It is sad to see a great concept deteriorate so quickly, isn't it? Since HA went forward with it's IPO it seems they've succumbed to the typical Wall Street think.  I guess they haven't gotten the word that most Americans are getting fed up with the concept that he who has the most $ gets, well most of the $$.

I am also EXTREMELY disappointed and frustrated with HomeAway and their disregard for owners.  This latest "offer" to "improve listing performance" is really unacceptable.     I wish we could all ban together and refuse to "upgrade".  That would be one way to get our point across.     I am hoping other companies are paying attention to the huge  mistakes HomeAway is making with their customer base, so that a good alternative will be made available to us in the near future.

I own 8 properties and up until last month had 18 listings with VRBO/HA.  Have been with these guys since 2003 and did not renew two of my listings last month and two more are expiring next month.  When Phil of VRBO sales called earlier this week to find out if I forgot to renew.....I said, "Nope.... have decided not to renew any more listings with your company as I am very upset over unethical business practices where the company favors travelers more than it's paying customers"  HomeAway may be the golden child of wall street right now....but I for one am not giving them any more of my hard earned dollars to line investors pockets...I moved over to Flip Key, AirBnB, signed up to the Chamber of Commerce and decided to hire a SEO expert, put greater emphasis on using Facebook and focus marketing of my homes using my own websites instead of all these listing sites. HomeAway is taking quite a gamble....this could really back fire on them if everyone decides to follow and drop them all together or just stick with VRBO.

Completely agree with your comments. It is deplorable, $300 for a basic listing!! and $999 for the top listing!!! Someone is having a laugh! but it certainly IS NOT the property owners!! Do HomeAway not realise the current state of the worlds finances? People are struggling to to keep up payments on their holiday properties with reduced rental rates and fewer people out there able to afford holidays at all. Corporate greed at its most obvious. I have been with HA for several years now but will not be renewing when my current subscription expires as I hope is the case with many current subscribers. There are plenty of smaller sites out there and I am sure they will welcome any defectors from HA and offer reasonable rates and probably better service. 

HA need to rethink and fast!

From a very angry JBM

Based on our area and the size of my property, I can only charge so much, leaving me a finite amount that I can spend on advertising overall.

Here's the problem, plain and simple:

All of HA's websites compete for top place in search engine results - and that's what really matters when it comes to advertising my property.  A year or so back, the top 5 for searches in my geopraphy included HA, 2 or 3 local management companies, and perhaps TripAdvisor.  Searchers only had one choice for a decent listing - HA.  I put my money on HA. 

Then HA corporate started pushing VRBO harder for search engine placement in my geographic area, which is great for VRBO advertisers, but it now means that web searchers go 50% to the HA website, 50% VRBO .  Yet both sites are owned by the same company.  My HA website advertisement is now worth only 50% of what it used to be.  So to get full coverage I now have to add a VRBO account.

Then along comes comes VacationRentals.com crowding into the top listings with improved web SEO - another HA corporate site.  My 100% is now 66%.  I have to buy a VR listing so I can compete against myself on the other 2 listings.

I only have so much money for advertising.  It's now spread among 3 different sites running essentially the same software run by the same company.

And now I'm asked to pay 2X or even 3X the current rate for a competetive listing on the first 33% website ???  I can't afford it.

HomeAway - you're pricing yourself out of the business for anyone renting in mid to low price areas.  Between mortgage, taxes, utilities, reserves, etc. I just can't afford a $2000 advertising budget. 

And all the angry voices you are hearing are probably in the same boat.  Many are going to simply bail out on you. 

Here's an alternate solution:

If HA offered a premium subscription that gave me high placement on ALL the sites in their network instead of making me buy a separate premium listing on each site, I could possibly justify it.

But having to pay a premium on one site that competes with the listing I'm paying for on another site, all managed by the same company, is ludicrous.

To further explain the model I'd suggest - consider the way liability insurance umbrella policies are structured:  With the umbrella policy you buy minimum liability coverage on all your individual policies (personal, auto, home, etc.) and the separate umberella moves all of them up to a much higher level of liability coverage - regardless of how many different policies you have.  It's a further incentive to put all your policies with one company (good for them) and a guarantee that you're getting a truly premium service from the company by buying the additional network coverage.

Please, please stop trying to get me to pay extra $$$ just to compete more effectively against my own listing on one of your other sites.  It's an idiotic, self-defeating approach to selling overlapping services, and one that will drive away customers in the long run.

Oh, and by the way, if you want us all to stay at all, modify the reviews policy to include a vetting process to weed out unproven / ficticious slanderous reviews by disgruntled renters (sorry, I just had to throw that in there too)

I have noticed that since the introduction of the tier pricing plan, I have not received a single inquiry and the number of people looking at my listing has basically stopped.

I think what made the existing customers mad is the fact that HomeAway does not provide actual incentives with the new higher pricing plans. These higher pricing plans are simply to stomp over their existing customers. If these high pricing plans provide any real incentives such as increasing actual number of inquirers or help to raise the rental rate, then everyone will be happier and they will expend their business as well, rather than just squeezing for golden eggs.

I spoke to a couple other websites such as FlipKey recently, and their customer service has said that they are getting a lot more business recently. Apparently, HomeAway is losing customers with such expensive plans and perhaps there are also disgruntled customers. By the way, I highly recommend FlipKey. Their customer service proactively calls me a couple times whenever I send them an email with questions. HomeAway customer service generally takes 1 or 2 weeks to get back to me by email.

So I am both a property owner and I have a little startup trying to figure out this vacation rentals directory thing.

A lot of the people I talk to about advertising have this reflection about high advertising fees: "They bring me a lot of business so I pay for my listing quickly"

This is bad reasoning and it is the reason why HomeAway has been successful.

If you are a monopoly and you have an idea of what things are worth to your customers you dont have to charge in function to what it costs you. You charge as much as you figure the client will pay because they cant go anywhere else. By over paying HomeAway has gone from high margins to ridiculously high and they flood Adwords and spend tons on SEO. Which in turns diminishes the chances of quality competition getting in and keeping their prices down.

If google wasn't busy with conflicts of intrest investing money in HomeAway and making tons on adwords they should merge all the seperate website's content into one result. All those websites belong to the same business and serve the same purpose after all.

Help yourselves: Advertise first on free websites, google maps, your own website. When you rent a house, look on HomeAway last. Otherwise we are creating a Giffen Good.

Vincent

Voya.ge