HomeAway
Questions & Answers

Homeaway is charging a fee for paying through them. They said it was to improve marketing and because renters like to pay through them. As some one who is listed through Homeaway I find this practice destructive both to the owners and renters. I encourage all potential renters to contact the owners directly and pay us directly.
Owners already pay a fee. If the owners want to be listed in higher tier you have to pay more. To me they are just trying to find ways to make more money at both the owners and renters expense without improved service for either.

I don't recall being notified by Homeaway of the fee but was very surprised to see it added in my listing along with my rental fee. My feeling is if enough property owners pull their listing and travelers stop booking, they are going to crash and burn. Definitely going elsewhere to advertise. Susan K you are correct. Listing quality is based on how many travelers book through Homeaway!

Stay with Airbnb straight cheap and safe site to deal business. Homeaway is a criminal enterprise.

Yes, they are trying to compete with Airbnb, but they have missed the mark. Big time. This only drives owner and renter towards Airbnb.

Hi, I do not believe owners or renters were notified of the fee including myself as a owner. I saw this potential abuse coming as VRBO kept offering more services to make things "easier" for owners and renters. I signed up for the "book It now" feature recently as I noticed when searching VRBO in my area through a VRBO ad that they automatically filtered out places that did not have the book it now. However I DID NOT sign up for payment processing through them. I have had my own business name, business license, merchant account and processing through costco/elavon, (who recently have been offering a free terminal) for 10 years now. Remember the saying don't put all your eggs in one basket! Anyhow my VRBO listing number is 121628 and I warn possible guests to not use the book it now feature to avoid the service fee. VRBO has not kicked me off as of almost a month now. I also have not received but 1 VRBO inquiry in almost 2 months and I have a well above average unit that had many inquiries all the time.
Recommend using VHR site, we signed up for a 2 month free listing ( no calendar with free listing) ( takes 10 business days to post as they are going crazy with new listings) we have been on the site for 5 days and have had 4 inquiries already. Yearly fee is much less than VRBO, and is like VRBO used to be. Also "home escapes" is another "free site" if you get in now before they grow bigger all they ask is to recommend the site to other owners. Once bigger they will charge to advertise but if already on the site you are grandfathered in for free. Hope this info helps.

Pure money grab for nothing

Thousands of owners fleeing at end of subscription They are trying to stop direct interaction with renters and owners, this is NOT THE HOTEL Business.

Avoid Airbnb too. Their is no reason to be paying large fees.

I agree. When HA 1st came out with on line booking, they said we had to "OFFER" on line booking to get any priority, so I "offered" it, but recommended that guests not use it. Then HA said priority is not based on whether it is "offered" but instead whether or not it is "used." Over which I have little control. I also have little control over whether or not guests write reviews or how guests rate my property. Although I have little if any control over reviews, listing priority is based on not only the number, but also the ranking of reviews. HA also used to have a "featured listing" which naturally they charged more for. They have dropped that & say they now run "featured listings" randomly. However, they are based on the number of HA on line bookings & listings don't match search criteria. For example, someone may search for a 2 bedroom cabin, but the "featured listings" show 1 bedroom houses or maybe 10 bedroom houses. A note of caution, I was going to switch to Airbnb until I read their policies. According to what I read, if a guests complains, Airbnd automatically withdraws funds from the owner's account before even giving the owner a chance to respond. The owner must then justify why the renter should not be given the refund.

The revolt against HomeAway's new policies of screwing everybody they can will only work if we pull our listings. We have to find a good online booking system that has all the details of VRBO but not the numbers. We give them the numbers, and that site can start competing against HomeAway. I was told by HomeAway publicists that being a classified-ad type service isn't enough for our renters, they want the anonymity of booking online with the security of renter protection which is what this fee is to cover, along with more marketing. But for me, the VRBO listing IS a classified type of ad, most of my renters WANT to talk to me as the owner and I am NOT competing with airbnb. VRBO is vacation rental, rural, family oriented, not a room in an urban setting. The modelling doesn't work for VRBO owners (although it mmay for HomeAway).
As for this pay through the site nonsense, where again the objective is make more money at the owner's expense--- ranking you lower if you don't pay the protection money, er, I mean accept booking online, it may be legal, but it isn't fair.

After reading through all of the above answers, you guys have pretty well covered it. I'll just say: you can help your renters avoid the new fee by telling them in your description to call you directly and deal by check or cashiers check. It's a little more work but worth it. I offer them the choice of using HA online system and paying the fee or dealing directly w/me and save the fee. What no one is saying, is that as owners, we are also travelers. Brian Sharples said in his explanation that travelers won't mind paying the extra fee as they all expect to pay a booking fee. However, when I travel, I know what they are doing and I DO mind paying a fee for no good reason. I will conact the owner and ask if I can deal directly w/them to rent their property. This is good anyway - you each are dealing w/a real person. We owners pay to list our property and they send us interested travelers. How we arrange payment should be up to us!

The fees are applied to all vacationers in addition to what we owners pay as you can see by the responses no one is happy with it albeit I do not feel Expedia was the reason as it was announced last summer by the HW COO to a round of boo's at the homeaway summit in Austin! Regardless it's corporate greed and stabbing us faithful owners who helped make HA/VRBO what it is today! Worse they instituted "Best Match" on top of it which is even a bigger screwing to owners who have followed all the rules and the shit they have shoved down our throats for the last ten years! Best match is a real Lie and crock of bull, what it really does is give all the "Johnny come latly's" a push to the top of the listings, that's all it does, a Big Fat Lie right out of the mouth of Brian Sharples!