An independent vacation rental owners’ guide to listing sites

Listing sites. Love them or hate them they are a valuable source of guest reservations. We look at how vacation rental owners can get the best out of them.

‘Which listing sites is your property on?’ is one of the first questions vacation rental owners ask each other when they get together. With the unstoppable rise of internet booking, so-called listing sites have grown in size and influence to become a major fixture in the vacation rental industry. So much so that many independent owners are wondering whether the sites wield too much power and influence. Some owners who rely on listing sites as their main source of bookings are worried about losing control of their property’s management as the listing sites impose changes to their terms and conditions.

Your short cut to getting the best

Whether you are a new, first time owner or a seasoned independent, you need to find out as much as you can about listing sites. You will almost certainly be using them to a greater or lesser degree. There are owners who do not use the listing sites, but they are few and far between. What you need is a short cut to getting the best out of them. So, to help, Homes and Rooms is about to start a series of blogs entitled ‘An independent vacation rental owner’s guide to listing sites’. This will run over the next couple of months and look at different aspects of listing sites and their activities. And where they fit into the vacation rental industry. Armed with the information we provide, you should be better able to make an informed choice of the listing site offers.

The demystification of listing sites

Next time we’ll begin the demystification with a definition of the listing site, the services it can provide and what it can do for you. Later, we’ll bring you a list of the most significant listing sites from the many hundreds available to owners like yourselves. And a look at some of the benefits they offer. We’ll also be looking at alternatives to being in thrall to the listing sites. Significantly, to use the alternatives effectively, you will need your own website. Which is why, here at Homes and Rooms, one of the first things we do is set up our subscribers with their own free website. And we also supply the booking tools which can make them independent of the big listing sites, should they wish to be so.

How to use the sites to your advantage

The power of the big listing sites and how this impacts on independent vacation rental owners is also something we’ll consider. And we’ll show how independent owners can use the listing sites to their advantage and get the best out of them. While retaining a large measure of their own independence, of course. Don’t miss the first part in this essential series which begins next week. Meanwhile, if there are any points you would like to make about your listing site experiences or any site that you would particularly recommend, we’d love to hear from you.