One of the many problems customers tell me they have with the likes of Airbnb and VRBO are the seemingly never ending price increases.
Listings sites went from taking a reasonable annual fee to pricing tiers (basically pay more annually for better placement on the listings sites) to a commission model.
A home owner with a property that brings in say £2,000 for a weeks booking with 6 bookings a year went from paying around £350 annually to around £1,700+ per year.
That works out to a price increase of over 385%!
Their commission models also means the more weeks you book out or the higher the price you list your property at the more you pay them.
Home owners with more expensive properties priced at £3,500 looking for 10 weeks booked a year will end up with annual commission payments of around £5,000 - £6,000…
The only ones benefiting here are the shareholders and investors of these big listing websites.
A Fairer Model
Our commission free model is a lot more advantageous for our customers.
It doesn't matter if you book out just 1 week or 10, or if your property lists for £500 a week or £5,000, you pay the same annual fee no matter what.
That's already a substantial saving however we are going one step further with our Price Promise.
Price Promise Guarantee
Here's the promise:
The price you pay when you sign up as an advertiser will never increase for as long as you remain a customer.
This doesn't mean that we are never going to increase our pricing, we probably will at some point, however when our price increases you will remain locked in at your original price.
Think of this as a loyalty bonus or a reward for trusting us with your advert.
All we ask is that you keep renewing your listing every year.
If you leave and then decide that you want to come back later then you will have to resubscribe at the current listing price.
Why Would Our Prices Increase?
We run a small and very efficient team however realistically things tend to get more expensive so our fee may have to go up to cover those increases.
Inflation means the cost of running the websites, paying for hosting servers, development, design work, wages, and advertising costs will only ever increase.
At this stage I can't say when it will increase and what the increase would be, but what I do know is that the current price of £195 per year is the lowest it will ever be.
If you're considering an advert then it's probably a good idea to lock in your low price now.
It's currently priced so that for many customers just 1 booking a year will save you more in commission fees than the annual fee costs, and for some a single booking could cover our annual fee for 2 or more years.