i advertise with owners direct, really fed up

[danTDM]

anyone else fed up with all the changes with the company? It is not what it was.

We have advertised with them for 8 years. 8 years ago it was clear and simple and people didn't pay to book. Now it is a nightmare.

Anyone else with a rental holiday property that can suggest an alternative?

I advertise my house in France with Owners Direct and have used Holiday Lettings in the past. They have both been taken over by huge US companies who are trying to take control away from the owners with online booking and extra charges. We used to be able to rent out our house so easily, but there is so much competition now (presumably because in France the property market is stagnant and people are renting their properties as they can't sell). We used to use Chez Nous and French Connections who are only specific to France but they used to be great. Then we stopped getting enquiries from FC so dropped them, but got some from CN this year. I advise looking on Lay My Hat as mentioned as everyone on there is complaining about HL and OD. If French Connections and CHez Nous advertised more I'm sure they could make a killing as most people want to leave OD and HL but there is nowhere to go.

polly people like you WILL have to pay to use the site, that is the whole point. It was bought by home away but now has been bought again.

Thanks! I think my own website is the way forward, as you say, people do a google search first (as do we about prospective renters!) Plus we always speak to each other first anyway. I'm sure the whole booking villas abroad thing is going to have to change now anyway. I am not the only one furious by all this.

Me too!
I am so cross about this. I just noticed that they had started charging my guests to pay! I am furious about this as I pay a lot to go on the site. I have messaged some guests to offer for them to pay me direct but I feel that looks dodgy.
I have just accepted a guest who paid through the site- the whole transaction involved 10 emails from owners direct to me, forwarding all sorts of nonsense. I can't imagine multiplying that by a years worth of bookings.
The trouble is, people have started to expect to be able to pay by card - they don't realise that as soon as you do that a whole raft of middlemen are taking a cut and driving up prices.

Have used both owners direct and holiday lettings abroad in the past but now using air B+B ( as renter not owner !) .

This year, as a punter , found the two older sites difficult and inflexible compared to air B+B. slow responses , availability not up to date ( or not even on the website at all just " contact owner" - well these days I want to know whats available and book it immediately!) etc. The fixed saturday/saturday or what ever doesn't work for me either. I can see an owner wants whole weeks but why not advertise a daily rate that allows you to " discount" a full week - you wouldn't loose out and may gain if 5 days cost the same as 7- get the money and maybe even re sell the 2 days!

I don't know where your property is but my sis lives in the costa del sol and there are huge numbers of rentals in urbanisations there so it's cheap and often they are empty.

dan Let us hope that there is a huge backlash from both prospective renters and owners . I use independent websites precisely because I don't want to be paying agency booking fees and would rather all of my money goes to the owner.

The trouble with air bnb is that they charge guests as well. I liked the fact that I paid a flat fee to advertise and that was it.
We have our own website as well but it's impossible to get traffic. We are hoping that guests will get a bit more savvy and Google the property before booking through one of the big sites and paying all the extra charges.

flashhearts YES!! exactly. Long gone are the simple, direct transactions between renter and owners. NO flexibility and as walt and Humphries say, it is confusing and very dull searching through thousands of properties. Booking online is ridiculous and gone is the 'oh you need baby bottles/cot/blender, I have some' sort of personal interactions.

Now, on top, people are being asked to pay.
The whole thing is a nightmare.

What are you going to do?

by the way I am not in an urbanisation or anything near it!

ohGove exactly. I hope there is a backlash. The whole point of ownersDIRECT was that it was direct. We keep costs way down because of this. Now it has all been ruined. I didn't realise renter has to pay Airbnb a fee too.

I just wanted to advertise my property on a reputable site, that's all.

Helenluvsrob- your comments as a guest are interesting. I think customer expectations are changing. The trouble is I have a day off work to change the place over, the full weeks suited me! - we are trying air bnb but people keep wanting shorter stays!
I agree, though, when I am booking holidays I do like to be able to see availability and charges and book straight away, but there is quite an extra cost involved.

danTDM- I will probably leave owners direct but I'm not sure where else to go. We are going to add a card payment to our site and hope people find us. The personal interactions and trust involved made it special- it all feels 'corporate' now. We have lots of repeat guests so they can still pay direct and they get a good discount!

