English Book directly with the homeowner on your Kauai vacation rental.
No need to pay Airbnb or VRBO service fees
Our Bird of Paradise vacation rental home has been a vacation rental home managed by a local vacation rental agent. In 2006, we decided to rent our home directly to travelers with the help of our local Kauai residents. The home has been listed with the original VRBO website owner in 2006. While we (homeowner) pay the annual fee for advertising our home, these listing sites offer the traveler to see all the lists of homes and condos in that specific region. In our case, it is in Kauai; Southshore; Poipu, or Poipu Beach.
Communication between our traveler and the homeowner prior to the booking was encouraged, without blocking our contact. We could call our traveler and described our home location, amenities, attractions nearby, Kauai/Southshore weather. Traveler can send the inquiry directly and book our home without any service fee. All along, we are also aware that the customer service is very by a different homeowner. Traveler still requires to communicate with the different owners to gain the confidence on his/her booking. It is also listed on the HomeAway website in 2008 and Airbnb. HomeAway company bought every vacation rentals sites and later sold it to Expedia corporation.
Our vacation rental home was listed in 2016 a well-known travel company bought this site, and now it is hard to avoid a service fee without booking directly with a vacation home owner. These fees can be significant. Even if the owner pays the listing site a subscription fee, the site now charges the guest a minimum service fee of 4% – 15% of the rental. “Service Fee” sounds somewhat better than “Booking Commission,” but it is simply a fee the site charges the guest for using its services.
There is nothing wrong with a vacation rental site charging a fee for its service, though it tends to irk me that they are getting paid on both ends of the transaction for nothing more than advertising. What is really upsetting, however, is that they are making it more and more difficult for me to communicate directly with my guests prior to booking.
For these reasons, owners are banning together to get the word out about how to book directly the next time you want to rent a vacation rental property. I still use the advertising site but I wanted to bring awareness to my past and future guests of the choice you have when renting a vacation rental property.
Our Bird of Paradise home was listed with the original VRBO homeowner
To be continued ….