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Owner Comments for VRBO.com.
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| VRBO is one of my main advertising outlets. They are an excellent way to gain exposure in the growing vacation rental market. I only wish I would have thought about it first! Like all things in life, there are ups and downs. Some months I generate a great deal of traffic and others it is quiet. I have no complaints about VRBO. |
| Been with VRBO quite a while maybe even 10 years. Best listing I have anywhere and I have tried most vacation rental sites |
| Our cabin is a fairly new vacation rental. We started renting it over Thanksgiving. So far we have had all of our renters come from VRBO (3 of them) |
| Overall, I still think VRBO is the best site for our property. It has the highest number of owner listings which brings more interested renters to the site, I believe. My only complaint is that VRBO segmented the market too much by moving to condo complexes within a town, rather than just segmenting by town. This has tended to diminish the number of potential renters because some buildings within our complex are becoming dated, while ours is renovated. |
| VRBO – VRBO gets a lot of good press, has a lot of
listings, and even accounts for a reasonable amount of
my business and yes I’ll continue to list with them for
now. Truth is however, that it’s like keeping your
friends close and enemies closer – I can’t stand this
site as an owner or as a vacationer! Why do I dislike vrbo? Let me count the ways: 1. Pay for placement by number of pictures you have. 2. Pay for changing photos. 3. Listing placement is not rotated randomly even when you have 12 photos. 4. Viewing the listings initially without photos is a waste of guest’s time. I can’t even find my own listing in the mess most of the time. 5. Listings are grouped only by city, not by area/complex within the city, making this site lousy for guest who know where they want to be. 6. No real search or efficient sort features. In short, I’d NEVER use vrbo to find a place to vacation myself, and if I did, I’d give up almost instantly. Their interface is doing a dis-service to the whole business. As an owner, I will stay with vrbo as long as they perform reasonably. VRBO are by no means my top performer. |
| VRBO gives me some good inquiries, but I am ticked
off that while I pay for my listing, they won't let me post my URL on it because I have google ads on my pages (which pay for my server fees...). They want me to put a link to the VRBO listing on it in order to have my own Web site show up. I should probably just go for that. |
| I have been happy with the performance of VRBO
- I
think it's very important to see who the performers are in the specific area of your rentals. There's clearly a wide range for performance of the different sites depending on where you're located. Something to review on a regular basis. |
| VRBO has not been a great producer for me. Here are
my stats along with the other sites that I have gotten
inquiries from. I am listed on many sites, these are the
only ones that have produced anything for me.
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| We feel that VRBO is an excellent site location for our rental homes on Paradox Lake,Adirondacks, N.Y. |
| Had no bookings this year at all - VRBO have become
too big even though i have 12 photos up. I will not use VRBO next year. VRBO used to be much better other years but have grown too popular. |
| We have been very happy with vrbo |
| I am concerned about the set up on VRBO. Since it is listed alphabetically renters looking for a place in the Caribbean would need to scroll to the bottom of the page to find me under Turks and Caicos Islands. Therefore I feel I get less traffic to my site |
| I have been with VRBO for 2 years now and
will definitely NOT renew. I have had much, much better results through other vacation rental sites. My best producing site provided 70 direct inquiries and 4 bookings last year. VRBO provided only 11 inquiries and no bookings. And this is for the same location, same listing, same pictures. In addition to the lack of results, I feel that the VRBO interface is not attractive, is not easy for renters to use, and does not provide search results based on specific criteria. It's more expensive than other, better performing sites. And up until recently, VRBO charged for photo updates and claimed copyright to all submitted photos. The photo issue really bothered me because it's completely unlawful to modify someone's submitted photo and then claim the copyright as your own. However, I'm told that VRBO recently ammended that policy. |
| As a homeowner who lists my property on VRBO,
among others, I can honestly say that I receive far more
inquiries and confirmations from the VRBO site
than any others that I use (Owner in Yorke, Maine) |
| VRBO generated many more visits and inquiries than
other sites, but not more bookings, though it does
generate bookings about as well as any site I use. I
suspect it has a lot of window-shoppers, since it's so
well known. (Owner in France, Florida) |
| Two years with VRBO and not one single
booking. That pretty much sums it up. We stay fairly
full throughout the year, and most of our bookings come
from a $23 sign in the front lawn. I've reached the
point where I don't even bother to update the calandar
on VRBO any more when I take guests reservations.