Just a quick one as Im in a rush.

We have advertised in HA for years and HATE this new way of booking.

However, I am not registered for online payment and as such the guest has a choice- contact me to book (same as before) or request a booking through HA (they then have to pay the fees) I gently guide them to booking directly to avoid the costs. It seems to have worked so far and only one guest has gone through HA and paid the princely sum of 95£ on top.

I will wait and see about the decrease in enquiries/bookings...

Oh and I forgot to say, I pay hundreds of £ a year to advertise, for guests to now have to pay as well is a money grabbing piss take

Does anyone know when the changes are due to take place? Then we can bombard the site with complaints about increased charges. I used Owners Direct to book a holiday cottage in the UK last month so am a registered user.

They're in effect now

Thanks everyone for your replies. I have to run to do a changeover but I'll be back!

Sort of glad others are in the same bot and agree with me.

Thanks Birnamwood - that explains why the owner I booked with told me on the phone that he didn't use the online booking system. We did a bank transfer but that of course is not without risk.

Yes birnham a money grabbing, inefficient piss take.

We've booked with VRBO before and though I know they are also part of Homeaway, I just looked up a random property in an area of Spain that we know a little and there don't seem to be any additional booking fees. Is it somehow incorporated into (or rather knocked off from) what you get as an owner?

We booked a couple of places last year through them and/or Homeaway and still got the "yes we can sort you out a cot" interactions. But maybe these changes are since last summer?

More and more owners are using their own websites these days. The last couple of apartments we've rented have been via private websites because we just got fed up trawling through the slow and counter-intuitive directory websites and many listings were either not up to date (i.e. calendars not updated for months) or were very poor with few pictures, little information, etc. A professional website with decent search engine optimisation should give you good results - i.e. as long as people can type in "3 bed apartment with pool and air con Pathos" and your website comes up within the first couple of google results pages.

Well this is a heads up for me for next year's hols. I have often used OD/HA but may rethink now.

BTW - I always look for properties with non Saturday changeover day even if it costs a bit more as the difference in flights costs makes it worth it. I'm surprised more owners don't offer it. As there are owners on here - is there a reason?

as a holiday maker i nearly got caught out by owners direct. Its really sneaky the way they have changed things and not made it clear. luckily i had also emailed the owners - so ended up paying them directly. i was happy to do this as i used my credit card and from what i can tell they seemed above board. how hard is it to offer a credit card facility?

Im looking at properties just now from OD and have been in contact with 2 owners (just need to decide now!) and didnt realise there was anything different - both have told me how much their deposit is, there is nothing about extra charges anywhere, should I be worried?

We are in Cornwall and there are thousands of rental properties like ours. It's impossible to appear in a Google search. We used to da a paid ad. On Google but that got expensive.
They have started charging guests to pay since May, i don't think the charges are clear on the initial quote but do appear later on. If the owner doesn't accept pay online they fall to the bottom of the rankings. A small charge would be acceptable for protection but it's really alot.

We have used OD a few times and are currently booked with them for our holiday in Sicily this year and have pencil bookings for properties in Andalucia next year. As a "user" I love it as there is so much choice and so easy to search and it easy to contact the owners who, in my experience, usually respond to enquiries within a couple of hours. We have always paid direct to the owners having talked to them first - at least virtually. I wasn't even aware there was a charge to pay through the website. Maybe all the properties I have looked at just do it in the "old fashioned" way. There is a risk for renters too - as one of the earlier posters hinted at - wasn't there a big problem last year with people turning up for their holidays and finding that the properties didn't exist? What a nightmare! I have looked at Holiday lettings and Air b and B but didn't find the sites as user friendly.

Laineylou we change over on a Friday as the traffic is less awful then. It is fixed because the cleaning takes alot of organising. I still get people asking for Saturday instead. Traditionally it's been a Saturday because that's what people who have a week off work prefer.