All Forum Posts by: Beverly Daves

@Julie McCoyThanks for your response. I can see you have really thought this through.

For what it’s worth, I was planning to pass on the exact fees our credit card service provider charged us to each host. That’s the only way I can see any service like this operating.

I can see your point about customer service costs, but there might be fewer problems for customer service to deal with in a more open and transparent platform. The original VRBO charged only a flat fee and managed to handle customer service and other expenses until Home Away bought them out.

I hear you about the service fees to the guests and agree completely. That was the big bomb that Expedia dropped when they bought Home Away and VRBO. I especially hate reading travel blogs advising renters to ask the host to lower their rates to make up for the additional 12% in service fees!

I definitely understand not wanting to pay for an unproven service. I don't think anybody would, honestly. I do wonder where you'd draw the line, though-- after all, there has to be a point where a new service transitions from "This is likely a waste of my time" to "This might actually be worth something." Is it about getting a certain number of active users? Surviving for a period of time? Having a given volume of listings or bookings?

Thanks again for all your comments and clear thinking.

@Paul SandhuI think I hear your problem but I'm not sure what sort of solution would work... It sounds like your guests simply aren't considering STRs as part of their accommodations search, right? The only solution that comes to mind would be to try and increase global awareness of STRs via an advertising campaign, possibly directed towards non-vacation travelers. I'm not sure how well that would perform in improving your specific situation, though, or if the costs would be prohibitive. How would you try to let them know, if you had free reign?

@Julie McCoy

@Julie McCoy and @Michael Greenberg

Thank you both for these responses, this is exactly the sort of feedback I was hoping for!

I'm aware that there are sites that work under the business model, but they don't seem to be growing or really making a difference-- which is why I figured that it takes more to be successful than just being low-cost. Setting up an easy interface and something to handle credit card processing definitely seems doable. There are all sorts of ecommerce tools and resources out there, so while I'll need to do some research to figure out which approach is the best for this specific use case, I'm inclined to believe that can be done. Guarantees and insurance, I’m not sure about... I'd need to come back to that after looking for a processing platform, to see what sort of offers I could make financially viable. Is there any specific protection that is particularly important to you, or is it just the peace of mind that the whole suite offers?

Customer service, marketing, and name presence are the real problems from that initial spread, in my mind. Customer service is just a money issue-- Particularly just starting out, people will have questions, both about the service, and the interface... If I can turn this into a proper business plan to pitch to investors, it would be fairly easy to dedicate some funds for customer service, but it puts a damper on any attempt at self-starting. Which is fair, I guess. I never really expected this to be a cheap or easy project.

Marketing and name presence are substantially more problematic from what I can see, because at the end of the day, HA/VRBO & Airbnb have spent a lot of time and money to develop it, and I can't really expect to have anything that can compare to that in a reasonable time frame. Do you think there's anything that can be done there? Advertising and time is an idea, but I don't think it's likely to make much headway on it's own.

As far as "post-stay" price visibility goes, I'm pretty sure that should be easy to provide from a programming perspective, so that's definitely something that can be done. Though, I have to confess that I don't have much personal experience with MarketMaker or third-party apps, so I'm not sure how to evaluate your feedback there. In the opening stages, do you think it would be worthwhile for a small OTA to dedicate resources to competing with the existing 3rd party apps? I worry that if I try to compete in too many directions, I'll wind up with a service that technically competes in all fields without actually being very competitive, if that makes sense.

I hear that you like the blind review process, and can definitely work to take some inspiration from Airbnb's setup, but can I ask what specifically bothers you about the star ratings? I know that they aren't helpful as a metric-- trying to regress a complex situation down to a numeric score usually isn't helpful-- but in what ways specifically do they fall short? Do they primarily bother you when reviewing, or when reading reviews? The review process is central, so improving it would be great, but, like Michael, I'm not entirely sure where to start.

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!