The following message is now appearing on my HA owner dashboard -
For subscription listings, your phone number will be moving from the listing page to the confirmation pages. This means that all of your conversations with travellers will be in one place, and it will be easier to get credit for your bookings in search results. – Learn more
And when I click on 'Learn more' I am told -
Processing bookings through HomeAway is key to your performance
January 10, 2017
Our goal is to get as many travellers as possible to book their holiday homes, with you, on the HomeAway websites. Bookings on the HomeAway website are core to the HomeAway business and enables us to help make sure we’ll continue to deliver you more bookings for years to come.
Since the most important thing you can do for your performance is use the HomeAway checkout for all of your bookings, we will be making changes to help make sure you're getting credit for all your bookings. Soon you’ll notice your phone number is being moved from your listing page to the enquiry confirmation pages. This means all your conversations will be grouped in your HomeAway inbox - and you can let us know it resulted in a successful booking, in just a few clicks.
You’ll still have access to the information about the traveller that you do today. Since bookings through the HomeAway checkout are so important, here is a quick “how-to” to make sure you know how to turn phone calls, enquiries and booking requests into bookings through the checkout, giving you credit for each and every booking:
When you receive an enquiry: You can attach a quote to your answer directly from your HomeAway inbox. Just select ‘Reply Available’ and add a quote or payment request.
When you receive A Booking Request: Simply accept that booking and it will be automatically added to your reservations and block your calendar for the booked dates.
If you talk to A Traveller On The Phone: In your dashboard, from their initial enquiry, send them a payment request or tell them to go to HomeAway.co.uk/OwnersDirect.co.uk to finalize the booking.
Do they really think we are so stupid that if they do not mention the service fee we will put direct inquiries through their platform as well? Early indications suggest travellers are not as stupid as HA/OD would like. I am getting hardly any bookings through HA/OD for this summer compared to previous years but am seeing more direct bookings. Not enough to compensate so I need to figure out which alternative service fee free platforms will work for me now that the writing is on the wall for HA/OD.
