Vacation Rental Sites Like Airbnb
- Some information about Airbnb
- Where else can you list your property?
- Flipkey (TripAdvisor Rentals)
- VRBO / Homeaway / Canadastays
- Booking.com
- Homestay
- Clickstay / Rentalsystems
- TheHolidayOutlet
- TouristParadise
- Owner Direct
- Holidu
- Hometogo
In this article, you can find 13 websites to place any type of vacation rental property, maximize your bookings online and, as a result, increase your profit. We provide a short description of each service and explain how they work. You can get to see how popular each of them is, read about the pros and cons and check fees for property owners (if any).
Online vacation rental services provide a great opportunity to reach your customers, see your first bookings in minutes and get profit hassle-free.
Some information about Airbnb
Popularity: high
Launched in 2008, Airbnb became a world-renowned online short-time rental service. As of today it is considered one of the largest tourist services, which provides access to 7 million venues to stay in 191 countries and over 100,000 cities. In addition to a short-term rental, the service offers local handcrafted activities organized by hosts.
Property Listing
Hosts can list their property with no fees, free of charge.
Terms & Fees
The host service fee is 3% of each accepted reservation. For property managers with 6+ listings, the fee is 14%.
What is special about it? Pros and cons
It’s up to hosts what to charge from guests: however, the service provides tools to help set a market price depending on the region’s popularity, location, property type, travel trends and prices set by homeowners nearby.
It’s easy to start: the service detects your location and shows an estimate for your possible monthly income – even prior to registration as a host or manager.
There are no fees for sign-up and listing charges. Hosts specify their unique schedule, pricing and rules for guests (no smoking, no pets, etc.) At the same time, Airbnb is ready to provide hosts with valuable recommendations along the way.
Interaction with guests is available via the website or a mobile app. The communication between hosts and their guests is convenient and simple. The service collects enough personal data to ensure security of your property, but doesn’t disclose this data until it is necessary.
Masterhost’s specialists will help you to place your property on this platform. More information about the terms of cooperation – here. Get free consultation – Сontact Us!
Where else can you list your property?
Although Airbnb is one of the most convenient vacation rental services, there are a lot of similar services online. To increase the number of bookings it’s a good idea to use a few of them.
Keep in mind that some online services are partners. It means that by listing your property on one of them, the listing will be placed on the other ones automatically.
Flipkey (TripAdvisor Rentals)
Popularity: high
Flipkey is a reliable vacation rental portal operating under TripAdvisor Rentals. Flipkey was launched in the year of 2007 and in the mid-2008 it was purchased by TripAdvisor and turned into one of its travel brands. The TripAdvisor Rentals group includes other brands, such as HouseTrip, Holiday Lettings, Niumba, and Vacation Home Rentals.
Flipkey offers 830,000 rental homes in almost 200 countries located in different parts of the globe. According to its website, the number of unique visitors is 300 million each month. It makes adding your property on Flipkey a reasonable investment of your time.
Property Listing
Free.
Terms & Fees
Like Airbnb, Flipkey charges house owners a 3% processing fee per each booking. For professional property managers with 6+ listings, the fee makes 14%.
What is special about it? Pros and cons
It takes just a few minutes to add a new listing. A trusted name helps guests decide on bookings faster. Secure and safe payment options and timely money transfers to the host make this service very popular in homeowners. After being published, the listing appears on the rest of the travel services hosted by TripAdvisor. If you own 25 or more properties, you need to contact the support team to inquire about terms and conditions.
VRBO / Homeaway / Canadastays
Popularity: high
VRBO is considered a reputable and safe online platform for vacation rentals, which has been connecting tourists to homeowners since 1995. Guests can enjoy the stay in almost 200 countries and in any type of space they prefer. Today VRBO belongs to the Expedia Group of tourism services. By placing your property on VRBO, Homeaway or Canadastays (for Canadian homes mostly) websites, you automatically place it on other websites of the group with the number of unique monthly visitors exceeding 750 million.
Property Listing
Free, but keep in mind that Expedia changed some terms and fees in the last few years, so this parameter can also be changed.
Terms & Fees
It’s up to the host to choose either to pay a yearly owner fee of $499 or pay 5% per booking along with a 3% fee for credit card processing.
What is special about it? Pros and cons
Hosts set their own prices, individual rules and other terms of property use. The service only provides recommendations and convenient calculation tools like earning estimates.
If you are up to listing 10 or more properties, you need to sign up as a professional property manager.
The VRBO support team is helpful and easy to reach. The system assists in payment collection: the fee is deducted automatically, and the funds are transferred to you according to the selected payment method.
Booking.com
Popularity: high
Booking.com service appeared in 1996 as a small-sized Dutch startup company. Today it is a great representative of the most trusted and reliable services famous worldwide. The web version together with the mobile apps for iOS and Android lists almost 30 million homes for travelers, hotels, hostels, and more in 228 countries.
Property Listing
Sign-up and property listing are free of charge.
Terms & Fees
Hosts are to pay a reasonable 15% fee for all confirmed bookings including non-refundable and partially refundable reservations made on the Booking.com platform. The service sends monthly invoices on the sum to be paid.
