Homeaway changes to Homeaway Bookings. Are you affected? Costing more to both owners and clients

Homeaway which we have successfully used as our on line booking presence, except for own website, has been taken over by Expedia and the whole feel of the site has changed.
It has gone from being a portal for owners to have a worldwide presence, to an on-line travel agent.
Is this affecting you and have you found anywhere else to advertise?

We have used Holiday Lettings and like Homeway they have been taken over by expedia. Our bookings have dropped significantly. We no longer subscribe to HL but our property is still live on their site, They take a commission if we secure a booking through them. Very, very disappointed. Going to list with Booking.com and Air Bnb and see how we get on with them. Will probably ditch HL completely, but need to establish if we lose our trip advisor reviews…

The same company took over Owners Direct a few years ago and the same things happened.
Going on to what their members are saying on line it looks like Expedia is taking over. FULL STOP.
Good luck Jayne if you can find a alternative site but it looks likely that you are going to have to pay more commision to the big boys from the states.

Elizabeth, I think you will find that Expedia and Tripadvisor are one of the same thing.

Thanks Michael….

There is a new site called Simply Owners which advertises only in UK and which tells prospective clients that they have the same properties, same owners, but no booking fee.
Most of our bookings come from Holland, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland so that is no help to us.
Everybody seems to be so p----d off with Expedia, I don’t think that they will last for ever.

We don’t use use any of these big boys and girls, too expensive and we like having direct contact. And we loathe AirBnB so would have to be desperate to go there. Neither do we use gîte de France as equally expensive. We’ve only got one modest gîte and in our area 24 or so weeks a year rental (which we get) is good so as long as we get that then that’s ok.

We use France-voyage.com and our local tourist office : both around 40€ a year each. France-voyage seems to attract mainly french families looking for mid range gîtes, with the rest Belgian, Dutch and German. In 5 years we’ve had one English family… Not suitable for the high end market I’d have thought. And not sure how it would work in more popular areas where there are loads and loads of gîtes so high competition.

Maybe one day we’ll have to eat our words, but right now that suits us fine.

Thanks Jane,
We are in the top of the range with en suite bathrooms and a heated pool, but we might have a look.

Well we’re 4 star, so have the quality features. I was more meaning mid range in terms of price as I think their market is probably under 1500/2000 a week in high season

Why’s that then?

Because young relatives have been priced out of renting flats, or find that there are few available because landlords get much more renting via airbnb to tourists than renting annually to permanent people. I’m currently subsidising one to help them live somewhere safe and decent.

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Yes, we can vouch for that jjones, we love going to London for a week in December to take in the lights and do some Christmas shopping and take in a few shows, we normally book self-catering Apartments with hotel groups which have become quite expensive so we tried Airbnb and found apartments that were half the price of the hotel chains.
But the downside is that we as tourists are prepared to pay a lot more per week than your young relatives.

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It’s not that they’re not prepared to pay, but that young workers on reasonable salaries of say £25k or so can’t afford to pay the average London rent that’s now well over half their salaries, and still afford to eat, save, etc etc.

Doesn’t do much good for neighbours of airbnb properties either, who now have to put up with living in a hotel rather than having real neighbours.

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Hummmmmmm I’ve tried to form a response to that but probably best I don’t…

Don’t worry, I think I can imagine it…

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