(Owner in Central Florida, East Coast) |
| This is our second full year utilizing VRBO
since we purchased an ocean view condo on Hilton Head.
The first year, we booked 95% during the season and got
a 6 month renter for the off-season. Very happy with the
ease of the VRBO website. This year...a little
different and I expressed my dissatisfaction as VRBO
had segmented the location of Hilton Head Beach & Tennis
and combined the location with other sites on the
Island, which actually moved our slot (we have 12
pictures listed too, which is the most expensive to
post) down on the list -so much so that our inquiries
had cut dramatically. We have ended up renting about 85%
during the season but we didn't rent to anyone in March
and last year we booked all four weeks - we don't know
if we'll sign up again next year-we haven't decided. The
site is easy to navigate and we have a link to our own
personal VRBO website from the home page. (Owner
in Hilton Head Beach and Tennis) |
| I've used VRBO for several years and have had
at least one rental per year. This more than pays for
the listing. Curiously enough, I receive fewer inquiries
from VRBO than CyberRentals, but I book
more renters. I don't know why that is. (Owner in
Rockport, MA) |
| Plenty of inquiries from this site, however they
have dried up right now as I expect they have for
everyone! If there are punters around they seem to find their way to VRBO (Owner in Spain) |
| I think VRBO's website is great -- it's
comprehensive & offers good pictures. However, the house
we rented in Hilton Head was misrepresented. Things that
were listed as being in the house were either not there
and/or broken. (Owner in Hilton Head Isliand) |
| I sent a letter to VBRO and they NEVER answered me. WHY???? |
| As a very timid lister of our property, I found vrbo.com ; 1) Very gracious and helpful, 2) Provides excellent guidance and educational material, 3) Made our listing both beautiful and professionally described. We have had excellent inquirities; and I am clear about ways to update and simplify our own information, as well as streamline our paperwork. We are extremely appreciative of this site. |
| I am a new owerner with VRBO and I'm very
disappointed in the location that they have listed my
condo. I cannot find my listing at times, and when I
do, it's so far down the list and listed in the wrong
area. Instead of listing me under my condo name
"Splash" they listed me under "other Panama City Beach
properties." I cannot find out any contact information
to these people to express my concerns. I am regretting
going to this site because of this and because the
website account set up is very hard to manipulate
through. If you are not consistant, sit there
throughout the entire procedure and do it really fast,
it times out and closeS out. When you log back into the site and try to resume, you can't make any changes or corrections. |
| We have had a listing on VRBO for nearly two years,
and over that time have been quite pleased with the
service. However, over the past two or three months, we
have detected some odd behaviour by VRBO, in that they
suddenly just took the step of deactivating our listing. We were advised that they were not happy with the level of complaints received from renters that their emails were not being answered quickly enough, although we have a policy of answering emails within 24 hours and keet to that. Furthermore, they want us to hand over management to their management company instead of handling enquiries ourselves, again very strangely as the site is meant to be for owners to rent out by themselves, via VRBO. Its a step in the direction of making the whole set up commercialised. Looking at their website (help section), we noticed that VRBO are to open a management section, so it could be a policy of theirs that they are slowly to persuade owners to give up their properties over to VRBO! Also noticed a tendency now not to answer emails from owners to their admin dept, or when they do anwer, they are very slow i.e. renters are more important to VRBO than the owners of the properties. |
| I used VRBO for a year with good results, however when I tried to renew my membership it was almost impossible. I called repeatedly explaining that I was unable to renew online, I kept getting answers that someone would call me and no one ever did. The only contact I had is when I initiated it. To date I have not been able to renew my membership and no expanation as to why |
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