HomeAway is it all hype?

View from Palm Desert Golf Condo

I just did an analysis of vacation rental stays in my Palm Desert California vacation rental home for the last 12 months. I've been in this particular market for 5 years now, so I've seen a lot change. Just when you think you have an advertising and marketing plan figured out for your particular location and property(ies), something changes. Like the formation of HomeAway in 2005. They bought up the big 4: Cyberrentals, A1 Vacations, VRBO, and GreatRentals. Next in was vacationrentals.com, and it continued. By 2010 the VRBO and Vacationrentals.com brands were still holding their own identities, but the others were really now distant memories and HomeAway got it's big launch with a SuperBowl ad.

By all measures things are good at HomeAway. Their inquiries are up, I'm told their inquiry per property is up, and the number of homes listed is up. However, as a homeowner, I wondered if they were up for me, since in the past the individual companies that made HomeAway worked.

So here are my top producers for the last 12 months. The numbers are based on revenue generated, not inquiries as I certainly got plenty from all parties.

VRBO 63.5%
FlipKey/TripAdvisor 10.7%
Bettervacationrentals.com 8.9%
Vrconnection 4.6%
Coachella 3.9%
Unknown 3.1%
Craigslist 1.3%
Email Marketing 1.3%
Referral 1.3%
Repeat 1.3%

Keep in mind if we add up Bettervacationrentals, Coachella, Craigslist, Email, Referral, and Repeat we get 17% of revenue generated by efforts under my own control. I truly wish that number were much higher as advertising costs have become out of hand for VRBO because of their charges for photos (which are what sells a listing).

Interestingly 37% of my inquiries were from VRBO, whilst 50% of my bookings were. That's a high quality lead. Ironically, I don't like the payment and listing priority model of VRBO, nor their stiff arm management, but that's another blog post. FlipKey/TripAdvisor for whom I have so much hope yielded 19% of inquiries but only 13% of bookings which means they are a lower quality lead. I noticed that even though my calendars are up to date on both, I received more inquiries via TripAdvisor for dates that were already booked.

How is it, though, that there was not 1 single booking sourced from HomeAway? This is the biggest vacation rental listing site in the world! I received at least 30 inquiries from HomeAway guests in the last 12 months. I should have statistically booked 3 stays if they were an average inquiry source. How can the biggest vacation rental listing site underperform so badly? Is it all just hype? Bad luck? A poor presentation of my property? The wrong customer base?

Finally, should I renew my listing with HomeAway?

Would love to hear. Please weigh in.