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Also part of the Home Away group, but left alone to operate independently so far. And why not, as by the number of properties it lists, and by visits, it’s the worlds busiest listing site. It comes at a price as it’s also the most expensive. They claim that, on average, every advert gets 90 enquiries a year from 95 million visits across their 150,000 properties. They guarantee to extend your advert 6 months for free if you don’t get 10 times the cost of your advert back in rental bookings the 1st year – effectively, if you dont get something like $3,000 of bookings in year 1. (The problem with that guarantee is that, of course, if you’re not getting bookings for 12 months you probably won’t get them for the next 6 either).They drive their extras – You Tube, Google Maps, Thumbnails on Location Pages and iTravex (a property swap website) through how many photos you have – and each photo you do have above 5 (maximum 16) costs a hefty $30, so you can add up to another $330 on top of the standard £279 price.
Size and Traffic
On a par with Homelidays in France for traffic volumes, making them the biggest in the world (think of HL and H-R added together – and then double it). . They have a mid avergae Bounce Rate (34%) and it’sabout 10% lower than HA’s 38% (Bounce Rate is the number of visits that immediately leave the site without going further).All websites have an element of Bounce (this site has a 23% rate) but by internet standards 34% is mid to high. Of course, a vast amount of it’s traffic is from the US and you’d only use it to attract US customers.
Average Pages viewed by Visitors is around 6.8 – visitors are staying on the vrbo site longer and looking at more information than they do on Home Away, though HA’s propety numbers are false inflated through free listings pulled from their sister UK sites.
Traffic and size can be a reasonable measure of how well your advert is expected to do. The simple calculation (total adverts divided by total traffic) at face value gives vrbo a better Average Traffic Per Property, comparing it to Home Away – but if you assume no one actually looks at HA’s free listings, HA may have the slight edge.
Pricing
They are straight forward and clear in their pricing policy with a standard ad coming in at $299 from Jan 1st 2011. It gets you and the usual Availability Calendar, a measly 5 photos as standard. Upgrade to 16 (the maximum) for an additional $330 and you aslo get GM, You Tube, Thumbnails and iTravex.
This makes them much more expensive than HA who (although with less features) compares at around $390.
Sign up to list your vacation rental property on VRBO.com, and get 1 month FREE. Use coupon code: 1MONTHFREE. Expires 03/31/2011.
For existing owners: Make your VRBO listing stand out! Purchase 3 additional photos ($29.99 ea.) and receive a Google Map icon on your property listing. Maps are one of the top requests from VRBO travelers..