What is special about it? Pros and cons
The platform is extremely popular among those who are traveling, but most of the listings are from hotels, hostels and similar organizations, not from individuals (like on Airbnb).
The sign-up process is extremely fast and simple, hosts can import listing details from other travel sites. All your guests are informed: the web version and both mobile apps exist in 43 languages.
Other features include custom house rules, complete control over your schedule and bookings (you can add prerequisites, if necessary), host protection and property damage insurance – for example, liability coverage.
Homeowners and property managers can easily sync-up their calendars with other sites to avoid the risk of double bookings. Automatic replies and convenient messaging tools with the added translator improve the communication quality with guests.
Homestay
Popularity: medium
Homestay appeared in 2013 to take the offline vacation rental industry online and turn individual’s property rental a more popular option for tourists and businesspeople. As for today, Homestay.com is a reputable service, which offers over 50 thousand rooms in 160 countries.
Property Listing
Free.
Terms & Fees
The website enables guests to make a payment in the full amount upon arrival. This option implies that guests cover 15% of the booking price to confirm the reservation. However, for some countries and currencies, a 25-percent deposit payment is available to protect yourself from cancellations and no shows. The deposit is paid to the host in 2 business days after the guest arrives. Also, the site has a 3% host service fee (a minimum of 1 $/£/€) if you select the scenario with a 25% deposit payment.
What is special about it? Pros and cons
Hosts are able to mention in their profile the preferred payment method (bank transfer, electronic payment systems like PayPal, cash, etc.) The guests are 18+ years old. Hosts can select the preferred length of stay to get the most suitable guests.
Clickstay / Rentalsystems
Popularity: high
Clickstay is a vacation rental platform advertising thousands of homes worldwide, which is operating since 2003 (Villarenters.com). It accentuates timely customer and host service support to solve any arising issues.
Property Listing
There is a £1 fee for a sign-up procedure in order to check your credentials, while to list property costs nothing.
Terms & Fees
Hosts can advertise as many properties as they need from one account – a perfect option for property managers. There is a 0% commission for instant bookings and if the property was booked from your own website. If the booking was made via the host’s website powered by Rentalsystems, the fee is 2%. The service has a 10% fee for bookings via the Clickstay website.
What is special about it? Pros and cons
Hosts manage their calendar and prices via mobile apps. There is London-based customer support on weekdays from 8:30 AM to 5 PM. The service offers to handle all the host’s banking issues and provides an early payment option.
TheHolidayOutlet
Popularity: medium
TheHolidayOutlet project started in 2008 as a holiday listing site, which gives hosts the best advertising at an affordable price.
Property Listing
There is a fixed payment (£15 monthly or £40 yearly) to start advertising.
Terms & Fees
No additional commissions or service charges.
What is special about it? Pros and cons
A full-page advert features up to 28 high-quality pictures, a video, a detail description, location and much more. Hosts may easily edit and update their adverts, sync with iCalendar, directly work with inquiries and link the ad to your own website.
TouristParadise
Popularity: medium
TouristParadise appeared in 2004 as a Germany-based portal Ferienhausmiete.de. Today it offers 90 thousand holiday properties with more than 14 million annual visitors.
Property Listing
When the free registration is complete, the functions become available for extensive testing.
Terms & Fees
There are zero fees for service or booking. At the same time, you are to pay an annual fee for your ad: EUR 99 annually per 1 advertisement, EUR 79 annually per each further ad. If you need to place more than 10 ads – there are additional terms. To highlight the ad costs EUR 25 monthly – pay for 10 months after booking 12.
What is special about it? Pros and cons
The site offers international reach with 8 online portals in different languages. There are no service fees, no booking fees, and no additional commissions. Competent host’s support on weekdays.
Owner Direct
Popularity: medium
Owner Direct Vacation Rentals was launched back in 1994, and today it represents lots of vacation short-term rental homes of the world’s popular resorts.
Property Listing
Free. But there is a basic requirement: the property should be available for a minimum of 3 weeks yearly.
Terms & Fees
Hosts need to pay only after you get your property reserved. To find out the full terms and exact fees, you need to fill out the host’s form on their website.
What is special about it? Pros and cons
Free management tools, easy-to-reach support team and total control over the property availability and rate levels.
Holidu
Popularity: high
It is a search engine for vacation and short-term rentals, which compares the prices on different services and informs travelers about the most appropriate options. Searches Booking, HomeAway, FeWo-Direkt, VRBO, HRS, Arbitel, Airbnb and more.
Property Listing
You can add your property and advertise it with any partner website to be automatically added to the Holidu catalog.
Terms & Fees
Terms and fees vary, and it depends solely on the platform. Visit the Holidu website for updated information.
What is special about it? Pros and cons
You can advertise your property at multiple platforms via one website. Check out the website to get relevant terms and fees.
Hometogo
Popularity: high
Hometogo is one of the top aggregators for short-term business and vacation rentals around the world. It searches over 1000 vacation rental online services.
Property Listing
After listing your offer at Hometogo, it automatically appears on partners’ websites.
Terms & Fees
There are different terms and fees, as they depend on the service you choose. Visit the official Hometogo website for updated information.
What is special about it? Pros and cons
Aggregators are a smart choice to save your time and effort on adding the property to multiple catalogs at once.
