polaris

I am sorry if the topic has been done to death, but would appreciate some pros and cons of each. DH and I are thinking of few weeks away this winter probably Fla. or maybe Arizona or Cal. thanks

Family_5

Hello, if I am not mistaken, HomeAway took over VRBO now. We had rent once from HomeAway & once with Airbnb so this is our impression.

I felt that depending on the location: HomeAway or Airbnb may have different houses/ cottages/ condos.

Personally I prefer HomeAway site & I felt that most seem to have a more lenient cancellation policy & the fee seems to be less than Airbnb.

Also if you are looking to rent a room while the owner lives on the property; Airbnb has more options. Airbnb also seems to check your background more than HomeAway - either thru FB, Linkedin or Twitter.

Hope that this helps!

polaris

Thanks for the reply, think we will check HomeAway.

HappyTrvlr

We had to pay a large fee,$400., last year for a VRBO/HomeAway rental.
We just booked a new place through AirBnB, no fee. Same area.

MmePerdu

Airbnb does, indeed, charge renters a fee though maybe you didn't notice it. The more the cost of the rental, the higher the fee, a percentage. I suspect Airbnb has more listings and more variety, more choice for varying needs and budgets.

My recommendation would be to shop all the sites, read the reviews carefully and book what looks good to you at a price, all fees included, that you can afford. It's the accommodation you're after with a congenial host and which site seems to me irrelevant. .

dfrostnh

I agree with MmePerdu. Last summer we split a vacation between two locations in Maine. We chose a secluded cottage listed on VRBO and then an airB&B bedrooms/private bath with the host on site for a place close to Portland. I research both websites to find the accommodations we liked best. I did the same for a long weekend in RI. We look at the accommodation and total price. Yes, I will cross some places off the list if there's a particularly high fee such as for cleaning.

lcuy

I can’t find much difference between all these sites now. Many of the houses are listed on more than one, so I look at both + Booking.com and If I find the same house on multiple sites, choose the cheapest. The fee structures can look different, so I just see which one has the lowest grand total after taxes, cleaning fees, service fees etc. Cancellation fees and time s when paymnents
Are due are important as well, so read the terms on each property, as they are not all the same, even on the same site. We ran into a new one recently where they require purchase a breakage insurance policy. It is written in the terms, but since you buy it through a different company, the cost doesn’t appear with the grand total.

5alive

I have used Home Away and Booking.com

I agree to price check all 3. Also, I think you should email/message the owner with questions before renting. Their responsiveness and tone can tell you something about what you are renting. You might also find out about fees not listed in the web posting.

I recently read that Home Away is not letting customers message owners until after they reserved a place. Don't know if that is true.

If price and location were equal, I would probably go with booking.com. I had good customer support when I needed it.

mlgb

You need to look at the total cost not just what is advertised.

A lot of former VRBO owners are not happy with the new regime.

Brian_in_Charlotte

After using vrbo.com for years with good results, we finally got burned a couple of months ago by their reservation fee system.

Booking through VRBO they charge you their fee ($61 in our case) once the owner "accepts" the reservation, and then you pay the owner in a separate transaction via their instructions. Well this owner failed to send payment instructions but strung us along for a couple of weeks promising that the reservation was valid and that the payment instructions would come soon. Then his listing disappeared from vrbo.com and he stopped answering inquiries.

Upon contacting VRBO asking for our "reservation fee" to be refunded as it didn't seem to us that we ever really had a valid reservation, we were first told sorry, it's non-refundable. After pushing them on this, they finally sent a e-mail to the owner (copying us) telling the owner that it was his responsibility to initiate a refund through their system. Of course this went nowhere. We will no longer take this risk with VRBO.

Coincidentally, we just booked our first trip with Airbnb this morning, and found the process to be better than the new VRBO.

MmePerdu

Indeed, one of the best reasons for using Airbnb is the fact that they handle all the money and bookkeeping. They collect all funds, owners' & booking fees, also taxes in jurisdictions where applicable, and the hosts aren't paid until the day after check in so in case anything goes awry you can contact the company who still has your money. I saw them in action when I was in Mexico earlier this year and a friend arrived to find her accommodation in unacceptable condition. Airbnb found her a great replacement and even went so far as to negotiated with the new host to accept my friend's dog, not something she ordinarily did. I was impressed.

I think other companies are trying to emulate the Airbnb model which has been so phenomenally successful but haven't managed to quite get it together resulting in many unhappy owners & customers, as mentioned above.

I've been using Airbnb from almost their inception and have been a host for 5 years. In my role as host I've had remarkably few problems but they were attentive when I did. I see no reason, assuming you can find a suitable lodging for your purposes, to use anyone else. The only time I use another site is when a hotel is in order, like at the moment. I write this from a hotel at Cairo airport, the most convenient option for an overnight before a flight today, booked on booking.com, my other favorite.

MmePerdu

I should also mention regarding Airbnb, new this year, in many/most cases even the company's booking fees are refundable if you need to cancel prior to check in. The time frame seems to vary depending on location but it's all there in black & white as you compare listings.

Bitter

My experience with VRBO was many years ago and primarily in resort type properties that were intended or likely to be rented out. I do wish people would not book rooms at otherwise residential properties, b/c that can be (a) illegal; and (b) problematic for neighbors.

Christina

I think this is personal preference, the fee issue is irrelevant as the only thing that matters is the bottom line, not what you call it. So you can just compare total effective price.

Personally, I find the Airbnb website a PITA to use in terms of searching and limiting listings to what you want, and you can't even see where a place is located very well. It isn't upfront and only finally ifyou scroll to the bottom of the page of a lot of stuff do they have a map with a big circle showing you the very general location of a place. And they refuse to tell you the exact location until you've already booked. Those circles are pretty big, also, I don't want to just know within a 7-8 block diameter circle where a place is. VRBO, by contrast, shows you exactly where a place is on the map.

I really dislike Airbnb in general, as well as their owner.

ChiSue

I miss the old Vacation Rentals BY OWNER. Expedia bought VRBO because they saw a chance to make big money by becoming the middleman VRBO had eliminated.

Neither VRBO nor airbnb take any responsibility for whether a property is as advertised or if it is a LEGAL RENTAL. If a guest has a problem while renting, guess who will fix it? (Not the booking agency; the owner.)

These are merely booking agents. Follow the money. They want as many rentals as they can get. Nothing to rent = No fees. There IS no vetting of 'guests' Owners and guests are pressured to rate one another highly. There is zero 'added value' for guest or owner.

Yes, these agents will not allow direct communication between guest and owner until the deal is made. Any identifying information will be deleted from communication through them. They don't want anyone to drop them and rent direct. We have been renting our Maui condo since 2001, and we have many returning guests. I don't know how VRBO plans to insert itself once someone has rented and comes back to me directly.

Macross

I use both. I rented a house in St Augustine recently and the communication issue had been fixed. I got text messages before during and after our stay. I just rented a house in Nashville and looked at both. The one with VRBO had so many fees it was crazy and then they wanted 1500 damage deposit or for me to buy a 60.00 insurance policy. I went with a nicer house through airbnb with only a service fee and cleaning fee. They even offered to split the bill with two, three or four ways. We did it two ways through paypal. U2 concert and the hotels were doubled in price. Four of us so this two bedroom with a pull out sofa was perfect. My husband used vrbo for our upcoming France trip and it was reasonable but did want a 300 deposit for damage. Flipkey is also good and fewer fees.