What booking sites do you use other than AirBnB/VRBO?
Yeah, hit it up. We all use VRBO/AirBnB, what else do you use?
I use..
- Zillow/Trulia
- Tripadvisor
- Craigslist (occasionally)
how are you using zillow/trulia for STR?
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Mainly use Homeaway. Have an Airbnb account that doesn't do much unless I discount my normal homeaway prices. I get some business from Craigslist. I drive people to my Homeaway account from CL Ad. I dont really need anything else. I have over 300 days reserved for this year. If I don't block days I can't get to my Lake House to do maintenance and ride my jet ski.
@Ryanne Hodson, if you hover over the "Rent" navigation on Zillow, you'll see a "List a rental" section.
@John Underwood, you don't aim for full vacancy?
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If I were retired I might want full vacancy, but for now I am making money since I can't use it that much.
@Andrew Wong thanks, i've never seen that before! how often do you get renters from Zillow? how do they pay you?
@Ryanne Hodson, it's less of a rental platform and more of a website to generate leads in which you have to talk to them personally and sign a custom lease.
@Andrew Wong got it. thanks for the info!
p.s. we use Airbnb, Homeaway/VRBO and Trip Advisor. Airbnb is 90% of our business. not sure why, since i have seen @John Underwood say his is 90+% VRBO. guess it just depends on the area. whatever works to keep you booked!
Yup, I've seen @John Underwood vouch for VRBO, but it is not very good in my area. Most of my leads come from AirBnB.
However, the more lead generation websites you can get, the higher you can put your prices within reason. I'm trying to increase my funnel.
airbnb - but hopefully branding my own stuff soon
@Jimmy Moncrief, why do you want to brand your own stuff? You're going to build your own booking website with your own payment integration and calendar blocking and messaging and emailing systems?
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We are 90% airbnb
We use Airbnb, TripAdvisor/Flipkey, and VRBO. I agree that it appears to depend on where you are located. I probably do 60% Airbnb, 35% tripadvisor, and 5% VRBO. Our cabin is in Gatlinburg, TN. Based on what John Underwood usually says, VRBO is the goto one but clearly that is not the case outside of his local.
@Jeff Piscioniere how has your experience with tripadvisor been? That's a higher % of booking then I have heard anyone else quote.
John D. It's been pretty good. I definitely don't think their app comes close to Airbnb though. In fact it's gotten worse. They had a calendar update function on the app but it has since gone away. It's also not as easy to change rates on the fly like Airbnb. You have to change it through rate categories, can't do it day by day. People also need to be prodded to give you a review unlike Airbnb. I find their fees are comparable to Airbnb though. Good luck!
Originally posted by @Andrew Wong:
@Jimmy Moncrief, why do you want to brand your own stuff? You're going to build your own booking website with your own payment integration and calendar blocking and messaging and emailing systems?
Yes, of course. That's what I'm in the process of doing. I have enough repeat bookings now that with some SEO to get my page ranked higher in Google search, I hope to ditch the booking sites altogether. Why keep paying the fees? Or even worse, pay the fees AND have the guests pay them too? It was fine when I was just paying VRBO an annual fee. But now that they are charging my guests as well, I don't see the added value...
I only use VRBO, but I've added AirBNB because everyone says you 'need' to. I don't see a lot of traffic from AirBNB though, unless I discount my pricing to fill it last minute. But I never seem to need to.
I added TripAdvisor and Booking.com about 3 months ago. I've got nothing from TA and Booking.com payment arrangement just confuses me and my guests. I'm going to dump both of these next week. If Booking.com ever gets their act together on payments, I might consider them again.
I've tried others in the past. In my experience, they literally are not worth the trouble. However, this could be a regional thing, as some people seem to have great luck with AirBNB (and others), but not so much with VRBO.
Originally posted by @Garry C.:
Originally posted by @Andrew Wong:@Jimmy Moncrief, why do you want to brand your own stuff? You're going to build your own booking website with your own payment integration and calendar blocking and messaging and emailing systems?
Yes, of course. That's what I'm in the process of doing. I have enough repeat bookings now that with some SEO to get my page ranked higher in Google search, I hope to ditch the booking sites altogether. Why keep paying the fees? Or even worse, pay the fees AND have the guests pay them too? It was fine when I was just paying VRBO an annual fee. But now that they are charging my guests as well, I don't see the added value...
Because software is hard. These are pretty complex systems that you'll end up hooking up and building. If you're not building it yourself, well then it's yet another expense that you'll have to pay and maintain. There's a reason these companies are million to billion dollar companies.
I have a website that aggregates my postings across different sites. Playing SEO on that is one thing. Building a calendar with a payment system and keeping payments secure and calendar up to date and all that is a different beast.
Also, my trust in giving someone my financial information on a self powered website is a lot less than a well vetted one like AirBnB or VRBO.
I don't think it's a simple "Of course".
We'll have to agree to disagree then. I'm firmly in the 'of course' camp. I want control over my business. Even more, I don't want someone else to have control over aspects of my business. What if all of a sudden VRBO wants to double their fees? (Which is essentially what they did last year when they started charging guests as well as listing owners.)
The reason that these businesses are multi-billion dollar is not because they can do it better than me, but due to scaling and fees. "Fees for you, fees for me, let's charge everybody! If they don't like it, who cares? It's not like they are going to go and build their own web site."
Well, why not?
I disagree that these systems are too complex for the average person to hook together. Wordpress and the various plugins make it fairly simple. And, if it is too much, then yes you might want to hire it out. But that's what we do here, or at least what I do. I'm not looking for more work for myself. I'm looking to build systems that work without my input. If I have to pay someone to set that up for me, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Because in the long run the payoff will be much greater than the up front costs.