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Homelidays is yet another rental site in the HomeAway stable (acquired early 2009), and are the biggest French based site with about 60,000 properties listed. So far they seem to have kept their identity and branding intact – there’s no sign yet of link-ups with other HA companies.

If you want to attract the French market this could be an ideal site for you. Research suggests that the French find rental properties much more attractive than hotels, and Homelidays covers a broad range of properties across Europe – and has staff speaking several different languages in recognition of that.

They offer new owners a Satisfaction Guarantee – after 1 month, no enquiries, your money back. Be cautious – when I paid them and then went online my first enquiry came in within 24 hours (and was never responded to by the enquirer) and then, 3 days days later, they took my advert offline for 2 weeks whilst I had to provide documentary proof I was a legitimate owner. OK, call me a cynic.

You get all the normal trappings with your ad – a good 15 photos, calendars, links and so on. Better than most sites, and no hidden extras for photos or links that bump up the price. After a 6 month initila qualifying period you can add Late Deal and Specials. With 4, 8 or 12 month listing options you pay €149, €199 or €229 respectively. There’s auto translate into 7 different langauges, too.

According to them they have 50 million hits a year, and send out over 14,000 enquiries a day – which easily makes them the biggest European based player. According to Alexa, Homelidays recieve more traffic than vrbo in the US – but I doubt that it is true (Alexa bases it’s findings are relatively small samples so can be erroneous) and when I checked recently, definately not the case. Nevertheless, their numbers are good. Bounce rates are nearly half that of Holiday-Rentals (the worst of the UK sites) and Page Views/User much higher than H-R and HL. 70% of their traffic comes from France and Italy.