Have you been wondering if there are alternatives to Airbnb? Well, there are lots of them.
Ever since Airbnb rocked the travel space with its ingenious peer-to-peer platform in 2008, countless other home-sharing sites jumped onto the online booking bandwagon and took a slice of the profitable pie.
Not all are vacation rental marketplaces, though. Airbnb competes with a variety of websites, including traditional online travel agencies (OTAs) like TripAdvisor and Expedia, and travel metasearch engines like HomeToGo. All of which are rental listing sites or distribution channels for both private and commercial properties.
Whether you’re sharing just an attic or a basement on your property, or leasing out multiple condos — or even an entire island — there are Airbnb alternatives suited to your marketing needs. And you can list your property on them all at the same time.
We think it’s not just okay to list your property on multiple OTAs. We totally recommend it. The advantages of advertising on different platforms are:
But before you jump on those Airbnb alternatives, you’ll have to have a property management software (PMS) that uses a channel manager. A channel manager like Hostfully or Lodgify will integrate and sync all your channels in one place so you can handle all your reservations from one central dashboard.
In this post, we’ll run down 5 Airbnb alternatives that you can list your property on to get the maximum benefits.
They’re by no means of lesser importance to Airbnb. Some of them just happen to be fairly new and haven’t had the same amount of time and experience as Airbnb.
But all of them deliver the same safe, smooth and secure booking experience. A few of them even have unique and better features than Airbnb, especially in the area of customer service.
When you’re choosing among them, remember to base your decision on these factors: the kind and breadth of their audience reach; any commission and/or listing fee they require; and the payment system they use that will be comfortable for you.
So what are the 5 best short-term rental sites that we recommend?
Vrbo (originally Vacation Rentals By Owner) is a pioneer in the vacation rental industry. It started in 1995 as a service for homeowners to list their beach houses and cabins as vacation rentals. To this day, it specializes in large, unique, and upscale accommodations including villas, houseboats, and even castles.
Like Airbnb, Vrbo is peer-to-peer. It’s open to private and commercial residences including single family homes, apartments, and condos.
In order to list, though, property owners must be willing to rent their entire home, not just one room or shared spaces.
Majority of the market that Vrbo caters to are mature and affluent travelers. The platform is also popular with families and large groups of friends. Because Vrbo takes diversity and inclusion seriously, they offer unique, streamlined features for group planning.
The site also offers flexible cancellation options and filters for destinations that are within driving distance only.
Being a veteran in the industry, Vrbo has a massive global reach. It attracts close to 16 million unique visitors per month.
And as part of the greater Expedia Group and HomeAway family, the site is able to provide exposure to over 730 million unique monthly visitors that its parent companies reach each month.
Vrbo also supports the recently added “vacation rental” search in Google Hotels. So using this platform would give your listing access to the most powerful search engine in the world.
Booking.com is a Dutch OTA for hotel accommodations, related travel services, and a growing list of private homes and apartments for rent. Available in 43 languages, the platform has over 6 million vacation rentals in 224 countries. It receives around 100 million visitors per month.
Booking is very popular with business and budget travelers. It’s famous for its user-friendly interface, with instant booking and flexible cancellation options.
As a host, you’ll be charged a per-booking fee of up to 15%. But you’ll be free to decide on a per-night, per-guest, or per-stay pricing scheme for your listing.
Because the site is primarily a search engine for hotels, you’d have to compete alongside its hotel inventory, though. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just means that all property owners play on a level field, and short-term rentals can ultimately reach guests who may not particularly be searching for STRs.
And since Booking has a partnership with search engines like Bing and Yahoo, your property will gain access to a much bigger audience.
Headquartered in Amsterdam, the company allows only private vacation rentals on its platform – instead of the shared accommodations that Airbnb is known for. It has an advanced search and filtering system that shows guests accurate results based on what they’re looking for. That’s good for hosts because you can easily promote your property to the target audience you want.
FlipKey is another rental listing site to consider. Owned by the biggest online travel agency, TripAdvisor, FlipKey has the advantage of its parent company’s massive user base. It also leans on the experience and wisdom shared by TripAdvisor’s 465 million users who leave travel reviews on the platform each month.
FlipKey is part of Tripadvisor Rentals, a marketplace boasting more than 830,000 properties in 190 countries.
Getting listed is free, but rental owners are verified by the company’s staff before being added to their website. If you are deemed eligible, you can list any type of accommodation whether it’s a single room, an entire home, a ski chalet, or a private island.
The platform does charge 3% from each successful booking. As a bonus, FlipKey’s listings sometimes get displayed on TripAdvisor’s search results.
Additionally, you can simplify management by using Google and Apple TripAdvisor property owner apps.
4. Tripping.com
Tripping.com isn’t a peer-to-peer home-sharing platform but a metasearch engine for vacation home rentals. It’s the largest engine of its kind and actually has more listings than Airbnb and other sites combined.
With more than 12 million rentals and a vast, worldwide user base, Tripping aims to aggregate the entire vacation rental market on one single platform.
One search lets users filter, compare and sort over a dozen million available properties in over 150 destinations, from top vacation rental sites like TripAdvisor, Vrbo, Booking.com, Airbnb, and more.
Users can also search by location, price, ratings, and a long list of features and amenities.
There are also market-specific platforms in case you want to target niche audiences. If you’d like to attract nature lovers and those wanting unique stays, use CollectiveRetreats, GlampingHub, HipCamp, and Yonder. For families with small children, try Kid and Coe. And for a more Asian-oriented market, there’s Trip.com.
Have an RV? Look into Outdoorsy.com, RVezy, and RVshare.
If your place is upscale and classy, and you’d like to cater to a large European market, go for OneFineStay, HouseTrip, and ClickStay.
As a property manager, you shouldn’t limit your distribution to a single channel.
No matter how popular and well-established Airbnb is, there’s a much bigger and rapidly growing online travel market out there. And you’ll want to be on all the platforms that your channel manager supports.
Don’t be afraid to spread out and expand your reach. Here’s the deal – you want to have more inquiries than you do availability. Keep in mind that the more platforms you’re on, the more potential guests will see your listing.
And the higher your visibility, the greater your chances of getting booked.
In the following video, Jon and I discuss what we think are the best alternatives to Airbnb and how we went about choosing them:
Listing your property on as many OTAs as possible can only do your business good. just choose the ones suited to your desired market, business goals, and property type.
Read also: 9 Sound and Solid Reasons Why You Should Start a Glamping Business
Ready to learn how we built & operate a $2M/year short term rental business, operate properties throughout the USA remotely, and acquired 70+ properties without owning any in just 2 years? Attend our free online master class to learn how you can do the same. Click here.
