meta listing

OTA = Online Travel Agency, which means those sites that sell the booking and take the payment for you.
Nigel Goodwin
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meta listing

Post by Nigel Goodwin »

I am starting to come across meta listing sites, which link to listing sites.

HomeToGo is an example, and I was recently contacted by hundredrooms.com

How do they make their money? hundredrooms.com say there are no fees for advertising. If you click on a property, it takes you straight to the relevant listing site such as HA, so there can't be any booking fees.

hundredrooms.com also told me they have 7 million properties, which I find more than a little difficult to believe.

HomeToGo keeps on appearing on pop up adverts, but usually some mud huts with poor photographs.

Is there any disadvantage for owners to appear on these sites? It seems owners are not asked permission, they just take them from listing sites directly.

I don't get the business model. Suck them in and then exploit them? Why would major listing sites give them permission to advertise?
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Ben McNevis
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Post by Ben McNevis »

7 million looks like a porkie to me. There are none listed for Lochgoilhead whereas on other listing sites I can find around 20 in this one village. I've seen 6 million as an estimate of the number of vacation rentals worldwide. I'm not sure if that includes ABB-style rooms. So, if they fail to include even 1 in 20 in our village, I think that 7 million is their aspiration and reality would be a few tens of thousands.

I would expect that their business model is the same as Skyscanner: They refer customers for a specific property/dates. That referral puts a cookie on the consumer's browser. If customer then makes the booking, the procedure checks for the cookie and if it exists, the listing site pays a proportion of the commission to the meta-search site. That all requires the listing site to implement a redirect landing page for creating the cookie and to put in place the referrer accounting system. It also requires the listing site to be honest and I recon that's a bit of a longshot.

You would then ask how it is that subscription properties appear in the metasearch site's list? That would be either that in importing the list, the metasearch site is unable to distinguish or that in the long term, all properties including subscription ones will be subject to enough fees and extra charges paid to the listing site that the listing site is still able to offer a slice to the meta-search site.
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Post by Nigel Goodwin »

On checking it was 5 rather than 7 million properties.

i sent them an email which included:

I am surprised you give a figure of 5 million properties, my impression when looking at your site was that there are far fewer. UK is hardly touched, apart from a few apartments in London. Even a search in February 2017 around Barcelona only resulted in two properties. Maybe I am not searching correctly?

It seems they are a valid company, with significant funding.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization ... ms#/entity

HomeToGo is certainly legitimate and has larger funding

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization ... go#/entity
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Ben McNevis
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Post by Ben McNevis »

I have some experience working with Spanish businesses. Even the most scrupulously honest Spanish businessman (don't start) would think nothing of making wildly extravagant claims of their success. To them, it's just "marketing" and it's what you have to do - because everyone else does it.
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Post by Essar »

There are dozens of meta-search sites; the biggest being Expedia and TripAdvisor. BC have all their properties distributed via 6000 other sites and pay them a share of the large commission they charge owners.

The 5 or 7 million figure is bogus; most meta-search sites take feeds from several listing sites, so if your property is listed with HA, OD, VRBO, HL, FK, AB, BC, etc then your properties will be replicated several times on one site. This can be interesting if you can narrow them all down to a single search - you can then see how your property prices compare/differ across all feed sites.

These meta-search sites will proliferate as commission listings become more the norm.

HA allow you to turn this on or off:
Login and go to: Account> Listing Sites > Expanded Distribution.

Within expanded distribution you can choose the following options:
All Partners (Recommended) :roll:
Partners with a commission of 20% or less
Partners with a commission of 15% or less
Partners with a commission of 10% or less
Partners with a commission of 0% or less
Opt out

Beware - HA will charge the owners the commission agreed; it does not come out of their owner booking fee or traveller service fee; whereas, BC pay for it out of their owner commission.
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Post by Nigel Goodwin »

Thanks Essar. useful information. I still don't really understand it - if you are fighting to be ruler of the universe, why help somebody else become super ruler of the universe?

No doubt some bright young thing out of Harvard Business School can explain it.

Seems to me to be yet another unacceptable face of capitalism. Screw the owners until the pips squeak.

The pips are squeaking, revenge is nigh.
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Post by Essar »

Think of it more like - "Compare The Holiday Rentals dot com" - you won't feel so bad! :)
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Nigel Goodwin
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Post by Nigel Goodwin »

Essar wrote:Think of it more like - "Compare The Holiday Rentals dot com" - you won't feel so bad! :)
I feel much worse. I keep imagine I am being chased by a fat opera singer. Male.

Or is it those pesky meerkats?
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Post by Dusty »

Just resurrecting this topic as I saw an advert on tele for hundredrooms dot com the other night, so they are clearly working raising their profile. They seem to be picking properties from HA, BC and ABNB in particular, I wonder what their criteria are.
apiersa
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How intriguing!

Post by apiersa »

Well, how intriguing! I'd never heard of these sites so out of curiosity after reading this thread, I looked on hundredrooms, and bingo! there was my flat in Tignes (French Alps). I wonder if this is why I've had so many more bookings this winter than I've had in the past?
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Re: How intriguing!

Post by AndrewH »

apiersa wrote:Well, how intriguing! I'd never heard of these sites so out of curiosity after reading this thread, I looked on hundredrooms, and bingo! there was my flat in Tignes (French Alps). I wonder if this is why I've had so many more bookings this winter than I've had in the past?
Curiosity also prompted me to try out 'hundredrooms', I searched my specific location and sure enough there was my rental near the top. Unlike my HA/OD listing it wasn't way down on the third page preceded by properties on another Greek island etc. So they don't apply the HA/OD "worst match" algorithm and I will give them their due for that.

From 'hundredrooms' I was redirected to my actual HA/OD listing and asked to continue my (fake) booking in the normal way from there. I was staggered to be reminded what that nasty greedy outfit pockets for themselves at the guest's expense.

Without an understanding of the technicalities of how it is done, I would say that HA/OD would be paying 'hundredrooms' a commission had I then gone on to book my property. HA/OD could well afford to do that, charging it to their advertising account.
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Post by e-richard »

Intriguing.

I also did a search on 'hundredrooms' and found my neighbour's property on HomeAway, but not mine.

A. I wonder if this explains why I have no bookings from HA
B. Does this arrangement only include commission based users of HA? Anybody on subscription found their property on 'hundredrooms'?
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Post by roxytoo »

I'm still on sub, not on hundred rooms
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Post by AndrewH »

e-richard wrote:B. Does this arrangement only include commission based users of HA? Anybody on subscription found their property on 'hundredrooms'?
I am on subscription with Owners Direct, and my property appeared in 'hundredrooms'. Perhaps HA/OD don't give 'hundredrooms' all their listed properties, but ration it for some reason. Anyway it has made no difference to the number of bookings through all their sites , which is now zero for me.

I do believe more and more holiday makers are getting wise to the fact that it is much cheaper to deal directly with the owner and so avoid paying a hefty commission.
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Post by apiersa »

I'm on subscription and my property is listed high up on the hundredrooms page for Tignes.
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