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I googled “best rentals in North Myrtle Beach SC” and Hometogo was in the results. It claims to search VRBO, Airbnb & other sites for the best rental prices. 90% of the results it displayed were VRBO.
Is this a new travel search product? Are you getting any bookings from people using this? Or would you know?
Airdna has search & links properties to book via Airbnb. This feels like a similar product.
I’ve never heard of it. I just did a search and I swear my property flashed on the screen but it never shows up in the search no matter how much I zoom in and tailor the filters for my listing. How much does it cost to list?
https://skift.com/2018/12/05/hometogo-buys-a-near-death-tripping-in-vacation-rental-rollup/
Looks like it is the evolution of tripping. Com. My neighbor’s home appeared. Mine never did even with map search. Hmmmmm. Looks like there is some further site development to do.
There has been discussion of Hometogo in other groups. I didn’t quite follow all of it. When I tried typing in open dates I had, many months ago - it did not pull in the cheapest one. I think it was maybe 7-8 months ago. I don’t recall the details, but I think it pulled in my VRBO listing instead of the Booking.com one. And didn’t include the vrbo service fees that the guest has to pay. But it could have just been that one test, cuz others are talking about using it.
I have found my listings there and never realized it even existed!
Interesting—my neighbor lists on Airbnb & VRBO/Homeaway. His listing displayed from VRBO. Although the site indicates it pulls Airbnb listings, when I input dates for June, it pulled 60 listings from VRBO /Homeaway & 1 from Airbnb.
Being curious how this worked, I input the same dates directly into Homeaway & Airbnb for his listing. The total fees displayed for both VRBO & Airbnb were higher than the fees/rate displayed by Homestogo. My first thought was they didn’t consider taxes; maybe site booking fees were omitted. I will test this and update this thread.
Before I posted this topic, I searched for a similar topic on Airhostsforum & didn’t find one.
UPDATE: His nightly rate is much lower on Homeaway. He has only two reviews on Homeaway; average 2-star rating. He may be trying to use a cheaper rate & to get rentals to build it.
So sad—The bad reviews were not deserved. 1. One: princess complaining kitchen appliances old (worked-just old).
2. Second : complaint the condo 3rd floor walk up NOT on the first floor. Maybe guest thought he booked a different unit. The description & pics make it clear this is a 3rd floor walk up.
Wow, thanks, @Annet3176. I had no idea this existed, either, and, weirdly, ONLY my listings show up for my town. It is a small town, but there are others; they just don’t appear in the “anytime” search.
I don’t think there is a way to know whether we are getting bookings from this platform. “View deal” takes users directly to the Airbnb listing page. Airbnb will know, since the URL is packed with query parameters, but we won’t.
Entire condo rented.
There are two other condo in the same building rented STR. Mine & the other are first floor and our community pictures are similar of the building, pool, gate entry, grill area waterway so there potential to get confused among the rentals. I have a big bright red couch that tends to be memorable.
Wow - a two-star average for two reviews. That’s horrible. I was wondering if he rented a shared listing (a no-no on HomeAway) and maybe that was the reason he got such bad reviews.
I’ll take a look at Hometogo soon and report what I see, too.
Yes-it was undeserved. I don’t understand some guests.
I dropped off VRBO when my FIRST rental left my unit a bad review of the couch was uncomfortable and needed replacement and the unit had cheap furnishings.
No one booked with me after that.
The irony is the jack-ass asked me to book off platform for the next year for a 60 day stay. The answer was “no”
On Hometogo it shows my largest room “Best Price” $30 more than the actual AirBnB listing for dates in June, my high season. That’s because for the 3 nights in June I was looking for, Hometogo added the cleaning fee and AirBnB service fee and divided by 3, to get $125, which is actually a dollar too high. Weird.
When I click through the link, it brings up my listing. Although my AirBnB listing clearly indicates that I am offering a private room in an apartment, Hometogo shows it as Apartment - 1 Bedroom.
On Hometogo search page:
Hometogo’s copy of my listing:
My listing on AirBnB:
This is the most expensive of my 3 rooms at this location. Now to check and see if the others also show up in Hometogo.
I tried it on our listing for a week in June. It showed “Best Price HomeAway” but showed the AirBnB price which is higher because the Air service fees are higher - $40 per night higher. Then it took me to AirBnB.
I don’t think we would know. Since it takes you to the site, they’d book through the site.
After seeing your post I had to check to make sure my listing doesn’t show up on it and it doesn’t. In my town it’s mostly hotels and the more you zoom in on the map the more hotels pop up. It’s unappealing to me and I wouldn’t particularly want my listing to show up there even if it was a VR.
