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 wonder how legal it is for them to charge renters? I'm sure they have had their legal team onto this BUT for example employment agencies are not allowed to charge a fee to people looking for work and almost every agency I know is not allowed to charge the customer- they charge the owner or the employer.

I've had a quick look at the website - as a potential renter- and it says nothing about these fees so it must be buried in the small print somewhere.

OP I think your own website is the way forward or hooking up with other owners- which is what Owners Direct started off as!!! - and having your own website for the region you are in.

LaineyLou. In the early days we used to send out a questionnaire to get feedback from people who had stayed at our villa, and one of the questions was would people prefer a weekday changeover to take advantage of cheaper flights and everyone always said No! Don't know what the answer is. I probably won't renew my subscription with OD and just hope I can get enough bookings through Chez Nous.

A lot of people do have their own website (we do) and if I'm looking to book somewhere I will find them on the rental listings and then google to see if they're online. If they have a website I'll then book direct.
This has also worked for booking hotels in the uk, search on booking . Com then call them direct. I got a massive discount on a room this summer by doing that.

It really pays to have your own website.

Op, our website is hosted through independentowners.com, it's totally free and quite easy to set up

If you're starting to lose trade by the changes, then you have to remember that those people will be booking somewhere else, so you need to think why someone else is getting their business and not you. Are they booking via other directory websites, are they booking direct, are they booking via OD but maybe other properties are cheaper, more flexible changeover days or better facilities?

Two of our criteria these days are air-con and wifi - a few years ago, we'd have been fine without either, but now, they are deal breakers for us. People have higher expectations. Also, flexible changeover days are also essential for us, we hardly ever travel on Friday or Saturday due to flight availability and cost.

Keeping abreast of market changes are all part of business. It sounds like a good time to move away from OD if you are sure that it's the new fee structure that are putting off potential customers. Personally, I prefer to pay a small fee if it means better protection both by means of credit card protection and also protection via the intermediary, i.e. record of communications etc - I don't really like paying direct.

Try Airbnb. Ive stopped staying in hotels most of the places I go nowadays and this year I've stayed in 5 Airbnb properties in Italy, Scotland, and England.

I'm past the age/ stage of hotels now and I much prefer to have a nice house or apartment to make myself comfy in.

I look after holiday apartments in the Algarve - and all the listing sites are as bad as each other now. I really hate the amount of interference in my business - I've just deactivated an ad on Airbnb because of their patronising attitude

Homeaway, holidaylettings, owners direct - all a huge PITA

And yes, we offer wifi, aircon and flexible changeover days

I offer all that badbunny this post is about my reaction to very very recent changes which I anticipate will affect my fully booked year round villa. Plus them charging people who book. As polly says, and as I feel, this seems illegal, although it must be legal.

If you don't pay through them, your advert falls off the page. It is not direct with the ower any more, despite what it says.

As other poster have explained and backed me up, you pay, punters pay. It's crazy.

Thanks everyone. Thanks birnham polly I will set up my own website now. Independent owners, I'm going to check it out!

laney if you are fully booked all summer, you can't afford to offer midweek bookings and have 'holes' in the overall booking system a week before and after. At 900 euros a week! Also, as pp said, the changeover involves juggling cleaners, laundry, pool men etc. You can't just swap and change with employees during peak season. Off season is a differet matter.

Hey birnham thanks so much, independent owners is like owners direct used to be. Can' hurt to set that up right away. Thank you.

DanTDM I can understand not wanting flexible changeover in high season but say if your fixed changeover day was Friday in peak season (as a PP said) then you could charge an extra £100 if the renter was saving £200 on non Saturday flights. Win all round?

People would then book Fri to Fri from July to August and the cleaner/pool man would just be booked for Friday's not Saturdays?

But Waltwhitefan and flashheartscanoe have said people actually want/ask for S to S - so what do I know 😀

Prob time off work also a factor/easier sat/sat, I agree it is more expensive!
Renting a villa is alot of work and expense, I have found!

