Do you prefer personal service or a machine sir?
The vacation rental market has changed beyond belief in the last 5- 10 years. The economic crisis, the hospitality industry's new focus on rentals as a new source of revenue, the new "sharing economy", the "internet of things" and Airbnb created a perfect storm and changed it all, creating havoc at supplier level and hence guest problems.
HomeAway (now Expedia)and TripAdvisor hoovered up all the straight advertising sites (VRBO, Ownerdirect, holidaylettings, Niumba etc etc ) and turned then into "e-commerce marketplaces" where as quoted by the ex CEO of Homeaway, Brian Sharples, "the really important part of this type of business is to distance buyer from seller, to stop leakage". Now throw in booking.com and a few others, create meta-marketplaces to compare prices across the big players and the recipe is complete for global dominance.
Except it hasn't quite worked like that in many market segments. Our records show on 20th November 2014 HomeAway had 793,751 properties of which 29% had BIN (Book It Now), which then was not a real book and pay solution as it is now. By this time last year however, they had over 1.2 million and 60%+ on BIN. More an enforced change than a choice and applies time pressures, technology stress and loss of margin. Later this year it will be approaching 100% as a BIN or request to book and credit card numbers entered ready to extract the funds. All manager and owners know how tough this is. Any problems with the home, lack of global marketplace synchronicity and the booking may need to be cancelled with penalties. A home is not a hotel, you can't re-allocate a room.
The problem lies in the transition. 50% of all properties are individual owners. Increasingly its managers, but they still have some of the same issues. So go back before 2014 and consider almost 750,000 properties all dealing with enquiries and taking money in many ways (not just credit cards) answering questions, negotiating prices, managing unusual requests, explaining health issues, dealing with guest and property specifics (does it have egg cups), vetting guests, helping with local knowledge and responding at their own pace, which in fairness was generally a few hours.
Assume each property makes 20 bookings, so that's 15 million bookers and nearer 35-40 million renters as families. These people are often habitual vacation renters, who like owners are now confronted by a wall of e-commerce where details are not disclosed, fees are added and confusion reigns.
There are a lot of people out there and a growing number who may simply want to save money and be reassured that what they see it what they will get and if something goes wrong, they know who to call.
Everybody wants an easy process, but many want more information and they are asked to put their trust in the middleman not the owner or manager with whom they actually book.
None of these sites know anything about a property, its location, validity of photos, local knowledge, so frustrations are happening.
This is not Airbnb standard territory, where you stay for a few nights, its a city, you know where the tube is, its cheaper than hotel. We are talking about true regional and seasonal vacation rentals.
So a question for all people out there who may consider taking their family to stay in a real vacation rental, maybe a stay-cation for a week, a trip to Disney or a week on Lake Como:- Assuming that its easy to book, you also save the guest service fee (up to 12%+) would you want to
a) speak to somebody and have unfettered communication and find out more details and know who to deal with in a crisis and save money?
b) read whats on the screen and put your credit card in (remember you are never booking with the site, they are an intermediary)and hope for the best?
What do you think, when the average booking is circa $1500?
Is this an age thing, a perceived trust issue, laziness (its easy to find direct) or lack of knowledge?