Investor · Kihei, HI · Member since 2016 · 24 posts · 7 votes
They have added a 6-9% fee to guests just recently, and it is bringing many owner's vacation rentals to a slowdown, or halt. Owners and guests are rather irate, and there is a facebook group of over 1000 owners. If you are a vrbo/homeaway lister, then you should join our group. There is a lot of really interesting information about what is going on, and many different viewpoints on this issue. You can go to facebook, and type in vrbo fees, and it is the group with over 1000 people, that you need to be approved to join. Please join us!
I'm sure you have read the open letter but here it is. Unfortunately its part of a larger industry trend of charging service fees for lobbying and the cost of acquisition. Doing it mid subscription term is what has a lot of people upset. At the same time they have changed a lot of their ranking algorithms which might be what is dropping traffic to lesser optimized ads. Staying ahead of these issues and having back up channel distributions so you are not so reliant on just one channel is another perk of working with a professional manager.
But, the other sites don't charge $1600 for two listings on their sites. Airbnb is virtually free, when you count that they pay for credit card processing. They do charge the guest, but vrbo is making a huge amount on our listing that airbnb isn't. And, airbnb is #1 by far. They are doing something right, they aren't extracting huge listing fees out of us. We were getting a similar number of requests and bookings from both sites, until vrbo/homeaway rolled in these guests fees. Yes, we feel that it is not legal to change your policies midstream, that negatively affect your business, with no real warning. Especially to people who have paid less than $1600/yr. or much more! There is going to be a class action lawsuit from this problem. A big problem, with many people getting very few inquiries right now, and our listing fee money is going down the drain. People need to band together, to get information, sign the petition, find out more about the class action lawsuit, see about the newspaper articles we're getting published (me as one). There is much information that is helpful to the vacation rental owner on the facebook site. We are at 1100 members, and growing. We can always appreciate more people to help us with the cause!
No, I don't feel that this is the issue to let it pass with vrbo. We are, of course, looking into other options for listings, and there are many on the site. I believe that much of our missing business is the guests balking at the fees- up to 10%, which adds a lot to the rental cost. We have had a number of people change their mind, and not book, or just complain. We tell them to complain to vrbo or Expedia. They aren't used to the fees, and they are expensive. Our group is also promoting boycotting Expedia, who bought out vrbo and Homeaway. They are the source of the problem. They need to have a message sent to them, that we aren't going to pay for their lack of more revenue, out of our pockets! Read more about all of this, in detail, and much more on the Facebook page. Go to facebook, and type in vrbo fees, and it's the group "say no to vrbo fees", that is a closed group. You have to be a lister on vrbo to join. It's well worth your time!
Professional managers take 25-40% of the rental fees, and they usually don't rent as much as we do! We have used professional managers, and they nearly put us out of business. We turned our Big Bear, CA cabin from LOSING $400/mo. to MAKING over $1000/mo. by me advertising on my own, and managing the property myself. We increased our number of rentals by twofold! There was also a proposed law in Hawaii that would have also put us out of business (our profit is about what managers charge). The government was trying to force us to use professional managers that were real estate agents at 25-40% of the rental cost. We, again, banded together as owners, fought the proposed laws (and the state of Hawaii!), and won! You CAN make a difference.
JOIN US, and tell your other owners and guests, too!
Dori Warner www.stayinparadise.com, and www.moonridgechalet.com
Sorry, Please erase the websites, I didn't know this wasn't allowed. Other forums allow you to list the websites you are talking about. But, I guess this is against your rules.
This definitely brings light to my concerns about how the vacation rental industry is going to change. Being how it's seemingly "new", I can only imagine the changes we will see in the following years. It makes me hesitant to buy a property solely on the idea of vacation renting it.
We're in the process of renovating a vacation property so we're not on Homeaway/VRBO currently, but would gladly join the FB group. When we're ready well just start with AirBnb or anything else we can find that makes sense.