Question for those of you in travel space

[grnidone]

Mom and Dad have purchased a condo in St. Croix as a rental income thing.  They would like to put it on various sites such as airbnb etc to get people to stay there.

What sites are the most beneficial to get travelers from

A.  United States & Canada
B.  Europe
C.  Australia

Thank you.

[ergophobe]

It depends a little on the type of customers you want.

In terms of volume on vacation rentals (granted, very different market than you)
- Booking.com
- VRBO
- Flipkey/Trip Advisor and AirBnB

Despite all the press and the higher Alexa rating, for us AirBnB has never delivered a lot. This is partly a choice because

Booking.com - we don't list with them. Our cleaner tells us she thinks there's a big difference between the Booking.com customer and the VRBO customer. I think this will change over time now that VRBO is owned by Expedia. People tell us Booking.com fills them, but people tend to be more "transactional" and thus take care of your place worse. VRBO customers often have this "thanks for letting us stay at your home" feel (and frequently say so in exactly those words).

VRBO - used to be hands down the best, but they have added a traveler fee that now makes them more expensive than Trip Advisor

Flipkey/Trip Advisor - their system is not as refined as VRBO, but they don't charge extra fees to guests

AirBnB - worst system and they charge fees like VRBO. The main problem with AirBnB is if you are trying to do active revenue management, you're missing some key options. For example, your minimum stay is just global setting. All the other services let you change minimum stays for high season, holidays, etc.

[Rupert]

we only use Trip advisor. We set up with Holiday Letting a few years ago, and it works well.

reasonably priced, plenty of visitors  (UK sea side).  most treat it as our home, with respect.

[grnidone]

VRBO is now owned by homeaway.  If you list on homeaway, you will be listed on VRBO.

Hmm.  Will give TripAdvisor a look. 

We've rented houses with HomeAway in the past, and the places have been wonderful and we've treated them as well.  But, perhaps others who use HomeAway do not do that...

[ergophobe]

VRBO and Homeaway and several others have been the same company for a long time.

The big change is that they are all now owned by Expedia as of last October.

It used to be a complicated thing with all sorts of upgrades if you wanted to appear on multiple properties. They've gone for a much simpler subscription model. The last date to renew for another year under the old model was, I believe, July 31. Now everyone is in the "one price" model.