In March 2010 we listed our Grand Haven Cottage on HomeAway.com, VRBO.com, and VacationRentals.com. The results have been great: the Cottage was fully booked for most of 2010 and spring and summer 2011 are already nearly full.
However, as it becomes time to renew, I questioned whether all three listings were necessary to maintain our current occupancy level. So I sourced all bookings back to their original source. Here are the results:
| Leads | Bookings | Ratio | Cost-Per-Booking | |
| HomeAway.com | 40 | 5 | 8 to 1 | $96 |
| VRBO.com | 38 | 9 | 4.2 to 1 | $58 |
| VacationRentals.com | 70 | 13 | 5.4 to 1 | $15 |
Our overall inquiries-to-booking ratio is 5.5 to 1 (5.5 inquiries to every 1 paid reservation). Our ratio is roughly in line with anecdotal reports from other vacation rental property managers, ranging from as low as 3 to 1 to as high as 9 to 1.
It’s interesting that VacationRentals.com, the least-expensive of the three, produced the most inquiries and the most bookings. VRBO.com, the most expensive, produced the highest quality leads, converting nearly a quarter of all initial inquiries to ultimate reservations.
Still, in our case, with an asking price of $3000/week, we’ve resolved to continue listing on all three websites. Property owners with a limited advertising budget, however, should look seriously at VacationRentals.com for maximum exposure.
Based on this article and past years of advertising on both vrbo.com and homeaway.com, we are now moving all of our advertising to vacation rentals.com.
We’ll see how the booking go…..