Booking.com heats up the vacation rental war
Booking.com has set a virtual cat among the pigeons with the launch last week of the villas.com website that is tipped by the parent company to spark a revitalisation of the self-catering sector.
It should also be causing a bit of consternation among its major competitors Airbnb, HomeAway and VacationHomeRentals.com that was recently acquired by TripAdvisor.
Darren Huston, chief executive of the Priceline-owned accommodation giant Booking.com, says there is pent up demand for quality holiday rental properties and a booking platform that provides good service and reassurance. As well as meeting customer demand Booking.com’s entry into the market could persuade people to acquire accommodation to rent knowing there is a reputable and reliable company to sell it
The site is the first brand outside of Amsterdam-based Booking.com’s core hotel accommodation website.Megan Anderson, Booking.com’s head of villas, said the new site was based on an entirely new platform designed to address the specific needs of customers looking for holiday rentals.
Ms Anderson said all the properties listed will come with instant confirmation and guaranteed availability and will be checked by Booking.com staff to ensure they exist and are not a scam.
Villas.com also offers the functionality to search around popular destinations for the ideal villas in sub-regions. It also features a set of property filters to enable customers to find properties which are pet friendly, or which have outdoor barbecues, for instance.
The commercial model is the same as on Booking.com, with properties paid per booking and no fees to either the owners or the customer to use the site.
Already Villas.com claims more than 147,000 vacation rentals in 24,736 popular vacation destinations most straight from the Booking.com website.
HomeAway (that has a marketing/distribution agreement with Expedia) has dozens of vacation rental websites around the world and claims 952,000 listings. VacationHomeRentals.com has 550,000 rental properties. Airbnb offers 600,000 listings.
Booking.com has been gradually adding more vacation rental properties to the main site for the best part of 18 months, adding to the small numbers of bungalow and cottage rentals it had featured for many years. In January 2013 it struck a deal with InterHome to start promoting its properties from around the world.
Coincidentally, eConsultancy analysis claims Booking.com’s hotel detail page is the most persuasive selling page in the world from a usabilty perspective with its big, bold images of hotels, its a property highlights section which immediately provides useful, relevant and potentially persuasive information about the hotel, and how the company effectively uses customer ratings and reviews.
