HomeAway posted an open letter to property managers and homeowners yesterday addressing the addition of traveler fees for bookings on the site. In November, HomeAway announced it would be mimicking Airbnb and TripAdvisor’s FlipKey by adding a traveler fee for bookings completed on their sites with the goal increasing their take rate without burdening homeowners and managers. There was little reaction to the announcement at the time, but as HomeAway has begun to implement the fees, homeowner backlash has been strong. HomeAway CEO Brian Sharples addressed concerns in the letter below.
Letter to Owners and Property Managers from Brian Sharples
Since the launch of the new service fee on HomeAway, I have heard from many of our long-term customers via email. And I’ve been following posts on the subject on social media. Many of you share the same concerns, so it makes sense to respond with an open letter to all concerned customers so you have the opportunity to read my answers to your questions.
I want to let you know that I am listening to your concerns, and every HomeAway employee is committed to making you as successful as possible.
First, I understand that many of you would like more and clearer communication on changes coming to our sites. Despite our attempts at communicating this change in advance, we fell short of your expectations. I take full accountability to make sure we are better on this in the future. Below, I want to explain our rationale for launching a service fee, and tell you a bit about how we plan to incorporate your feedback going forward.
Second, I want to acknowledge that we are in the middle of a huge shift for the industry. The good news is that vacation rentals are now considered a mainstream travel option, but as a result travelers are demanding more from listing sites like HomeAway and VRBO. Our research and experience shows that it is no longer enough for us to just operate an online classified listing site. (I miss the good old days too – believe me.) We know this because properties that are online bookable get chosen at almost double the rate of ones that are not. And our most dissatisfied travelers are complaining louder than ever about listings with inaccurate calendars and offline payment methods that can’t be backed up with online receipts and solid financial protection from our company.
As a result we announced in late 2014 that we would ask all of our owners to make their properties bookable online by the end of 2016. This doesn’t mean you can’t still communicate or negotiate with travelers prior to accepting a booking request, but it does mean that your properties need to be accurately quotable online, calendars need to be maintained, and we need to be able to process the booking through our systems in order to provide the financial guarantees travelers are demanding.
To incentivize our owners to adopt online booking, we have increasingly been favoring online bookable properties in our sort algorithms. It is no secret to any of our owners that a higher position in sort leads to more bookings. We are also rewarding listings in sort when they have higher conversion rates – because a listing that rejects most of its booking or inquiry requests is not a good experience for travelers. Most of the travelers who choose to stop using our sites say it’s because they are frustrated by not being able to find a property that is actually available. This is offset by being able to book the property online so it increases the number of travelers who gravitate to HomeAway listings that are bookable online. Worst case for our customers and HomeAway: travelers leave our sites and go to sites where all properties are already required to be online bookable.
Our #1 goal at HomeAway is to drive more bookings to our owners and property managers. Your success is our success, as it has always been in this business. Every piece of evidence says that the right way to do this, given the demands of the “new” vacation rental consumer, is to do the following:
- Provide transparent price and availability data so travelers can get accurate quotes online
- Back up every transaction with a strong guarantee, instilling trust in new travelers who are unfamiliar with our industry and how it works
- Invest heavily in brand and online marketing to compete with other travel alternatives such as hotels. Now that vacation rentals are mainstream and the category is large, we need to work harder than ever to bring in more travelers
Protect the rights of owners to rent their homes on a short-term basis. We are currently fighting battles in dozens of cities and investing millions of dollars to maintain your ability to rent out your home to guests.
So why did we launch a service fee?
The biggest motivation was to better accomplish the things I’ve mentioned above. Today, our subscription customers pay us roughly 3% of the revenue we generate for them while our major competitors charge 6-15% (mostly in service fees). We’ve always been proud to be the lowest cost solution for renting your home. But we simply can’t provide the level of marketing and service that today’s travelers expect without asking travelers to also pay a fee for the service we provide.
