This forum is dedicated to connecting hosts with other hosts. Sign up to get the latest updates and news just for AirBnb hosts! Note that we are not affiliated with Airbnb - we are just passionate hosts!
Hi everyone. I started self-managing my villa in Thailand and using Airbnb at the end of February.
Almost immediately I got a great guest for a month-long booking. They seemed to love the place (and my local host), but unfortunately didn’t leave feedback, despite polite reminders. I have only had one further guest booking on airbnb since then, perhaps because I have no feedback. Hoping my current guest will leave kind feedback!
About two weeks after starting with airbnb I also tried to get started with booking.com, because this is the most popular platform in Thailand. Setting up Booking.com was not at all straightforward because some of the same photos had appeared under the previous manager’s listing (which I myself had taken) and it took me three months to persuade booking.com that I wasn’t a fraudster. However, since eventually getting started, Booking.com has provided me with a couple of bookings and fortunately I now have 10/10 feedback in all categories there. It can also auto messages guests before arrival and leaving which is something airbnb doesn’t do as far as I am aware.
We have also done a couple of private bookings to friends of friends and so far our guest experiences have been really positive, there has been no damage to our villa, and overall occupancy has been pretty good.
Despite having somehow managed reasonable occupancy so far, I have no bookings from 1 Sept onwards and am now looking at Expedia, the third most popular platform in Thailand. I am in two minds about this as with booking.com it was quite fiddly getting it up and running and also trying to align rates between the two platforms. Also, with booking.com, it won’t initially let you do “no refunds on cancellation” and limits the size of cash deposit you can take until you have had at least three bookings. The other thing that will take more time is if I want to fine tune rates (rates in Thailand are highly seasonal) I will need to play with three platforms instead of two.
How have others found setting up and managing Expedia and/or dealing with running 3 or more platforms? Will Expedia auto populate from bookings.com or airbnb?
I haven’t use Expedia as a host, only as a guest but if you type Expedia on the search of this platform, you will see several threads related to Expedia. That might provide some insight.
I don’t know if you can list a villa directly with Expedia. But Expedia owns Vrbo, and Vrbo listings should show up on Expedia searches (ours does).
You should be able to sync all the calendars, but another option is a “channel manager” such as OwnerReservations. You have to pay for that and it’s a lot of work, but it cuts down the chances of getting double booked.
I went for years just doing the sync manually. We don’t get lots and lots of interest in our home because our price is so high, but I also slept with the phone on all night long and the volume turned up so I would wake up if we got a booking at night.
Which platforms you should chose is influenced by demand in each geography and in Phuket (where I have my villa) the agents and managers tell me it’s: 1. Booking.com 2. airbnb 3. Expedia and the other channels are a lot less popular.
Just to understand a couple of things, if I register on vrbo, does this mean my villa will feature on hotels.com? We use this platform ourselves and find it good as guests.
Plus, I’m not that keen on paying for a channel manager as the synching between booking and airbnb seems fine. (i) Are there any decent free channel managers (I guess not) (ii) Is it just the dates and bookings that channel managers control or do they help you keep consistent with content, policies etc?
No. You had asked about how to list on Expedia. I listed our property on Vrbo and it shows up on Expedia, not hotels dot com.
Channel managers do a lot more than just keep calendars synched. As an example, with OwnerRez, you can automate messages, send contracts for signature, use your own payment processor (for some of the channels, but not AirBnB), automatically send emails about bookings to cleaners and others, generate financial reports, use it to keep content and pictures consistent and probably more. They also offers damage (and bedbug) insurance that I can buy for a reasonable price per booking.
I don’t know of a decent free channel manager. I never looked. OwnerRez costs about the same as the contract-signing program I used (DocuSign) but offers a lot more services and gets high recommendations from a lot of vacation rental owners.
OK it’s just that hotels.com is part of Expedia, same as vrbo I think.
This is what it says on Expedia:
"Do I have to sign up with each of your brands separately?
Thankfully, no! You do not need to sign up for all Expedia Group brands separately. When you partner with us, your listing will appear on some of the world’s leading online travel brands, including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Orbitz, Wotif and more. Collectively, our sites cover virtually every aspect of researching, planning and booking travel. Leisure and business travelers with various tastes and budgets rely on our sites for all their travel needs."
This list doesn’t specifically mention vrbo, but think if I sign with expedia I get hotels.com and vrbo - but would like to have this confirmed.
I looked around and it appears you can get on hotels dot com somehow, but it does not seem to work if you list on Vrbo. We show up on Expedia but not on hotels dot com, and the same is true for almost all of our neighbors. But we all started on Vrbo, so maybe you can list with Expedia and get on hotels dot com.
So hopefully someone else can tell you how to do exactly what you want.
A word of caution, though. Be careful about listing on lots of sites with Instant Book turned on. I suggest you look into a channel manager (such as OwnerReservations) to help you avoid double bookings. The annual cost of a channel manager is probably less than the direct financial penalty for a single double booking.
Got it - thanks so much. I think the booking sites sync every 15 mins so there is an exposure, but hopefully not a big one for my villa as I’m trying to set the price at a level where the demand only just matches availability. It is a good reminder for me though as I should disable auto-book on airbnb (you cannot do so on bookings.com). Out of interest, which are the best value channel managers for a single property?
There’s probably a gap in the market for a free channel manager that makes revenue from advertising and other services to landlords.
Nope. AirBnB says every 3 hours. Booking dot com is 3 times a day (every 8 hours). I can’t find data on Expedia/Vrbo, but I suspect at least 2 hours between being synced. Before using the channel manager, I had instant book on both Vrbo and AirBnB and our own website was request-to-book. I managed it manually (and did not sleep well!). But we are a fly-to destination and priced at the top end of the market, so the likelihood of overlapping bookings coming in at the same time was always pretty low.
I can’t find this said by AirBnB, but it’s highly likely that having instant book on AirBnB gives you higher placement in searches.
OwnerReservations is $40US a month. I don’t know what other channel managers cost.
Thanks for this info on sync timings. Could have sworn I read 15 minutes somewhere but it seems I was wrong. When I get a spare weekend to get going on Expedia I should definitely sort a channel manager too, especially if it’s only $40 per month.
