VRBO Advertised Prices
 

I'm working on a beach vacation and have been selecting beach condos through VRBO. After selecting a rental and proceeding through the rental request, the final price is more than double the advertised price. The dates are off-season dates, and the dates were submitted before the availability and prices are shown. One unit was listed for $235/night. After submitting "request to book", an exorbitant total price pops up, and the actual rental price is $514/night! What in the world is this? A big waste of time. Isn't this called bait and switch? Where can we find actual rental prices that we can trust?

Sometimes the rate doesn't reflect seasonal pricing, or cleaning and taxes, but something is wrong if it almost doubles the price. Maybe there was a refundable security deposit included? Why not ask the owner?

Airbnb, and VRBO & Homeaway, uses what they call "smart pricing" or "dynamic pricing" if owners choose it. From the Airbnb site: "Smart Pricing lets you set your prices to automatically go up or down based on changes in demand for listings like yours."

I've been searching for apartments in Rome in November and have seen the same thing you're experiencing. Exasperating to say the least. I think you'll find that not all owners are so inclined so keep looking. Price is important to me and I'm not sure how they figure people won't notice or mind when the significantly higher rates are sprung on them, completely at odds with the price we see in the listing. It seems counter-productive to me. I just move on.

Here's a pitch from another site: "Beyond Pricing is an automated dynamic pricing solution for Airbnb and other vacation rental sites. We bring the same sophistication utilized by the largest hotels and airlines in the world to the individual Airbnb and vacation rental host, at a fraction of the traditional enterprise software cost."

They call it sophistication, not what I'd call it.

This happened when I was looking for a summer rental in Tahoe. Once all the cleaning, taxes, fees were added, it was much more than I wanted to spend. I had to lower my wants :(