Rental Property Investor · Waikapu, HI · Member since 2018 · 305 posts · 197 votes
Aloha everyone,
We have a couple STRs here in Maui. I've been working on a website where I'd like to be able to offer booking directly, instead of sending someone to Airbnb, VRBO, etc. We are using Wordpress (DIVI) to build out the site and would love to find a simple plugin for WooCommerce or some other storefront that has the same features as a HomeAway, VRBO, Airbnb etc. You know, check in date, check out date, number of guests, blah blah blah.
It doesn't have to be super complex, but if we could host all of our properties on our own independent website then we can avoid the downsides of the bigger companies such as their cancellation policies. Does anyone know of a plugin that does this? I've tried a few that were supposed to be able to handle, but they were pretty disappointing.
If not, I can build one, but it'll take a lot of work and I want to make sure there's not one out there before I travel down that road! Thank you!
@Kevin Lefeuvre, I send the URL to our website to each guest with my follow-up email inviting them to book directly with me the next time they want to some to our location. I offer a 5% repeat guest discount which they can receive if they book their next stay through my website using a coupon code.
I also have business cards made up with the URL of our website on it and give them out to anyone that we happen to meet and is interested in our rentals.
I have a "Google My Business" listing (pin on Google map) for each location that links to our website so anyone who finds me on Google can see our website and our properties.
This year I've taken 26 bookings through our website directly, either from repeat guests or guests who found us online.
The booking engine I currently use is ReservationKey. I used to use MyVR but it was terribly expensive. ReservationKey is very reasonably priced (I'm paying $34/month for up to 10 properties). However, while their support team is responsive I get the feeling they are strapped for help because the response I receive sometimes when reporting issues I've had is that no one else seems to be having the same issue and I'll need to do some testing myself by creating test bookings, etc. On the whole, though, I've been happy with
@Kevin Lefeuvre As it pertains to my post last year on this topic, the site I used the WP plugin on really didn't go anywhere so I don't have much info to provide there. For my personal property and website I still send uses to my Evolve listing so they can take care of the payments, calendar, etc. Sorry I can't provide more info for you on this front unfortunately.
@Valerie Rogers that’s great info! @Kevin Lefeuvre, I ended up using VRCalendarPro but it was only supposed to be a temporary fix as I got pretty busy with rehabbing other units and being over 95% booked on my Airbnb’s I didn’t get back to it as it wasn’t priority #1. However in light of this renewed topic interest, I’m eager to try out a few more options and I really like what Valerie has in place. I’m in the middle of another rehab now but when this one is done I’ll give this another crack! Thanks everyone!