Already on airbnb/vrbo, is booking.com worth it?

Question

While I'm doing incredibly well on airbnb/vrbo, its really taught me that multiple platforms helps a lot. Whether airbnb is banning certain dates for no reason (no parties on halloween, 2020) or vrbo doesn't have enough bookings to sustain all year so I need airbnb guests, I was wondering if booking.com was a good alternative. Is anyone using all 3? Anyone use booking.com at all? It seems all my software backend is already setup to include booking.com so it'd be pretty easy to integrate.

John Underwood · Answer

I would say if your not at the level of occupancy you want, then try it. Maybe create a FB marketplace add too.

I personally am happy with my occupancy levels using just Vrbo and Airbnb.

Dave Stokley · Answer

We did not like booking.com

We had trouble integrating it with our other systems, and did not like that guests don’t get reviews so there’s no accountability. We run 80% occupancy across 20 properties on only Airbnb.

Kyle Parks · Answer

Booking.com is awful. 0 support yet they take the same or more as other platforms.

airbnb and vrbo should be more than enough. If you are not getting bookings on those platforms you have an issue that more platforms is not likely to solve.

Scott K. · Answer

Thanks for the input. We get probably 60 percent occupancy in a remote rural town where people generally only come for weekends with huge groups, 14+. So while it's possible to get higher occupancy I think it's unrealistic given the market. We still make a lot of money. 120k revenue for a 300k house.

Kyle Parks · Answer

Sounds like you are absolutely killing it. On a property that size I'd imagine that is par for the course. We typically get people on business, cleveland clinic or "just passing through" guests here in cleveland during the week.

Luke Carl · Answer

@Scott Kunz I found it to be a waste of time. Although it was years ago. I haven’t heard anything favorable in recent past.

Al Williamson · Answer

Wow, you're really doing great. I've had a terrible experience with Booking. I've found their iCal link to be unreliable and that lead to a double booking situation and a lot of stress.

Also, Booking isn't good for +30 day rentals which is my focus.

William Beck · Answer

You're probably fine without it for now. Might just keep paying attention to investments they put towards the vacation rental side of the business though, because they are the worlds largest travel site. Hundreds of millions of visitors/month.

Scott K. · Answer

Yeah since we're not in a city, getting guests during the week is pretty uncommon. So occupancy rate is not my major concern. Its more just, can we squeeze out an extra 10% of revenue by having access to a greater pool of people. We saw that vrbo increased our revenue by 15-20% because the clientele happened to want to stay longer than the average airbnb guest. So I wonder if there is some 'hidden advantage' like that, to booking.com. Seems not.

Joe S. · Answer

What occupancy percentage are you getting now?

Already on airbnb/vrbo, is booking.com worth it?

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