Websites and businesses like Airbnb, Booking.com and VRBO look at guests as their customers and see you (the home owners) as inventory.
Although it is ultimately you that pay them and fund their businesses and investor returns, they have essentially turned your property into a commodity that they then sell to guests.
The way they see it is that if a guest doesn't book then they don't get paid, it's the only way they can see things because of their commission based business model.
We see things a lot differently.
We get paid by you, so you are our customer.
Guests on the other hand pay you, so they are your customers.
This distinction matters in a few ways.
It changes the relationship between you and us, and it should (if you want it to) change the relationship between you and your guests.
Our Relationship
In terms of the relationship between you (the home owner) and us, our job is to make you happy so we put in place things such as our Regional Property Limits or our Fair Rankings Policy that make things better for you.
Our whole goal is to make home owners happy and to facilitate the interaction between you and your guests.
We believe if we make things fair and provide you with a stream of enquiries and bookings then you'll be happy and will keep being our customer.
That allows us to keep doing our thing and in turn saves you a lot of money that you'd otherwise be handing over to the likes of VRBO, Airbnb, or Booking.com.
Your Guest Relationship
Your guest relationship is perhaps more important for your long term income.
The large commission based websites treat guests to your property as their customers.
When guests make bookings for your property they pay Airbnb, they get a receipt from Airbnb, they can complain to Airbnb about your property, and they leave reviews with Airbnb.
If they stay at your property and have a wonderful time they will tell their friends and colleagues about this great 'Airbnb' they stayed in. They don't say they stayed at David and Jenny's place, they stayed at an Airbnb.
This benefits Airbnb way more than it benefits you.
Airbnb get the 'word of mouth' marketing benefit and greater brand recognition. You, more likely than not, get forgotten about.
Even if the guest tells their friends about your place and they go on to make a booking the friends will be referred to and will book through Airbnb.
Although you may secure another booking from this which is good, you will be liable for the commission payments on that second booking even though Airbnb did nothing to get you it.
You also run the risk of the referral being distracted by other properties on Airbnb and then booking some other property instead of yours.
If you own the customer relationship then things can be different.
Referrals and good 'word of mouth' advertising benefits you directly.
Any potential problems can be sorted by you quickly and efficiently without involving the customer service reps at some global faceless company, and any reviews left belong to you, not a listing website.
If you want to take things further you can do your own marketing to your previous guests, ask them for referrals, benefit from social media shares and likes.
You don't have to do this, but you could, and you'd probably benefit in the long term if you did.
Having your own website helps with this a lot but even if you don't have one yet, or don't ever plan to, a listing on a commission free website like ours is a great starting point, and somewhere you can refer guests to without it costing you a big chunk of your income.
You're also helping to break the cycle of making these big commission based listing websites ever more popular which ends up giving them even more control over the industry and eventually your property.
I hope you can see that by treating you as our customer this only changes things for the better for you.