Low Quality Inquiries from Non-Airbnb Sites. What's Your Experience?

21

Alan,

Your response is totally confusing. Are you even speaking of HA’s new direction, or are you rattling off why your bookings this year have not been affected?

Don’t get too smug my friend. I have consistenly predicted what HA will do, and the company has done it. You do not sound like you are totally dependent on them…kind of. OR you are an owner who already had your peak season filled and you think I am making up conspiracy theories. Go with what you want to believe.

If you have your rental priced at what the market will bear…you WILL NOT get all of your bookings through sites like Airbnb and Flipkey that charge outrageous booking fees. You must be priced under market in order to acheive 100% bookings for your full calendar through sites like this.

You claim to not be offering your accommodation at too low of a price. Well if you aren’t then you wouldn’t be fully booked through 3rd party sites that DO BELIEVE you are priced too low. They have added the booking fee because they have tested the market and realize that most travelers do their homework and consider a whole home a better value. NOBODY is paying an extra $40 a night on Flipkey, Air, and VRBO etc. because they do not trust the homeowner. They just have no idea how to book directly to avoid the horrendous fees.

I honestly don’t care if Airbnb hosts are tax cheats…have no time for them. I was only trying to be helpful that anyone here is a fool if they believe that a 3rd party website will not eventually exploit them. Homeaway did just that, and so did Directv/Dish Network, etc. And yes I have personal experience being a retailer through them. They told the little guy to shove it!

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22

It’s not just HA. The lesson here is for all of us dependent on Air is to not get too complacent with THEM, just as owners had become complacent with HA!

Even though Air are still privately held, they can and will implement hard changes to make sure they get their cut of bookings… and to them that means increase the bookings in every way they can think of. That includes pushing such features as IB, and moderate or light cancellation policies, going light on guests who do cancel and on and on.

How would we all feel if Expedia suddenly announced they were buying Air?

I would bet my mortgage balance that such a thing would not play out well for us owners, who are more and more, seen as commodities to be squeezed, just as we are bought and sold to ginormous travel corporations.

Whatever happened to renting your property out and keeping 100% of the profit without having to fork over 15% (12 from guest; 3 from us) to a middleman? What a concept.

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23

I’m starting to see your point. Air booked me up completely for my high season and I just subscribed to a yearly HA listing (this was my first season).

It’s insulting how they push people to use their payment platform with the fear mongering of protecting the consumer from those fraudulent homeowners. Those fraudulent homeowners are the ones that built their business.

In either case our homes represent the same “inventory” that will float among all of the sites so they have to fight for it and HA will lose out with their be business practices.

So far AirBnB was solid for me for my first season. True I don’t have the guest’s contact information but I have other homeowner’s feedback on the guests along pictures of the guests. And I only accept bookings from guests with positive feedback (for the time being until I’m used to the system).

The inquiries that I received from HomeAway seem to be lower in quality. One liners asking for general information that’s already listed and then no response after that.

So far, for April (my first month with HomeAway) I see that I’ve gotten 300 view, with only one booking. Meanwhile AirBnB completely booked me up with a very high conversion rate, great communication with the guests, positive feedback history with the guests that I choose to interact with, along with appreciative reviews of NY property and service after that check out.

I think that HomeAway used to be the industry leader but they’re trying to play catch up now. The problem is that they’re getting too greedy with the double dipping of those fees so maybe it’s resulting in some homeowners to increase their rate while, simultaneously, the guest has to impute the cost if the service fee?

If HA sells a yearly subscription, but then starts to charge a fee to the owner and then to the guest as well then these additional costs have to figure into the final price where it becomes more expensive when compared to other listing sites.

With FlipKey, I had 250 views last month and then I decided to pay the yearly subscription instead of PPB. I think that it was a mistake. We’re in the last week of the month and I’m only at 42 views so far. So now that I’m a paying client they must be pushing my listing down in favor of the 12% PPB fees.

So this means that the whole industry is going in that direction.

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24

But the middleman percentage more than makes up for the marketing budget of doing it on your own.

It’s a free market society and if the benefit us there then they’ll take advantage of it and so will the owners.

It’s a Bell curve and once it reaches its peak then one side will flinch.

Of course if there are owners out there that are generating bookings on their own then these listing sites aren’t as attractive but I’ll bet that the cost will still be more than 15%.

About the tax cheats comment. I usually wouldn’t comment on something like that in a public forum but I feel that it’s just rambling and bravado. Each person should be mindful of their own business.

A tax cheat will eventually be caught and when that happens the penalties far outweigh the savings. But tax cheats are to be found in every business and have no relevance to this topic other than to beat our own chests to show the world how successful we are, while still doing things the right way. How does that help in the analysis of the subject line?

Usually people that do that sing a different tune a little while later when they realize that they may have taken some good advice by listening to other people’s opinions. Who knows maybe there are some good opinions out there.

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25

Yes… I like your analysis!

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I hear with you the different quality of inquiries. Air does by far have the best inquiries. I noticed FK recently added some suggestions before the guest submitting a booking request…tell the owner who is joining you, etc. - similar to Air. Either they removed this or everyone ignores it!

I always get the “we are interested in these dates. Look forward to hearing your reply”

Then I ask for the ages of any children/babies, etc. Ask if there will be visitors…the FK from yesterday replied back with the ages of her 4 children. And she had only entered 2 guests!

Yo u are correct that HA is playing catch up. They of course still claim to be the industry leader…but Airbnb is the one that is becoming a household name in many regions.

27

The bookings that come through my website are either people who have found me on Flipkey and they are saavy enought to seek me elsewhere. Or they are from local attraction sites where I am listed under their lodging section. I don’t pay for google adwords or anything like that. I need to get one of those things on my site that tracks how people found me. There was also a site that I paid $129 for a one year subscription a couple of years ago and I believe a couple of people told me they found me that way.

One of my competitors’ sites shows up first if you google search for movies filmed in my area. She has a long blog post about it. Just blogging about activities, etc. in your area will also give your website visiblity. Most people googling activities in your area are planning to visit. So yeah, I probably would not be able to compete with the listing sites if someone searched for “vacation rental in blah blah” - but all of my Air and FK guests know if they want to visit again they can just go through my site in order to avoid the booking fees next time.

If I was solely dependent on Air I would have to lower my rates in order to fill my calendar. The people booking me through there have money to burn.