VRBO's dead. AirBNB's not great. How to market a Vacation Rental?

[Miki M.]

I have been working on setting up a modest vacation rental in the Portland metro area. 

In the past, friends of mine were raving about VRBO, telling me it really does work- and they had a reasonable fee structure. But I recently checked their reviews on Consumer Affairs, and Oh-My-Gosh! Really unfortunate what has happened there as of late. Here is the link so you can read for yourself:

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/online/vrbo.html

And then there is AirBNB. It used to be a fresh platform and maybe many people still view it as an innovator in travel. But I must be honest- I really dread their limiting app/UX/GUi... plus I also hear some owners are unhappy with their pricing and fees structure, and the lack of sufficient control over their listing. But at least they are still relatively transparent in their pricing, compared to the "new VRBO / HomeAway"...

I wanted to ask the BiggerPockets VR owners: can you recommend any other websites or resources to help me jumpstart my new vacation rental as a business? With sufficient control over picking the right visitors, and still being able to break Eben- without excessive fees...?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Julie McCoy]

The owners in my market rave about VRBO, but 95% of my bookings come from AirBNB - and I love AirBNB!  I've found their fee structure to be simple and inexpensive (VRBO, on the other hand, had undisclosed fees that pissed me right off), and the interface is VASTLY simpler to use.  I have had no problems with controlling my listing.

I'm experimenting with Booking.com - they're a PITA and have a high level of control over your listing, AND you have to process the credit cards yourself, but I've already gotten two bookings as a brand new listing (in a very slow season), so I'm going to give them a shot for a couple of months - but a lot of people decide they're more trouble than they're worth.

As for being able to break even, that's really going to come down to your particular market, expenses, and skill as a manager.  The fees on the various platforms shouldn't be the difference in whether you make money or not.