Profile

This is the company that boasts on Google it’s the UK’s No.1 for self catering villas, with 220,000 listings (though on their actual site they say 210,000). On the site they claim 100 million traveller visits annually, and that owners can reach global travellers through their 10 connected extra sites that come free when advertising on H-R. They’re owned by the Home Away group based in the US.

Size and Traffic

H-R recieve marginally more daily visits than Holiday Lettings, and a whopping 80% more than Owners Direct (in the 3 months to Nov 2010). But they havest the highest Bounce Rate of all major listings sites, at 40% (Bounce Rate is the number of visits that immediately leave the site without going further). It’s true all websites have an element of Bounce (this site has a 23% rate) but by industry standards 40% is high. It means NETT traffic (ie: excluding Bounced Traffic) they get slightly less traffic than HL.

Average Pages viewed by Visitors is around 4.8 – visitors are staying on the H-R site less time and looking at less information than they do on HL (and OD). So in summary, slightly less traffic than HL and significantly less time on site and looking around.

They may have 220,000 listings but many are non-display, from advertisers on other portals (such as Home Away in the US) and taking advantage of a free listing on H-R. For H-R listings on France, of the 46,700 total only 30% (14,000) are paying advertisers, and for Greece it’s 61%.

Traffic and size can be a reasonable measure of how well your advert is expected to do. The problem with H-R is the judgement whether visitors are actually looking at non-display adverts (the free ads pulled in from other sites). The simple calculation (total adverts divided by total traffic) gives H-R the lowest industry statistic for Average Traffic Per Property, comparing much less favourably than their competitors. The reality is that a majority of visitors aren’t bothering to scroll through non-display ads; but how many, we can’t tell. Whichever way you cut the numbers and whatever reasonable assumptions you make, though, H-R’s performance (and likely performance for you the owner) is less effective than their competition. Bear in mind that’s a general assumption – there’s just not enough good data around to be precise (and H-R aren’t about to release any to us, are they?) Only 6% of traffic comes from the US, so if you’re looking for US audience you’ll need alternatives. (You can upgrade to the US Home Away site to get the audience, and it’s cheaper on an upgrade basis than buying Home Away US seperately.

They also work hard to attract Property Managers and Agencies – so the site isn’t just Owners advertising their properties.

Pricing

There are two things annoying about H-R’s pricing policy: They only give you 4 photos as standard in their Standard price of £209 – depsite saying in their blurb that you get 40% more enquiries with 9-12 photos – and they surcharge you 20% more than the actual exchange rate if you’re paying in Euro (Standard is €279).

As well as 4 photos the £209 Standard gets you Google Maps and the usual Availability Calendar. But you don’t get a link back to your own website.

Based on my benchmark to compare all sites (12 photos and 4 weeks of featured listings) H-R will actually cost £337 (compared to £299 and £247 for HL and OD respectively). For that you get access to 10 other European sites for free, and options to upgrade to Abritel (the French based site smaller than Homelidays [read more on Homelidays here]), Home Away in the US, FeWo-Direkt in Germany, or some smaller sites in Spain, Italy and Portugal. Upgrades are £139 (€179) for France and Germany and the US, £99 (€119) for the smaller sites.

Visit them here