Many owners have asked me if our fee was motivated by greed. The reality is that we’re re-investing the majority of this money into marketing to bring in more travelers (we nearly doubled marketing spend with the introduction of this fee) and to provide true financial guarantees that can protect and help travelers who have bad experiences from using our sites. And we’re also more than doubling our investment in government relations efforts to continue fighting for the rights of property owners all over the world.
With that said, let me address some of the other things I’ve heard in the letters and posts from our owners and managers:
“The new fee represents double-dipping because we’re charging both the owner and the traveler”
In our marketplace there are two people that benefit: travelers and owners. Going forward, we are asking both sides to bear some of the cost for the service we provide, and research shows us that travelers do not see the fee as a barrier to booking.
“The combination of the new fee and what you already charge is too much”
We hear you on this. With the launch of the service fee, we did take down the rates charged to our suppliers for our pay-per-booking listing product (and our subscribers are always welcome to choose that option). In April we will announce a new long-term plan for subscribers that we believe is more balanced than what we have today. This will be based on our research leading into the launch, the data we are observing from this launch, and also will include the feedback we’ve been receiving.
“Travelers won’t pay these fees and they will choke off bookings”
I can completely understand this fear, in fact, I had that worry, too. So we did a lot of research and testing before launching this fee, which is already charged at even higher rates by our two largest competitors in the United States. We’ve processed tens of thousands of bookings in just the last few days with a service fee. Early data tells us that the fee has not been a meaningful deterrent for travelers making a booking on our sites. We will be carefully studying how these fees impact bookings at different pricing levels, and adjustments may be made in the coming weeks. The booking data we’re seeing supports our belief that this fee will not have a meaningful negative impact for the vast majority of our customers.
“By simply calling it a ‘service fee’ on the site the travelers don’t know who is actually charging them.”
The community is right about this and we hear you. We’ll be adding language to the sites to let travelers know the service fee is being paid to us, and will clearly spell out the extra guarantees that come along with booking online.
“I’m better off dropping online booking, even though it is what you asked me to do.”
Many of you are justifiably concerned that non-online bookable properties now look cheaper on the site. And you may think switching back to the “old way” will make you more competitive. I completely understand the point here, but it would not be the right move for your rental business, because the benefits of sort would completely outweigh any short-term benefit of opting out of online booking. The fact is that all online bookable listings are advantaged in sort order. And our sort algorithms going forward will be incorporating booking history and booking conversion as a factor in determining search position. Simply put – the more and higher frequency of online bookings you do, the better you’ll perform on our sites over the long term.
I hope this explanation was helpful, and I appreciate that many of you are nervous and still quite concerned. I also want to acknowledge again that I could have done a better job of communicating our rationale up front. Please know I am listening to your concerns, and we will take them into account as we design our new pricing plan to be announced in April. And rest assured that if we see a meaningful decline in bookings from the fee, we will make adjustments to get it right. But at the moment bookings are flowing at a very good pace (consistent with booking volumes before launch of the fee), and I should also note that most of the calls made to customer service have been from owners, not the travelers paying the actual fee.
Please continue to write and provide input. Again I’m sorry I can’t answer everyone’s email personally. But I will read them and come back in a few days with a post to answer other questions that are consistent from our community. In the meantime I ask you to please bear with us through these changes and evaluate our service as you always have – based on the business we deliver to you over the next several months and years.
Thank you,
Brian Sharples
Co-Founder and CEO
I too am a long term customer (owner) of 12 years who will not be renewing!!!
Brian Sharples, I have been with Homeaway when it was first Cyberrentals.com ,which is a long time as you know . I will no longer stay with your company as an owner because the changes you have made from a subscription based company to a Airb&b model company does not work for me at all .
It cost me much more than when it was subscription based only . Between Homeway commission and Pay Pal commission plus basic subscription cost I cannot raise my prices to make up the difference in such a competitive market .
