Vacation Rental Owners Blog

Are You On the Right Listing Sites? Compare the Top Five.

Posted: 07 Mar 2013 01:00 AM PST

vr listing sites Here's a quick rundown of what you can expect from today's most popular paid listing sites:

HomeAway

HomeAway is still the biggest of them all when it comes to vacation homes. They have over 300,000 listings and more than 9.5 million unique visitors monthly. The HomeAway Community is also one of the best places to connect with other owners for advice.

FlipKey

Double exposure is a good deal: with FlipKey, you automatically get listed on parent site TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor does a good job of giving vacation rentals equal play amongst hotel listings — plus they're known as a "review site." FlipKey itself has 170,000 listings in over 7,000 cities worldwide.

VRBO

Name recognition means a lot, and VRBO is one of the oldest websites dedicated to vacation rentals. They have over 190,000 properties worldwide, but are primarily U.S.-focused. Rentals skew towards popular destinations, so especially if you own a vacation home in a beach, ski or theme park destination, it might be a good option for you.

Airbnb

This site is its own sort of community: you can connect through Facebook, guests and owners have profiles and can leave each other reviews, and the pay structure is commission-based. Especially if you're listing a nontraditional vacation rental or one in an urban location (right now they have listings in more than 37,700 cities), this might be the perfect place for you. Plus they offer free professional photography in certain locations.

VacationRentals.com

This site is a smaller player in the HomeAway family, but it's still got quite a bit of traffic. It's heavily geared toward U.S. vacation homes (more than 31,000 of their 35,000 listings) and deals, so keep that in mind.

Which listing sites work best for your property? Tell us where you’re located and which sites you use in the comments below.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013