Free Listing on Tripadvisor / Flipkey / Holiday Lettings

Many Vacation Rental Owners have complained about the booking fee recently introduced by Homeaway:  if you are paying for an annual listing, it does seem a little unfair that Homeaway also gets a slice of the income from renters!

One alternative worth considering is a free listing on TripAdvisor / Flipkey / Holiday Lettings. These used to all be completely separate sites, but a while ago TripAdvisor ( who owns Flipkey and Holiday Lettings) allows owners to manage them as one listing. Your property still appears on each site individually, but you have one login, calendar and dashboard.

I started listing with TripAdvisor a couple of years ago and my experience have been overall very positive. I have a property in Nice, France plus one in Marbella, Spain and the TripAdvisor sites provide me with about 70% of my bookings.

As mentioned above, there properties are actually listed on several sites i.e. TripAdvisor, Flipkey, Holiday Lettings and Niumba, with no annual listing charges. Instead, TripAdvisor gets a booking fee from the renter, plus I pay them 3% commission on my bookings. I know that some owners have reservations about "commission-only" listings, but my experience is that it works well, because TripAdvisor has a strong incentive to get me bookings.

I particularly like the fact that I can see the performance of my property on each of these sites individually. (My properties do best on TripAdvisor's main site and Holidaylettings.)

I also like the fact that TripAdvisor handles all the details of payments, including collecting and refunding the security deposit, which used to be a real hassle when I did it myself.

Plus, there really is no down side: if I don't get bookings, I don't pay anything.

You can check them out by clicking the banner above or the link below:

List your rental for free.

Homeaway Listing: Annual Listing Fee or Commission Based?

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With the impending acquisition of  Homeaway by Expedia, the move from annual listing fees to commission based listings is likely to accelerate. So, which is better: annual listing fee or commission based listing?

Well, there are certainly some advantages to the commission based listing.

Firstly, you save the price of the annual listing fee! This means that, assuming you continue to get (at least) the same amount of bookings, your profits from renting your property will increase.

Secondly, it is likely that Homeaway will give preference (e.g. in listing searches) to commission based listings. After all, any bookings generated give Homeaway incremental revenues, so they will have a strong incentive to promote these listings. (This may include promoting your property on other Homeaway owned sites that your standard annual listing does not cover.) This means that your bookings through Homeaway are likely to go up!

Of course, there are also some disadvantages to commission based listings as well.

For example, although you may save on the annual listing fee, that extra revenue that Homeaway generates must come from somewhere: and if your guests are only prepared to pay the same amount, then surely it must come out of your pocket i.e. you will get less revenue per booking than you currently get ?

Perhaps not ...

A couple of years ago, when Holidaylettings launched their Commission Based listings option, I signed up for it and kept my prices at the same level as I had on other annual listing fee sites. I reckoned that any bookings I got through the HL site would be a bonus. Because I was getting the same net price, it would cost me nothing.

Even at these "higher prices", I now get a substantial portion of my bookings through HL: the renters are paying more than they would on other sites, but they seem to be prepared to do so! I suspect the same will happen on Homeaway, so my advice is to seriously consider a commission based listing.

(By the way, commission based listings on Homeaway are not yet available in every country.)

What Have I Learned from This Vacation Rental Season?

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Now that summer if officially over, it’s a good time to reflect on the season as a Vacation Rental Owner. There is no doubt that the industry is changing (is maturing the right word?) and that has implications for Vacation Rental Owners everywhere

 

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So, what have I observed this season?

1.       Consolidation in the Vacation Rental industry continues. With Homeaway surpassing 1 million listings and other key players such as Holidaylettings in Europe also growing, it’s clear that the big guys continue to get bigger. That’s not to say that there are not good niche options (there are many listed on COHR) out there, but it’s clear that more of the market is moving to the big players. This is to be expected, as the industry “matures” and , although there are downsides to listing with the big guys, unless you are prepared to invest considerable effort in marketing your property yourself, it’s probably the easiest way to generate bookings

2.       Commission only listings work for me! My experience (particularly with Holidaylettings) is that the commission only option generates bookings at the same revenue to me as my listings on annual fee sites.  I also have a lot less hassle in chasing payments and tracking security deposits and even receive some enquiries where all I have to do is click an “accept booking” button!

3.       Commission only listings also work for the Listing Site! Booking fees, commission, added value services to the renter: these are the ways for the Vacation Rental Listing site to make money. It’s far easier for them to do this than to increase their annual listing price to me! 

4.       Reviews matter. Although guests are becoming more used to booking Vacation Rentals, there primary worry remains to be that, because each property is individually managed, when they get there, it just won’t be what was sold to them. Reviews give them some assurance that they won’t be drastically disappointed and vacation rentals with good reviews will consistently be chosen over those with none. On the flip side, a single bad review can do untold damage to your business (particularly if not balanced by some positive reviews).   Build up a selection of positive reviews

Do You Respond To Rental Enquiries in 24 Hours? Your Rental Listing Site Cares!

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It has been well documented that those who respond most quickly to vacation rental enquiries are most likely to earn the booking. This is true particularly when it is possible for a potential renter to send the same request to many owners, as it the case on many of the vacation rental listing sites.

Interestingly, both Flipkey and Holidaylettings.co.uk are now planning to use the speed of response of owners on their systems to manage booking requests.

Both Flipkey and Holidaylettings.co.uk recently introduced the ability for renters to request a booking for an available property: all the owner has to do is respond to either confirm or reject the booking.

This is actually a really nice feature. From the renter's point of view, it means that, once they find a vacation rental property that they like, they can make a booking request quickly and easily. From the Owner's point of view, it also reduces the back-and-forth responding to requests and means that the owner can simply accept the booking with a single click (at the "list price").

(It also works well for Holidaylettings.co.uk and Flipkey, since they get a commission on all of these bookings!)

When originally launched a few months ago, Owners had 48 hours to respond to these booking requests. However, both Holiday Lettings and Flipkey have announced that they are reducing this time to 24 hours. They argue that most requests are answered in this time and I assume don't want to lose the booking because of a slow response from the owner. It's also not clear whether they will proactively suggest alternate vacation rental properties once a booking request has expired, although that would be a logical thing to do.

In a similar vein, Flipkey have indicated that they routinely remove "commission only" listings from their systems once the enquiry response rates fall below a certain value. The rationale is that they want to "reward" owners who respond quickly by channelling the enquiry traffic to them and away from those owners who are not active on the system.

The clear message from all of this is that, particularly with the move to "commission" based listings, those who respond quickly will get favoured treatment by the vacation rental listings sites.