VBRO - worth paying extra for better listing placement?

[MarcManley]

Hi,

Do any of you who advertise on VBRO have opinions on whether or not it is worthwhile to pay VBRO extra to have your vacation rental listed closer to the top of the list of homes in your area?

VBRO offers a standard 3-photo listing for $148 (USD). Their default sort of homes in a given area is based first on the number of photos the homeowner has purchased. So paying, for example, $322 gets you 12 photos and the house is listed near the top. In my case, there are 83 homes in my area. With 3 photos, my home would come up 78th. With 12 photos, my home would be the 11th in the list.

Sort of seems worthwhile...but VBRO users also have the option to sort the list of homes by number of bedrooms or occupancy, at which point paying extra doesn't help.

We already have a separate web page with tons of photos. The VBRO listing would link to our own page.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Marc
www.sandnc.com

[vrooje]

I did pay extra for extra photos, but there are only a handful of listings in my area, so it didn't matter that much. I put extra photos on the page simply because some people never visit the owner's websites, judging instead by what is on the listing site's advertisement. I want to wow those customers, too, not just the ones who make the extra effort to click through to my website.

That being said, I actually have only gotten one booking so far with VRBO. So I'm not sure that it makes a difference at all, but in a highly competitive area such as yours, it might.

I did browse the VRBO listings when I was thinking of renting a place in Florida, and the number of properties there is a bit intimidating -- I did tend to look at properties with more than the default number of photos.

Cheers!

[rich_sipe]

Thats a great question. I have gotten a few bookings already from VRBO and we only completed construction on our place a month ago. We are listed near the bottom but I have been considering going higher. It seems silly, though, because we have so many pictures on our website.

To try and get people to visit our site, I put "Please visit our website for more pictures" below all of our pictures. We will see if it works.

I will take a look at the budget, though, because even 1 weekend booking would way pay for the added cost.

[paolo]

I don't know whether it is worth paying for additional pics just to get higher up the list, but I do think it is worth it to differentiate your property from the competition.

All things being equal it is the house that you can see most of that you will book.

I wouldn't assume that people are going to click through to your website because that is an extra action you are requiring of them, and also the link from a vrbo ad to your own website is not blindingly obvious. If you can show all the highlights on the one page, so much the better.

[tansy]

I paid for 8 photos for each house...so far only one booking in 6/7 months...the one thing I'm finding really baffling with VRBO enquiries is the conversion rate.

It is driving me insane - I get an enquiry - typical as per the other day all about how they want to celebrate a wife's 50th birthday - I answer within a few hours...then complete silence.

I had a similar enquiry from h-r.com the other week for a 50th birthday for a wife - that's all booked for 2006 - so I know it's not me and my selling skills! Also not the same name or same dates so it hasn't been a duplicate enquiry.

This is happening time after time...is it just the American market - where they splatter enquiries and then don't have the courtesy to reply? Or are the emails not getting through?

My decision is made I will not be renewing my advertisments with them.

[paolo]

Tansy,

That's an interesting problem. I find that I get excellent conversion (and enquiry levels) with vrbo, although in a different area and smaller property.

Maybe there is something in your responses that is off-putting to Americans but not Europeans?!

You could send me an example to see if there is anything obvious, or you could even post something here - see what American owners think.

[rich_sipe]

Granted we have only been renting for 1 month but we listed on VRBO before our chalet was completed and have had 2 bookings already! I have gotten 1 booking through Great Rentals also but other than that my other sites have not revved up yet. Next month I will probably get some more photos.

The only thing that REALLY annoys me about VRBO is the cost to change a picture, $10. COME ON really it doesn't take that long and they could easily automate it. It takes them 5 days to do it and their upload site doesn't work all the time, what a pain. Plus they keep adding a silly fade to the edges of my pictures which annoys me.

[tansy]

Paolo

I thought it very odd not getting replies...so I looked up my stats on VRBO - I've had 4,500 veiws on average on each property - 9 enquiries on one & 11 on the other.

I've converted one - by phone - they rang me from USA they were so keen to book...

The other recent ones I've re emailed to ask if the got my reply...lo & behold the answer is NO

So there we are - for some reason my answers are not getting through - so I have changed the email address to the new one on the web site you are building...lets see what happens now... I was using a wanadoo address.

If this doesn't work - looks like the old dog & bone will have to be used until my advertisement time runs out...

[paolo]

It sounds even odder that emails from a wanadoo address are not getting through - wanadoo is a pretty major player.

[vrooje]

Actually I have the same issue with VRBO -- a huge number of page views (though that's probably just a counter rather than counting unique sites, so I take it with a grain of salt) and a relatively large number of click-throughs to my website, but very few inquiries. Like Tansy, I have converted one of them. So it's paid for the membership, but it hasn't worked as well as I'd hoped.

It's quite puzzling to me -- with French Connections I have a much higher ratio of inquiries per click-through.

[tansy]

I don't know the exact statistics for h-r.com - but on conversions I do have a very high rate ....I've 39 confirmed bookings - I can only remember a few enquiries not coming to anything...put it like this I'm quite surprised if I don't convert an enquiry - with VRBO it's almost like a chore now!

I've emailed them...so lets see what they say...but yes Brooke when I think about it 4,500+ views is a lot just for 9 enquiries...