Polly - I booked a holiday cottage this year with OD and was definitely charged a fee. I didn't realise this was new until the owner rang me and told me that OD had just put this in place WITHOUT telling the owners. By then I had paid up of course, about £75 on top of the rental, without realising it wasn't normal. So OD are now charging the owners AND the person booking, and didn't tell owners they would be doing this. I won't book with them again.

exactly, they have gone about it in a super underhand way.

Both owners (£500 up/6 month fee)AND punters are charged. What for? I repeat, no vetting is in place, nor guarantees about the property.

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.

Most guests think the protection airbnb offers them, is worth the fee airbnb take. As compared to owners direct, were there was zero come nback if you were scammed.

I do wish holiay let owners would include a floor plan and a photo of every bed.

So difficult tryign to decypher exactly how many double beds there are, is that a bed in the sitting room or not, does the bed have an end (and therefore no good for tall DH) etc.

I'm so glad you started this thread. I've advertised my French cottage on Owners Direct for the past five or so years and I loathe the new system. It's confusing, expensive, a nightmare to navigate for both owners and guests and I just don't understand why they've made the changes.

I've sent feedback to Owners Direct, expressing my unhappiness, and have got nowhere.

I advertise on Holiday Lettings (which is a good website and I get quite a few bookings on it from people in the US, Australia and NZ) and have just started with AirBnB but no bookings as yet.

I'm just fed up - I have fewer bookings this year.

We've had the same issues with OW and a few of the others. We've been using Holiday France Direct to advertise for the last couple of years, but as others have said, when potential guests can view hundreds of gites in the same location, it is very difficult to stand out.

I've thought about using AirBnB but up to now have been put off by scams - I read on Lay My Hat that there is quite a bit of this on there. Anyone heard similar?

That is such a shame, we have found places through owners direct for years and stayed I some fab places. It has always been my go to site and I've found some absolute bargains. It won't be any more if all those changes are coming in. It used to be so easy to find somewhere good and I loved communicating directly with the owners. We've booked the place we are going to to summer through them but I doubt we will next year.

Iam, if you find a place you like on OD, try googling the place before booking, quite often they will have their own website and you can book direct.

Fictional I'm not disputing people are having to pay. It's almost a year since I used OD. In the UK I prefer Premier Cottages, which was set up by a small group of owners who wanted to pool their resources for UK cottages. It must still be almost unheard of to pay the owners of the website for using their services. Usually their income comes from the property owners.

Sounds as if there is a gap in the market for someone with a business brain who can copy what OD used to be!

The problem is that the big players don't want the competition, hence why they buy out their competitors and try to move all owners onto a commission system

Well I, for one, am moving on. I'm going to go for own website choosing advertising for free on the site recommended here, independentowners.com then I will use again, recommended here, Spain holiday.com, and give that a go. My husband uses a few smaller Spanish ones anyway.

Certainly ditching a company that charges my clients money to book with me. Charges me more and more money at every turn. Dictates how I respond and discourages totally direct communication and is headed in the direction of people being forced to book and pay through them, not me. No opportunity for flexibility on dates, special discounts, special requests, nothing but grief.

Thanks again so much for all the advice which has been invaluable, Sorry for all those, like me, who have been sneaked up on by the new owners of owner direct.

Just to clarify ... you do have to pay to book! Incredible.

A family member started renting out a property in about March this year in the Uk. They didn't like the fees charged by any of the websites so decided to set up their own website using Wordpress and then use Google Adwords. I was sceptical as to whether it would work but it has!

The nature of the property they rent means people tend to stay there for 2-3 nights at once rather than longer and they have been booked nearly every weekend since May, with a few mid week bookings as well. They are starting to get repeat bookings/word of mouth so have just reduced their ad spend with Google.

Although it sounds like a different type of property as you are looking to do weekly rentals I expect, I would definitely recommend the website/Google route.

We've been renting out villa in Thailand through owners direct (home away) and holiday lettings since 2011. Our problem is that we bank overseas in US$ so can't use the online payment facility so despite our consistent 5* visitor ratings we are always on the last page of villas that come up in our area. Started with Airbnb a year ago and we have the busiest year ever, up 20% on last year. We've had 6 bookings through non Airbnb sources in the past 12 months. I think we'll continue with Airbnb and dump the others when they come up for renewal next month.