Under the new model Homeaway holds my money until a client stays one night ,. Wow that’s really good for Homeaway to make interest on my money while I have to wait to until the very last moment to get my money . People book early for my house so at times I could wait 8 months under this new copy cat Air B&B model .
Also your company gets to avoid corporate taxes at our expense.
Having to accept or a reject an inquiry within 24 hours does not work for me . I sometimes have many people on the line at one time and I give them more time to decide than 24hours . I also have to find out more about them and that takes many emails back and forth which takes more than 24 hours .
Your algorithms do not work for me . So many time I have put in the information about my house as if I was a client and could not find my property. It just does not always come up. Now that I will not follow all the new rules I will get least priority to be shown .
Your company now is way to corporate for me and you make it is hard for me to make concessions with my clients when needed .
Seems it is profits for your shareholders that is moving your company not service for the home owners who also keep your company afloat .
I think Homeaway along with Air B & B are also ruining the year round housing market for families as developers turn every apt. and house and little closet in to a short term rental .
I hope you get to create a better business in the future that is responsible to others and not just your shareholders .
I will no longer be a part of Homeaway going forward .
Yes you charge 3 instead of 6-15 but the company that charged me 6-15 also physically went to my property and handled anything that needed to be done on site. You answer the phone. No comparison. Purely for profit, but not at my expensive. My property will be listed elsewhere.
Brian,
You just put out another missive about new changes to VRBO.
Your announcement emails evoke a similar pattern — a struggle to decipher the impact of your rosy policy announcements on my bottom line. Despite keeping my policies and prices constant, my overall sales are down about 20% since your wave of new changes. If your goal is to make airbnb more competitive, you are hitting your marks. Much to my chagrin, more sales are going through airbnb than ever.
Even more, the UX has only become more cumbersome since you implemented your new system. New features can be great, but elegance in design makes them intuitive, not constrictive.
I depend on VRBO for my business. I built my entire webpage to go to the VRBO booking site. So be honest with me about your “service fees.” You are taking more money because you can — customers like me have nowhere else to go. You are likely a bright business guy and odds are you surround yourself with women and men who are at least as savvy. You know that — in general — if you increase the price points for a given good the customer demand will go down accordingly.
The expectation that I understood is that the increased cash flow would enable you spend more money to drive more volume, which would offset any deleterious effect on my bottom line. If that is indeed your goal, you are only exceeding on spending money. My family’s livelihood depends on sales volume.
I’m all about improving the system and encourage you to continue to work hard to do so. Know that in rural areas like mine, VRBO’s changes can make or break us.
Do more than replicate Airbnb with a different marketshare. Be original. Be bold. Be innovative. Put your customers’ experience first. I want to be loyal to VRBO and you are making it harder by the month.
Robert
Might as well go with FlipKey now. There are no annual fees and the service charge is about the same. Sad that HomeAwayVRBO wants to go the way of greed.
Then he says, I take full accountability… Does he even know what that means. I doubt it.
This is my business, not yours HomeAway. You are a listing site.
This customer will be gone next season. I pay annually for advertisement of my home and an interface to converse and accept payments for my customers. EVERYTHING ELSE ABOUT MY RESERVATIONS IS DONE BY ME… so if anyone should get a service fee, it should be ME. And oddly enough, this letter does not explain the value of the fee to the customer at all. Are you going to fix the AC if it breaks, or arrange the internet service to be rebooted. I will be moving to FlipKey or some other company ASAP.
I am being penalized because we choose not to be a anytime, anyone can rent from us property, obviously your buisness plan is to do turnstile renting which the opposite of how WE choose to run OUR business. We carefully rent to qualified renters because of the high-end experience provided.
This is my business and you should be there to provide the tools I need. You have got a head of your skis and we will be moving on unless you revise your role in this relationship.
New Coke was also interduced by a bunch bright people like yourselfs.