What are the best sites to list my vacation rental on?
At BookingTeam.com, we specialize in helping property owners manage and share their listings with popular rental sites to get the highest booking conversion rates. From our experience, results are usually very random, some sites might pick up very well on a certain rental but not work at all on another rental. There usually is no way to know which listing will do well on which site. Below are some of the sites that are great for listing vacation rentals. By being on all of the sites you greatly increase your chances of optimal results for your listings.
Booking.com
The site has over one million properties and claims that every week 6.3 million room nights are booked. When you use Booking.com, you pay based on commission, so you only pay a percentage of each booking that is processed. In certain circumstances, such as a no-show, the site won’t hold you accountable for the fee. Our system reconciles the invoice for you automatically so you won't pay too much.
HomeAway
HomeAway is part of a larger network of rental sites with global reach. When you list your property on HomeAway, you get access to the rest of that network too, which includes VRBO and VacationRentals.com and a handful of other strong sites too. Listing costs are based on one annual subscription fee. Our integration with the site also features instant booking and is mobile-friendly, which makes the booking process simple and painless for guests.
Wimdu
The platform lists properties from over 150 countries, but if you have a vacation property in Europe, Wimdu is a must list rental site. Listing is free, although there is a commission fee for each booking. One of the best perks is that you can also use it to rent out a space in your home and share it through being a host. Plus, the site even offers professional photography services for hosts that list with them.
TripAdvisor and FlipKey
As part of the TripAdvisor family, FlipKey has impressive features and advantages. For one, TripAdvisor has a long history of being a trusted booking site. Tripadvisor recently took in about a dozen of excellent booking sites, such as Housetrip and Holidaylettings.co.uk. Guests come to the main TripAdvisor site to read reviews and research places to stay. Naturally, the next step is to book, which they can do easily from the TripAdvisor sites. It’s also free to list a property. For each guest payment, 3% is deducted as payment handling fee, the guest also pays a commission on their end which is automatically added on top of your pricing.
9flats
The rental site 9Flats may not be the most well-known, but it has its charms. One of those is that it provides insurance for hosts for up to 500,000 Euros in damages to rented properties. In addition, it is geared to providing authentic, local experiences for guests. Listing is again free, but comes with a 15% minimum commission fee per booking.
There are many more booking sites, Booking Team also manages your property on Wimdu, Agoda, and AirBnB, each of these rental sites have something unique to offer guests, property managers, and owners, and each comes with its own algorithm. It is hard to know beforehand which one will really take off for your listing. Creating and posting your vacation properties on each individual site is incredibly painstaking, tedious and time-consuming.
Instead, use BookingTeam.com. Our software makes it possible to share your listings with hundreds of popular rental sites in a matter of minutes. Once a listing is shared, our team can manage your bookings, calendar, guest communication and much more with you from our easy-to-use dashboard.
This is totally great information and I need to share this with friends of mine now. so, here's a full 100% up vote and a few shares...
Namaste :)
Namaste Eric
Good info. I've mentioned your site at my last REIA meeting and coffee meetup as it seems the vacational rental folks only know homeaway and airBnB.
Being I provide "how to buy a rental property" education to people I have no problems promoting you guys for the renting out piece. I'm proud to say my rental property book was just published!
Do you have any success with your rental properties thus far?
Yes. I have been fortunate to be profitable on all my rentals each year.
I also made sure to "buy right" as I call it. Which starts by running the financials through this basic property calculator I created in microsoft excel.
If the cash on cash return is not acceptable after factoring costs (mtg. maintenance, vacancy, etc.) than I wont even look at it. The calculator is out on the web for anyone to grab, you can grab it at ScaredyCatGuide if you want it.
So I'm curious how you actually evaluate cost for vacancy, maintenance, etc. I've been investing in real estate for about 6 months and it's so hard to predict when your tenants going to leave etc.
Agreed that most people only know about the larger/advertised travel sites. As a travel nurse, I have mainly used Airbnb site. It wasn't until recently I discovered other sites. It can sometimes be difficult to find furnished housing for longer than a week and at least 13 weeks.
I am hearing of a new site coming soon, NO Commissions to owners and NO Fees to guests. 100% free to everyone. Only Facebook users will be able to join and use. The future of the Vacation Rental Industry is FREE just like so many others businesses. Why should Vacation Rentals be any different?.
I'm part of a company called Rentivo - we build software to help owners & managers take direct bookings.
I strongly agree with your comment. Companies like Airbnb & HomeAway are taking huge fees from both owners & guests and it should be free. I'm very excited for a couple of projects we have in the works :).
You need to try the HotelTonight app... some people are scared about not booking hotels ahead of time but you can trust that they always have available hotels and they're top notch quality for unbeatable prices.
In NYC for instance you can always get a room that is around 300-400 USD per night for 100 USD if you booked the same day. I have friends who have done entire euro trips with it as well.
That's right, in fact NYC is one of the most pricy cities to stay in a hotel. You should opt for an apartment next time, with fairer prices, and much more space and amenities.
I would love to book an apartment for a month if this is even possible.
For my travel purpose, I always used booking.com. I feel its much easier to book through this site. But its always good to have other options as mentioned in this post. Will look more into it. Thanks
But, don't you need chance to find good deals in the last night. You may end up with high prices at peak times.
Booking.com seems like a good way to stay in hotel; however, they are also doing short term rental for apartments just like Airbnb. There's no reason why you shouldn't use Airbnb if you cannot find comparable apartments on Booking.com.
Landlords are afraid of not getting paid. Renters are afraid of getting scammed. I guess there should be a better technology to bridge the gap. Perhaps, a smart contract on Ethereum can produced? What do you guys think?
For sure. Those are very interesting implementations. Swarm.city is working on such an escrow type of service, but without middleman.
thank you for good posting.
Quality content, I follow you.
You didn't list AirBnB as an option.
Not that I use it. Just curious as why it wasn't listed.
Hi Deanlogic, AirBnB is one of the most known ones and is also very powerful. We wanted to write more about the other less familiar ones, but did mention airbnb in the last part.
Ah.. missed that last blurb. My bad. Thanks.
I guess AirBnB is the most popular site nowadays.
Hi, I have same units listed on airbnb, booking and agoda. Will bookingteam.com help me on my double bookings by syncing all these calendars?
Here's my listing :
https://www.airbnb.com/users/5234333/listings?user_id=3514452&s=50
Yes, we certainly can help you with that. Have a look at our website and click on getting started. You have some very nice units by the way, and excellent reviews, congratulations!
Great content! Keep it up!!
with this explanation maybe i might give it a try in the future. Started to follow!