STR fees - Should you take your rental off of them?

[Andrew Neal]

So I am wondering how much on average it costs STR investors in fees to take bookings through the major STR sites like Airbnb and VRBO?

I ask because I recently saw an ad for a company who helps STR investors make their own website. But my thought is, what good is a website (that you have to manage yourself) if no one knows it exists let alone it doesn't drive any bookings.

I work in marketing so I always go to results and work backwards and unless this service is helping you get bookings then seems like a waste.

Does anyone have a separate site for their STR and find it beneficial?

[Jon Crosby]

@Andrew Neal  I personally create one for each of my STRs using Wordpress but I'm also in technology so it's pretty easy for me to do that. 

If you are in a niche area then you could likely leverage SEO an get some actual traction with that site.  But for me, I mainly have the site to do things like run PPC campaigns, have a custom domain email address and landing page for email campaigns I send to current/past guests. 

That's it though, to expect to get more bookings than you would in savings by not using the main OTA's doesn't seem feasible to me.