The Difference - Dollars and Sense

Let's look at the difference between booking directly through a vacation rental website, known as direct booking, versus booking through websites such as Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, etc.

Most people are familiar with the big 3 booking engines mentioned above.  Airbnb is the newer of the 3 and arguably the most popular.  Each caters to a slightly different customer with some overlap.  Direct booking is probably the oldest method of booking a vacation rental, but probably the least utilized since the introduction of the big 3.  

Understandably, these large booking engines are so popular due to their categorizing and ranking of millions of vacation properties, allowing customers to fairly quickly search for destinations of their choice by price, date, amenities, and more.  It's convenient for vacation rentals to have their properties listed on these websites to get in front of customers' eyes and compete for those customers. However, that convenience comes with a price.  Quite often a hefty price.

There are fees assessed to both the customer and the vacation rental.  The biggest winners in the process are the booking websites because most customers don't realize that they can book the very same vacation rental directly on the vacation rental's website.  You will see below examples of the exact same property booked for the exact same dates and how the price differs when a booking engine adds in their fees.


Example of direct booking website of vacation rental property:




Example of one of the big 3 booking site's price for the same property:



The total difference in price is $81.76 more on the big 3 website, including a 20% discount.  Without that discount, their cost would be $1043.63.  I'm sure you can think of other things to spend your $81.76 on.

The moral to this story is to shop and compare with the actual rental website before you book with one of the big 3.  Call and speak to the vacation rental owner/manager.  You may be pleasantly surprised to find that there are discounts and other perks available by booking directly with a vacation rental owner/manager.

Happy Vacationing!

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