TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Renting from VRBO

Knowing that quite a lot of people on this forum rent through VRBO I want you to be aware of the following:
Since Expedia bought VRBO, they are charging a service fee to the renter on a scale of 3% to 9% of the TOTAL rental price which includes cleaning fees, taxes, etc. We owners are up in arms but there isn't much we can do. I personally am going to "eat" the fee.

Didn't know this - thanks for the tip.

Maybe if you contact the owner and do things privately you can bypass the fee. This is such a shame! Expedia is not only gouging the customers but you may be directed to their hotels. Sneaky people! It's really hurting the owners. I pay close to a thousand dollars a year to be on VRBO. It's plain greed!

AirBnb also charges a fee for the service to the renters. Curious if they charge the owner a fee as well for listing

I rented thru VRBO in January of this year and did not pay anyone other than the unit owner. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Airbnb charges the renter a 6$ fee on the rental price, and while they do not charge the owner a listing fee, the charge us a 5% booking fee for each placement. Like LeeLee, I net down the 6% renter's fee and absorb that myself as well. It will be interesting to see if my VRBO activity drops off as the result of the imposition of the renter's fee. I may not renew my listing with them if that's the case.

On AirBnb, my rental was 600, the cleaning fee was 50 and Airbnb charged a service fee of 76

Must be a sliding scale then, depending on the amount of the rental. The less the rental charge, the higher the fee, and visa versa. They probably feel they need to get at least a minimum amount to cover their processing costs.

I'm very leary of Airbnb. We did a few searches for condos and were contacted by an "owner" through Airbnb. It was a crazy cheap price on some 6 bedroom villa in Terres Basses. My husband was skeptical and did some research. Someone had hacked into the site and was contacting email addresses that searched.
Hubby finally found the actual owner and let him know of the scam. I'm still getting the odd email, supposedly on Airbnb's behalf giving us deals. I would be very careful.
Having said that, I always get nervous when companies ask for a wire transfer. We take the hit of the credit card fee on VRBO or HomeAway just to be safe. Worth it for a bit of insurance in my opinion.

My Airbnb transaction was easy and was not a wire transfer, we paid by credit card, and I also conversed with the owner via Facebook. The other unit we rented was through Homeaway, and that transaction was paid through a wire transfer. So all depends how it's set up. But I agree, i would never do a wire transfer again. Many times the unit is listed on several sites, so always good to do some research.

we rented through Airbnb last Sept with no incidents and tried VRBO for our most recent trip (We arrive mon April 4th...woohoo!!!) We plan on keeping our eyes and ears open for suggestions for our next trip scheduled for August. We aren't the big resort type and still learning the ropes of renting in St Martin. Keeping our fingers crossed that what we get this trip is what was presented on the site.

Similar problems have happened with VRBO. One of the things which VRBO suggests is that you communicate with the villa owner/manager using the phone number in the listing, not one which has been emailed to you, in order to verify that you're dealing with the actual owner/manager and not someone who has hacked the account/email.

We have rented through Homeaway/VRBO many, many times and never paid a booking fee. We are presently in our next to last week of a six week home rental in Cape Coral, FL.

When booking next years visit I noticed a "booking fee" of $499 for a 7 week rental and did some research. They now charge a fee of 4-10% depending on rental cost to a max of $499 (they say average is 6%) but it also eliminates the credit card surcharge and kinda mandates (for safety) that method of payment. I also found that this was usually cheaper than AirBNB.

..and...re: contacting the owner directly via email...they now encrypt ANY email address put in the booking request so ALL communications have to be through them...and..if they find out that this was somehow defeated they will ban the owner from any future rentals through Homeaway and VRBO.

Nice.... <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Yikes.gif" alt="" />

Oh, I forgot...this was started the 2nd week of February 2016

Duh...edit #2...the owner we rented from gave us a 20% discount and itemized it as "long term rental" to help (it obviously exceeded) the booking fee.

We've just started using Airbnb and VRBO to rent out our Condo... Its been fantastic ... lots of renters and easy to use.
Yes I would love to bypass them and not pay fees, but I'm happy for them to find people for me and pay them for that privilege.

They started in March....that's why...you got in just in time!

I pay a little over $1000.00 a year (just looked it up). What it seems they are doing now is spreading the fee money across the board so it includes all there holdings. VRBO was working just fine but they saw an opportunity to make their other companies more profitable off the backs of VRBO owners. That is my opinion and that of thousands of other owners.

Vrbo and Homeaway are the same company correct?? I don't understand why they don't combine and just have one company, it does get very confusing. Any idea what the difference is?

Homeaway has acquired around 20 rental companies (VRBO is one) since 2005...most operate under their original name. No clue why they don't combine but maybe brand loyalty/familiarity to each one is important

Sometimes when doing a search on VRBO the rental ID number has "HA" after it indicating the original listing is on Homeaway (and vise versa)

Thanks for the heads up on this. We've rented a number of times on vbro and in some cases they charged tax and a cleaning fee though that has been mostly in the US.

In SXM, I found that it is agents that add a tax and they are rep-ing multiple properties but using vbro which, I'm not a fan of them doing as it is supposedly 'by owner'.

So if an 'owner' already charges a tax and a cleaning fee will that go away and it will be this new % fee from vbro or should we expect to see tax, cleaning and vbro service charge? <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Mad.gif" alt="" />

The above....

I always paid FL tax and cleaning fee...now a Homeaway booking fee was added to my recent 2017 rental

I should add the tax is location dependent..some charge..some do not

Agree with most of what you are saying. I am an owner of a SXM rental on VRBO. If the owner is a paid upfront advertiser (like me) rather than a per booking advertiser you can contact the owner via email or by an inquiry on the site. It is ONLY if you book AND pay via VRBO will they charge their service fee payable to VRBO (not owner.) As an owner you have to go to the VRBO site, sign in and check the inquire. In it you will see the email address and or phone number of the party. The automatic email sent to you as an owner will (as someone has said) have the email address hidden.
So, as an owner you can still book guest. As a guest you can pay direct to owner and avoid the VRBO fees. At least for now. (they will most likely phase out the one fee ad rate to prevent this in future.) <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/duh.gif" alt="" />

Good luck and happy travels.
GaryB <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/handshake.gif" alt="" />

yes - that is what we've done the past three years all with the same owner - we are renting directly from them now and will continue to do so - but we found the booking through VRBO - saved $$$ by paying directly but were not able to use the paypal option that way...

As an owner with property at The Ocean Club, they began to charge the service fee in April on future bookings. They appear to have gotten a lot of feedback, not just from me, and a notice this week was posted explaining a whole new pricing structure that may be better in the long run. The verdict is still out. They are motivated to drive more bookings though, so it might be fine.
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Thanks for the info. I didn't see that today when I looked for a rental in FL over Christmas. Will be more diligent.