As the vacation rental industry expands, more and more online marketplaces spring up, giving hosts and travelers endless opportunities to connect with travelers. Deciding on which websites to list your property is rather important, but often overwhelming. Here’s our guide to some of the top vacation rental marketplaces:

Airbnb

Started back in 2008 in San Francisco, Airbnb has grown into the largest and most popular player in the industry, with over 1.5 million listings in more than 190 countries, serving more than 40 million guests. As they continue to grow, they incorporate  helpful features, including: host-guest mediation services, $1,000,000 host protection (that only kicks in after your own insurance), flexible price calendars, and price suggestions. Finally, it is completely free to list on their site, they charge a 3% commission for every booking.

The HomeAway Family

Founded in Singapore in 2012, HomeAway began in the Asia Pacific market but has since exploded internationally by acquiring a number of successful marketplaces. HomeAway has a huge number of listings (huge competition) and travelers (huge opportunity). They offer a 10% free-to-list option, but it is well-known that these listings get buried under paid subscription listings, which at a certain price level also becomes cost effective.

Acquired by HomeAway in 2006, VRBO (founded 20 years ago) boasts the same number of travelers as HomeAway does, while having significantly fewer listings, meaning much lower competition for hosts. Similarly to HomeAway, its free-to-list listings rank much lower than its subscription listings.

Finally, VacationRentals.com is another significant player in the HomeAway family, but is much smaller than those previously mentioned, and is generally regarded as having slightly lower quality listings. One attractive feature here, however, is its subscription price which is noticeably lower than that of HomeAway and VRBO.

The TripAdvisor Family

Along with its own vacation rentals section of its website (which attracts 375 million monthly visitors), TripAdvisor has established itself as a major entity within the vacation rentals community through valuable acquisitions, most notably FlipKey, which has well over 300,000 properties from over 160 countries. Listing on FlipKey can be especially attractive for hosts for a number of reasons, including its variety of payment options (3% free-to-list commission, pay-per-lead option, or a flat subscription fee) and its wide scale publicity over all 12 of TripAdvisor’s websites.

A second noteworthy TripAdvisor website is Holiday Lettings, an originally British marketplace that remains a powerhouse in the European vacation rental marketplace. Once again you get the major publicity of being part of the TripAdvisor family, with an emphasis on European travelers, while being given two payment options: a 3% free-to-list option and a 395 euro/year flat fee.

PandaBed

Gaining significant footing in the Asian rentals market, PandaBed differentiates itself from the competition through its ‘PeerMatch’ capability. Users and hosts fill out personality and preference questionnaires, which are later used to match hosts and travelers with similar personalities and cultural backgrounds. By connecting people with common ground, PandaBed seeks to make first time hosts much more comfortable with the entire process. They currently take a 10% commission for bookings, and operate with 5,000 listings in 9 Asian cities; yet, this number of listings is expected to double at least when they expand in the coming future into China, Japan, India, and Taiwan.

SleepOut

The only website devoted solely to the African, Indian Ocean islands, and Middle East regions, SleepOut should definitely be considered if your property is in these locations. While remaining rather small, most travelers who venture into these areas usually check SleepOut, making it an area of low competition for a sizable number of guests.

Roomorama

Finally, Roomorama, a marketplace of about 300,000 properties, operates globally but is especially popular in Europe. Hosts benefit from listing and booking their properties completely for free (Roomorama charges guests a booking fee), while offering guests other benefits such as a concierge service and discounts to local services and attractions. Since there are no fees, listing on Roomorama is definitely a no-brainer.

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