The disadvantages of big holiday home listing sites? Are there any?

Firstly let’s look at the advantages of the big listing sites.  It’s pretty much guaranteed that if guests search for a holiday home in Google, the big holiday home listing sites will be ranked on page one. And this is no surprise given their huge advertising and search engine optimisation budgets.  So it must be the right thing to do, to list your holiday rental with them, right?  Plus if it’s good enough for all those other owners then it must be the right thing to do? And with bookings and payments taken via these sites, so saving holiday home owners a lot of time and trouble is there really any need to have your own website and handle bookings and guests yourself?

Yes there is! Listing sites may get you in front of more guests, but it’s about quality of those guests not quantity and crucially being on a listing site you lose one vital thing.

The biggest disadvantage is that you lose CONTROL

• Control over how you display your prices
• Control over how you describe your facilities and amenities
• Control over when you receive your money
• Control over building a guest relationship from that very first enquiry

All can have a massive impact on your holiday rental business in the wrong way. Let’s look at each of these.

Control over how you display your prices

Let me give you an example.  I operate 4 seasons with a 7 night weekly price and a short break price within each season.  On AirBnB for example prices have to be entered per night.  If my low season rates are £600 for 7 nights and £440 for a short break of 4 nights, my price per night is £85 and £110 respectively. So which nightly price do I display? My changeover costs are high, and it costs the same per changeover, regardless of how many nights a guests stays, so offering a 4 night break at £85 per night ie £340 isn’t really feasible for me.  Yet at £110 per night am I pricing myself out of the market compared to other properties on there. I know what my holiday rental is worth to my guests and this is how I want to price it.  On my own website I can do just that!

Holiday Lettings for example does allow you to enter a 7 night price against a set time period but again asks for a per night rate too. So when guests enter their dates, the price calculated is different to the actual price I charge.

This is so frustrating to me as an owner and it’s misleading for guests, wasting their time and my time handling enquiries and clarifying the actual price.

Control of how you describe your facilities and amenities

Depending on which big listing site, this is usually a check list.  One of my holiday home’s key features is the garden and this is often not listed, instead “swimming pool” or “patio” or “terrace” are my only outdoor options.  Of course I can mention the garden in the description boxes, but control is taken away from me as the listing site has made their list on the features and amenities they think are most important, but actually they are irrelevant a lot of the time to my UK country cottage.  Also, since when has a family bathroom on the first floor and a downstairs cloakroom, been 1.5 bathrooms?  Several listing sites have asked me to list these facilities this way.

Control over when you receive your money

We’re in this business to make money, so why shouldn’t we control when we receive it?  My payment terms, for example, are 25% non refundable deposit at the time of booking and the remaining balance 8 weeks before the holiday starts. Quite standard terms.  Using AirBnB again as an example; they take full payment from the guest at time of booking and only transfer this payment to the owner, 2 days after check in.  Then allow 5 days (even by bank transfer) for this payment to be cleared.  In other words money is often received by the owner after the guest has had their holiday and settled back into life at home!

Control over building a guest relationship from that very first enquiry

Smaller listing sites eg Elite Cottages display a link to my website, so any guests can then liaise directly with me. That’s how it should be and that’s how I like it!

But the bigger sites don’t allow any contact between the guest and owner, unless it’s through their portal. This is so any transaction takes place via them and they can take their respective fees from both guest and owner.  Understandable from their point of view, but the owner/guest relationship is so important to develop and this starts from that very first point of contact, that very first enquiry.  Emailing via their portal feels so impersonal and frustrating as you may want to point guests to a particular page on your website, but this is not allowed as the listing site is in control!

Generally I’m not a control freak, but when it comes to managing my holiday rental business, I am.  Listing sites do serve a purpose, but to me the disadvantages of big holiday home listing sites and the frustrations of handling guests and bookings via these listing sites are significant.

Avoid, at the start of your holiday rental journey, spending time and money and listing on all possible listing sites you can find.  Use them as you start out but also spend your time building and using your own website, working towards being independent of listing sites from the start.  This puts you back in control. I believe that as holiday home owners this is our only way forward.  Control our listing our way!

If you found this blog interesting and you too have fallen for this mistake of listing everywhere, certainly when you first start out, then you’ll be really interested in what I have to share with you in my free live class on Monday 18 January at 2 pm.

Grab your place now!

IT’S FREE AND IT’S LIVE

Join me and discover 20 mistakes that you may not realise you’re making. Mistakes that will be having an impact on your holiday home business.

• Mistakes that are common and easy to make
• Mistakes that are easy to rectify once you’ve identified them
• Mistakes that will be holding you back
• Mistakes that will be stopping your holiday rental business from growing
• Mistakes that if you find you’re making, you musn’t worry about, you’re not alone

All you need is access to your emails (as I’ll send you a confirmation email and an email with links to join the class) and access to the internet.  There’ll also be a Q&A session at the end of the class. I look forward to chatting to you then.

Karen