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We rent a condo in Boston on Beacon Hill that we offer through VRBO, Airbnb and FilpKey. Our rentals are dominated by VRBO. Out of 109 rentals since November, 2015, the breakdown is:
83.4% VRBO
10.1% Airbnb
7.5% FilpKey
We read over and over that Airbnb is the leader and feel like we must be doing something wrong on our Airbnb listing. What are your experiences?
My rental (2br condo in the suburbs of Paris) is listed on HomeAway/VRBO, Airbnb, Wimdu and Housetrip.
90% of my bookings are from Airbnb, 10% from HomeAway, no booking from other platforms.
I know that the rental agency in my neighborhood does almost all its bookings with HomeAway and almost none with Air. Both them and I have the same descriptions and photos on both platforms.
There are definitely mysteries.
Other Than Summer: 90% Airbnb, 10% HomeAway, only one FK booking.
During Summer: 80% HomeAway, 20% Airbnb.
98% Airbnb
1% Wimdu
1% Private or guidebook referrals
0% FK (thank goodness)
0% Home Away…( but I am thinking of listing PPB there just for visibility and will redirect inquiries to Air. )
I have a private basement apartment near Kona, Hawaii, the Big Island.
High season is November through April or early May. Then, it is not only low season it is DEAD season. This has been the pattern since I first listed on Air in 2009.
100% ABB. 0% others (like 5 of them)
Interesting topic. Anyone else care to share? I’m currently only on Airbnb, but I’ll add my contribution if/when I’m on more sites.
Curious about why you’re grateful not to have FlipKey bookings (am I understanding your “thank goodness” correctly?). I’m considering listing on FlipKey but haven’t done any research on it yet.
After I first listed on Airbnb in Nov 2015, it took 3 months before I had a guest inquiry & booking. After I listed on HomeAway recently, it took less than 24 hours before I had a guest inquiry & booking. Exact same content on both sites!
HI Dia…
FlopKey sends me terrible guests. They are generally inexperienced travelers and often they are charged waaaaaaay more than Airbnb guests so they are understandably grumpy when they get here . Also FlipKey collects the entire guest deposit in full and doesn’t retune it to the guest until some 14 days after. Their interface and platform are horrid to use. Their customer service is all in India and all unhelpful (sorry Faheem) the fees are way higher – they charge the guest up to 17%. Need any more reasons to hate them?
Wow… thanks for saving me the hassle of signing up with FK. Really detestable about holding the deposit for so long and inflating the fees.
I’m new to the vacay rental property biz (Jan 2016). For awhile I had my property on TripAdvisor and frequently got inquiries – but not one of them (no exaggeration here) ever seemed to read my listing. They were always asking if I had space for lots more people (one bed, two people), a kitchen (no), a TV (no), etc ad nauseum. Not one person who ever wrote to me from TripAdvisor was a good fit for my property, so finally I just took that account offline. So far, my guests thru Airbnb have been a perfect fit, perfect profile for my property.
makes sense…trip advisor and FlopKey are the same thing!!!
I leave mine up because I’ve been able to sometimes redirect the enquiring FK guest to Air or Home escape. Home Escape is something new by the way. The listing and service is completely free, but it is just getting off the ground so go check it out!
20% Booking.com
50% Airbnb
20% Flipkey / Tripadvisor / holidaylettings
10% Others (Roomorama, Homestay, Wimdu etc)
(approximately)
I’m getting Home Escape blocked over here. Has anyone else seen this? I’ve reported it to the email address in the blocking notice, along with a screenshot.
Hi @Jan_J,
You seem to know a lot about this stuff. Do you have any ideas which sites might be most effective for Bombay, India? Most of the sites I’ve tried seem discouragingly inactive, which the possible exception of booking.com, which seems kind of scary.
I learned through my property management company that each site caters to a slightly different clientele. Perhaps your property caters much more to the clientele of VRBO which is why you are seeing those numeric results. Regardless, it’s still a good idea to list on all sites, because it increases the visibility of your property and likelihood of it being booked.
I was readi g this thread last night so decided to pop over and view some other platforms and see if dublin is used much. I found one site roomster and it had a house in o connell street which is the center of dublin. The picture of the house looked like an estate in spain or turkey. There was a blue sky, sunny and palms tree so not ireland. I reported it as would hate some poor person to book a non existent holiday. Their fraud team were investigating.
This house had reviews which was even more strange
AirBnB 85%
VRBO 10%
Direct: 5%
Flip Key and Bookings: 0% (Was with them at the beginning; never again)