO the $399 is that it doesn't take many bookings and your fees to them for the individual bookings will quickly add up to that $399 and beyond. I use Airbnb, TripAdvisor/Flipkey, and VRBO and VRBO's fees are confiscatory vs the other 2 and as a renter I'd love to be able to tell my VRBO renters to go to my Airbnb or TripAdvisor listings to book there because I'd save them quite a bit of money too! Put it this way, when I want to book a short term VR I'm going to Airbnb then TripAdvisor. I'm steering clear of VRBO because of the fees. If it doesn't exist in the average popular vacation spot on Airbnb or TripAdvisor then I assume it probably doesn't exist at all. As a host however, naturally I'll continue to list on VRBO because I'm not removing my property from millions of eyeballs because bite the hand that feeds you.
We use Airbnb and Homeaway/VRBO. We get 95% of our bookings from Airbnb. But other hosts with similar properties in the same area swear by VRBO and say they get no traffic from Airbnb. As a matter of fact a lot of hosts in our area speak very negatively of Airbnb. They turn their nose up at it, which makes no sense to me. I have posted on here before asking for advice on getting more VRBO traffic, but if we are getting completely booked with Airbnb I suppose it doesn't matter. Other than it just bothers me because I can't figure out why.
Also, we have a lot more technical difficulty with Homeaway/VRBO than Airbnb. For instance we have had one guest trying to book a few days for about 3 days now. Her dates are open, but when she goes to book it says they are blocked. Everything is clear on our end. We have called VRBO twice a day for 3 days to resolve this issue, and they can't figure it out. Never had a tech problem with Airbnb.
How easy is it to combine all of the systems calendars so you don't have double bookings? Is there any software that you use to control all of the platforms at once?
I don't know about flipkey but Airbnb and VRBO you can sync to each other's calendars to avoid double bookings. Don't have to get a 3rd party program, it's built into both sites. You just import each' calendar into the other!
I'm a huge fan of Airbnb over VRBO. The website is cooler looking and works 1000 times better than VRBO. I never handle money and I get a 1099 from them. They're 100% pro-host and insure damages up to $1m. They provide (or did the last time I listed a property) free, professional photography and don't charge a sign-up fee.
For those of you that use Craigs List, how do you handle the payment processing? I have a place in Arizona that I will be renting out to mostly older individuals. I doubt they are going to be to versed in Venmo or Paypal.
I don't do CL @Scott H. but when I do take rentals outside of the big platforms I run the payments through Stripe. All major credit and debit cards accepted and it appears on your renter's statements as STRIPE*YOURBUSINESSNAME. Fees are more or less on par with Paypal but more than Venmo. 3-4% ish.
How easy is it to combine all of the systems calendars so you don't have double bookings? Is there any software that you use to control all of the platforms at once?
I used to be able to use a Google Calendar that would sync all of them (down and up) not sure if that's still supported though.
I'm new to using Airbnb and wondering if there's any research to back up the theory that bookings can be increased by cross-posting to other rental sites to the extent that the additional fees would be worth it. @Keith Courtney do you have any input? Is it just something I'm going to have to feel around for? Seems like there would be some study online.
@David McErlean I'm looking into Guesty which syncs all the calendars from the various sites into one platform.
@Myka Artis - I'm always voting for your stuff because I always agree... I think of VRBO as being more for mountain towns, etc. - places where you would have families gather and need a larger space. Airbnb tends to be better for people that are singles or couples and want to be near the city. (That's been our experience at least- although I do think Airbnb is starting to move into larger homes more often.)
@David McErlean - the platforms let you combine the calendars. I'd be really careful about this though because it's still something you have to stay on top of and in some ways may provide a false sense of confidence.
Like @Mike V., I use Airbnb and VRBO/Homeaway and 95% of my vacation rentals come from Homeaway. I like the website 1,000,000 times better than airbnb too.
Airbnb has issues like not being able to add a pet fee to the instant booking.
I get higher rental prices on Homeaway also. I have to discount my prices some on Airbnb just to pickup a few rentals.