If you could make your own property listing service...

[Beverly Daves]

Hello all! I hope everyone is having a nice holiday rest.

Going over my rentals for the season, it struck me that the major listing services (like VRBO, HomeAway, AirBnB, etc) are getting way too comfortable after having near control of the market for so long. Guests pay more, while Hosts receive less, because these services all insist on taking a sizable cut of the action. Service fees, booking fees, commissions, whatever name they use, everyone seems to be charging some sort of middle-man fee that causes a serious discrepancy between the costs Guests pay and the money Hosts receive.

I’m posting here to try and get some feedback on an idea I’ve had kicking around for a while to try and solve the problem.

Basically, I’m aiming to establish a listing service that only charges an annual listing fee to the Host. No per-transaction cuts, no interference in communication, no games with mystery fees. Hosting a website is expensive, but not NEARLY so expensive as to warrant the kind of fees that are currently being charged.

To help guide me, I’d like to have a discussion on what problems you have with existing listing services, how you might imagine resolving them, what it might take to convince you to try a new service, and what features from existing services you feel are “must-haves” for any new service you’d consider using. In other words, I want to know how to best design your dream listing service.

I know that’s kind of a big subject, and I have a lot of ideas of my own, but I’d to hear other people’s before I get going. Thanks!

[Julie McCoy]

@Beverly Daves There are already sites that work under precisely the model you're proposing.  Here's what AirBNB/VRBO provide to me, a host, that those sites don't, that I find particularly valuable:

- Easy interface that I didn't have to build myself

- Credit card processing

- Customer service representation, guarantees, and "insurance" that, while definitely less than perfect, provides an element of support and a sense of safety to both guests and hosts

- Most importantly, a monstrous marketing presence and household name recognition

These are costs that far outstrip simply running a website that acts as a way for guests and hosts to connect.  There's a place for that, but make sure you know exactly what niche you're trying to carve out and what ways you would (and would not) be competing with the major OTAs.

To answer your original question, the most important things to me are the marketing and the credit card processing.