HomeAway Reviews By Owners
I wanted to share this with the community to see what you’re thoughts are in the matter.
1) Soaring Vacation Rental Website Listing Rates: Vacation rental owners biggest complaints are that listing websites are increasing their prices and decreasing the amount of rental leads they’ve received in the past.
Unfortunately many owners feel stuck paying whatever fees the listing sites demand to advertise their rental property.
I have included several comments from these vacation rental listing websites I have cited directly from the Homeaway website.
These are direct from Homeaway website members in response to Homeaways new listing price hikes and “tier” pricing.
2) Disconnect and disregard for property owners: Vacation rental owners have questions, comments and suggestions which seem to fall on deaf ears.
Owners seem to be growing more and more irritated with large vacation rental listing websites like Homeaway.
I’ve heard rental owners complain about them all including Homeaway, VRBO, VacationRentals, TripAdvisor/FlipKey. Here are more comments cited from the Homeaway website. ————————————————————————————————————————————————-
New Homeaway Pricing & Subcription Levels
Vacation rental owners have been very vocal about these vacation rental website listings price hikes. Owners reviews of the listing websites advertising results have not been positive. Owners complain that they are no longer getting the exposure on these websites which they once did. Here is yet another comment from a vacation rental owner regarding the new price increase for listings and the actual consequences owners are facing with Homeaway. ——————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Be aware of the pros and cons when advertising your vacation rental on listing websites. That’s not to say you shouldn’t use vacation rental websites to advertise your vacation home. In fact I recommend you do. Don’t become a victim of the monopoly the vacation rental listing sites have on rental owners. Stayed tuned to this vacation rental marketing blog to learn how to beat this system. Need help marketing your vacation rental? Push the easy button! Contact us today for a free marketing solutions -Call Now 1-800-856-8641 https://villamarketers.com
Homeaway is Just Gouging it’s Owners & Property Managers
I have managed multiple properties with Stayz since 2005, and recently had to migrate all of them to Homeaway when they took over Stayz.
Apart from a major exercise due to the hundreds of mistakes made in the process, I have now discovered that Homeaway will not pass on guest payments until a MONTH after the guest arrives.
They claim it is a security measure. This is absolute rubbish! Homeaway is just gouging property managers and owner; making money on the held funds for an extra month. They claimed it would only happen on the first booking for EACH property, just to verify the owner. This is a lie, as we have been given two late payment dates for the same property this week. It is also rubbish, because once an owner or property manager is verified once, why would they need to be verified again for the other properties they manage?
This delayed payment means that we don’t find out for a month after the arrival date if we will be paid. How are owners meant to keep track of payments that are related to an arrival a month ago? This will involve extra time, extra staff hours, extra costs for us to monitor.
Further to this, property managers generally have to pay their owners at the end of the month for all bookings received during that month. If they haven’t been paid by Homeaway, and the guests have been and gone, how can we pay the owners? We are not financiers. We are not a benevolent fund.
Alternatively, how do we not pay the owners, keep track of which bookings from the last month have not yet been paid for, and pay the owners the following month? They may not receive payment for a completed booking for up to nine weeks or more.
This is outrageous.
We can see no alternative but to charge higher rates on Homeaway, compared to other sites, to cover the extra delays and costs. Guests will go to other sites as Homeaway complaints continue to increase, and hopefully they will see that they need to manage their income producers much better than they do at present.