Stay with Air/VRBO or add others?

Question

In our first year of STR's and have just used Air and VRBO...wanted to keep things simple, avoid double bookings, and just plain learn the business.

I'm considering adding Bookins.com and/or Trip Advisor.....Any reason I should? Or just stay with what I got?

PS - We are booked pretty fully most months......

Myka Artis · Answer

@Bruce Woodruff Yes you should be on every site possible and more importantly you should have your own website. You can get one through a channel manager such as Yourporter or Hostfully. Airbnb is great but if you were hosting last March when Airbnb cancelled all reservations without guest or host approval then you should know they are not to be relied on to run an efficient short term rental business.

Kyle Parks · Answer

My wife and I both have experiences with booking.com (her managing several hotels and I had used it working for a hostel) and we avoid it like the plague. They take a % and if anything goes wrong you are on your own. At least with airbnb and vrbo you can get someone on the phone. Booking.com is straight trash.

John Underwood · Answer

If it's not broke don't fix it.

If you are happy with your occupancy levels then I wouldn't add a 3rd or 4th booking site to add more complexity to what you have.

Bruce Woodruff · Answer

My thoughts as well, but having been in business for decades, I know there are hills and valleys. Thought it might be prudent to have more irons in the fire if/when there is a downturn in the economy.....?

Joseph Bafia · Answer

We went the other direction on ours.  Initially, we were on AIrBnb, VRBO and Lodgify for our first cabin.  Definitely say no harm to try several platforms early on.  AFter about 6 months, 95% of bookings came from VRBO, 5% from Airbnb and 1 had only 1 deal through our own Lodgify site and that was to someone we knew locally and steered them that way.

AT that point, we dropped Airbnb, i cancelled Lodgify subscription and we push 85% occupancy all year.  Easier for us to manage (although there are platforms to sync multiple booking sites).  We just bought 2 more and have them again on AIrbnb and VRBO to start.  I'll stay with where the traction takes me.

Good luck!

Michael Thorne · Answer

@Myka Artis Good input! I came to this thread to learn more about STR and where to list as we have just listed our rural property with a cabin on AirBNB this week (and got a booking!). Will definitely list with VBRO as one of the posts I read mentioned airdna and I was able to go there and see that 71% of our area booked on VBRO - yet another nugget of value coming from BP. I too think that we will ultimately have multiple listings as I learn - the whole not having your eggs in one basket thing. I plan to add as I put in the process to handle the complexity of multiple sites.

Michael Baum · Answer

@Bruce Woodruff, the vast majority of folks book through VRBO and AirBNB. You could give it a try and but I think you won't get much if any.

Landon Bleau · Answer

Bruce, based on what I've heard the vast majority of people use AirBNB & VRBO, in my personal opinion I would not worry about adding to other sites as well, especially if you're staying pretty booked.  Is there a site out there that can post your STR to all STR Rental sites?  If so, maybe it's worth trying for a few months just to see if your vacancy goes down a bit.

Stay with Air/VRBO or add others?

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