You sound like a shill for Homeaway.
Not a shill. Just sharing what I’ve found as I was doing my research.
You don’t work for Evolve? Are you sure?
yah… not a lot gets by us. 
1 Like
No, I set the dates unavailable.
I still want them to be able to book outside the season.
You got me! I do work at Evolve.
I hope working there doesn’t disqualify me from sharing my opinion. I can see how you’d think it would give me a bias, but I just wanted to share my own perspective.
I used to run a vacation rental in Boston and had a lot of success on Airbnb - which is one of the reasons why I wanted to work in the industry. It’s been really interesting to learn about the pros and cons of the platforms, and hear about why there’s such a backlash against these sites. I honestly think they’re good advertising platforms - at least to get your name out there in front of a huge pool of travelers.
Then why didn’t you say that at the beginning, rather than being underhanded. I for one will be ignoring anything you post
2 Likes
I use both Airbnb and HomeAway/VRBO. Each year is different in terms of which platform I book more with. My second year it was definitely HomeAway/VRBO and then they changed their platform and my bookings went way down from 60% to less than 10% with HomeAway/VRBO. Now HomeAway/VRBO are about 35% of my bookings. I have a few horror stories from FlipKey (posted on this blog) and refuse to book with them. I tried Evolve -blog post on that as well - and found them to be geared toward resort markets and really did not know how to market rural areas. The listing they created for my properties was very pedantic - had no color and they tried to advertise my rural river setting by noting a Casino which is 20 miles from our home and in a different state! I told Evolve that I had bee renting for 5 years and that was not my market, casino attendees, but they did not listen. Also for my Canadian property I could not use my Canadian bank for my deposits which would have cost me a lot of money with the exchange rates and also Evolve did not understand the difference in the Canadian and American dollar therefore my chalet was WAY overpriced! Not a great experience!
I don’t appreciate the duplicity of an Evolve worker posting here without full disclosure. I am not impressed with what I have seen of the company and that is NOT helping.
1 Like
Not very enlightened, erhh, “evolved,” of her.
1 Like
I an not a big fan of VRBO/Homeaway/etc. I have only been listed for 2 months. I have gotten around 30 bookings from air since listing, and just 3 from the entire connected homeaway world.
I had a guest recently that also hosts a few places on air, and she had the same sentiment as I. She said that fewer people are using VRBO now as opposed to a year or two ago.
Then we both agreed that their website interface was awful. 
1 Like
@LaurenKaye -
Let me count the ways there is such a backlash against the major sites (not necessarily in priority order):
- service fees. What service is the site providing that’s worth 6 -12%? That’s hundreds of dollars in my case.
- loss of control over our businesses. AirBnB and their “extenuating circumstances” refund policy takes the refund from OUR pocket despite our cancellation policy. And having to ask AirBnB to get reimbursed for damages is another way we’ve lost control
- Not being able to vet guests prior to booking
- not being able to talk to guests prior to booking. I sometimes get dozens of questions from people about the area (we are in the Caribbean) before they book and spend a lot of time typing answers
- manipulating who gets shown to travelers and not always knowing where we stand in that order
- not announcing changes and we have to find out the hard way
- bugs in the software
- limited cancellation policy options
- holding OUR money until after check in. Some of our guests book a year in advance and Air makes money off of holding my money (yes, I know there is an option to get it earlier, but you pay even more)
- horrible search feature on HomeAway (I searched once for Salzburg, Austria and the results included Munich, Germany). Results aren’t ordered in the distance from the selected area - they are ordered how the site wants you to see the properties
Others -feel free to add to my list!
3 Likes
Now that Lauren has been found out, she can’t shill anymore and I doubt she will be back to answer.
Agree with everything you say Piton. And very sorry for the pain VRBO is causing to longtime owners by trying to become Airbnb2.
They won’t stop until they are basically the same platform.
I’m in Australia and our local holiday/short term rental website Stayz was bought out by HomeAway maybe a year or so again. We recently received emails that they are now changing the name to HomeAway and will include an updated dashboard and a lower commission of 5.5%(currently 7%) however they will be introducing service fees for the traveller from 6-12%.
By the sounds of the above we have a lot to look forward to. In saying that, we always get very few bookings from stayz, so not sure that will change.
1 Like
Hi. I will have to say I agree 100% with the issues listed here. I was delisted by HomeAway/VRBO numerous times, crazy reasons. But it has been more than a 3 year struggle with them. All they want is the Service Fee plus with the merging of VRBO another VRBO fee applied to the owner. Seriously a one week rental and the customer pays about $500. That’s just stealing.
The number of software updates and glitches is overwhelming.
Very little control over the site, my cancellation policy is not "no cancellation " or maximum “60” day does not apply to summer vacation rentals. People book in the fall and winter, but the booking period ends by end-of-March. You can’t have a person cancel 60 days prior to the rental date with the prime rental period is over. Zero flexibility in these cancellation terms.
I require a security deposit, I am giving them a very nice home and a boat. The deposit is required. A home owner cannot be exposed, in my case $750, which does get returned and the home & boat are built for renters, it’s hard to break something, door screens, typical, damaged propeller, sometimes, a chair here and there. Not so bad. But you never know. Renters are great at hiding any damages.
Does anyone know of a site where the potential renter can communicate with the home owner? This is old school, but owners can vet the prospect by talking, in most cases it’s a good thing. I do want to know who is renting my property. Also, the renter always has a great number of questions and you can list anything and everything, they just don’t read.
Does anyone require a rental agreement?
Who knows of a rental site where they allow live communication prior to booking?
Thanks. NRGLR
Snizzler, do you rent 1 day, multiple days, any minimum like a week? Are you renting a home or a room? Curious.
I see AB&B as a nightly room type rental as compared to a house/weekly rental.
Thoughts?
Thanks
This topic is around three years old and some of the info is out of date now. You’d be better off creating your own topic, when you can, then resurrected three year old discussions.
JF