I'm trying to sort out if VRBO will charge me the new Host fees of 12 % for this reservation request I received today that will occur in Dec, or if I will be charged the current rate because it is AFTER Oct. 29th Host fee hike?
Here is the reservation request I received (apologies for the small print; you can expand if necessary)
TIA !
We are supposed to check in tomorrow but there is a mandatory evacuation order in Walton County, Zones A-C for hurricane Isaias. This includes our rental. We cannot even go to our unit according to the county’s order, but our host is saying there’s nothing she can do and we should just “use caution” while arriving and that the city “can’t prevent us from driving to the unit”. Wtf is this I am floored right now! We even bought the extra travel insurance offered and are still getting nowhere with customer service. It doesn’t help that they’re clearly not native english speaking at their overseas call center. What a nightmare.
EDIT: 10/9/26: VRBO has enacted their Extenuating Circumstances policy and issued a full refund!
After 11 years of Hosting and dealing with a lot of High Maintence guests... I'm done accepting them. I just don't need the money that badly anymore that I'm willing to deal with their bullsh!t.
What is a High Maintenance Guest, you may be wondering?
Example from yesterday/today:
A guest asked if she and her group of 12 could have an early check-in because she had a baby (as if she's the first person to travel with a baby)
I told her we had other guests checking out that day, and the only way I could swing it was if she was willing to accept "imperfect cleaning... primarily, the floors won't be mopped to perfection, etc., and that also, when the crew gets rushed... things get missed"
Keep in mind, this is a 7-bedroom, 4-bathroom the crew had to flip in 5 hours.
I got her in an hour and 1/2 earlier than our normal check time.
Well, sure enough... I get a message at 9 PM:
"There's only one potholder", and apparently, one wasn't enough, and she needed a second potholder. I ignored her 9 PM message because, imo, it's insane to even request a second potholder... let alone at 9 PM.
I replied to her this morning at 9 AM and let her know that I was having a second potholder delivered to the house.
Today, I decided I no longer want to host these sorts of guests... I've done pretty well promoting Men's Groups (they are SO easy to work with... They check, I never hear a word from them, then check out... as long as the BBQ grill is working... I'm golden)...
But I still want to "weed out" the rest of the High Maintenance groups. I won't say "what" type of people make up these groups; I'll leave that to your imagination.
Feel free to judge me; I don't care anymore... I'm just looking for advice on how to politely WORD a sentence or two to let potential guests know we are no longer interested in constant hand-holding, etc. I want them to know if they are going to need a lot of "attention," our property may not be a good choice for their group.
I'm not interested in "lectures" about how I have to deal with the nonsense from guests, etc. As I mentioned, if my "requirement" offends potential guests and they don't book with me... I'm totally fine with that.
TIA !
PLEASE NOTE ON THIS POST:
I'M NOT LOOKING FOR ADVICE ON HOW TO MANAGE MY PROPERTIES... I'M LOOKING FOR PEOPLE WHO KNOW HOW TO WRITE WELL-WORDED SENTENCES TO PUT IN MY LISTING.
After 11 years of Hosting and dealing with a lot of high-maintenance guests... I'm done accepting them. I just don't need the money that badly anymore that I'm willing to deal with their bullsh!t.
What is a High Maintenance Guest, you may be wondering?
Example from yesterday/today: THIS IS ONLY ONE SMALL EXAMPLE... PLEASE DON'T FOCUS ON THIS ONE INCIDENT. (And YES, if you're messaging a Host at 9PM for a POT HOLDER... You ARE High Maintenance...)
A guest asked if she and her group of 12 could have an early check-in because she had a baby (as if she's the first person to travel with a baby)
I told her we had other guests checking out that day, and the only way I could swing it was if she was willing to accept "imperfect cleaning... primarily, the floors won't be mopped to perfection, etc., and that also, when the crew gets rushed... things get missed"
Keep in mind, this is a 7-bedroom, 4-bathroom the crew had to flip in 5 hours.
I got her in an hour and 1/2 earlier than our normal check-in time.
Well, sure enough... I get a message at 9 PM:
"There's only one potholder", and apparently, one wasn't enough, and she needed a second potholder. I ignored her 9 PM message because, imo, it's insane to even request a second potholder... let alone at 9 PM.
I replied to her this morning at 9 AM and let her know that I was having a second potholder delivered to the house.
Today, I decided I no longer want to host these sorts of guests... I've done pretty well promoting Men's Groups (they are SO easy to work with... They check, I never hear a word from them, then check out... as long as the BBQ grill is working... I'm golden)...
But I still want to "weed out" the rest of the High Maintenance groups. I won't say "what" type of people make up these groups; I'll leave that to your imagination.
Feel free to judge me; I don't care anymore... I'm just looking for advice on how to politely WORD a sentence or two to let potential guests know we are no longer interested in constant hand-holding, etc. I want them to know if they are going to need a lot of "attention," our property may not be a good choice for their group.
I'm not interested in "lectures" about how I have to deal with the nonsense from guests, etc. As I mentioned, if my "requirement" offends potential guests and they don't book with me... I'm totally fine with that.
TIA !
New T&Cs state if a guest makes a booking enquiry via VRBO but then books ANY property listed by the host on another channel (eg. direct site or Airbnb), VRBO will charge the host a commission!
Since booking calendars need to be kept synced across platforms, if someone initially requests a booking via VRBO, but ends up booking the same dates on AirBnb, VRBO can see me block those dates. Will I be then sent an invoice for the commission or can they just pull it out of my linked payout account? What happens if i don't pay it? Can they come after me legally because I agreed to the T&Cs???
Wondering if I should delist my property with VRBO as this isn't a risk worth taking. Seems to me that its not as simple as ''just don't tell VRBO that an enquirer booked elsewhere and they'll never know" because VRBO can SEE when I block the same dates on the VRBO calendar (which I need to do to prevent double booking).
What are your feelings on this? Im obviously not happy, it will negatively impact me. What about you all?
in the incredibly dishonest email announcing the rate change, there was no mention of refunding the unused portion of current subscriptions.
for instance, I paid $699 july 5th for 12 month subscription. they (at minimum) owe me a refund of $461 (8 months), and really they owe some penalty for breach of contract too.
anybody interested in a class action suit if they are not forthcoming with the refunds?
EDIT: I missed the bolded "when your subscription expires" clause in the email, because I was so pissed about the BS wording about "making things better for owners and customers" so, nevermind.
VRBO is changing its TOS so it can claim commission when a guest interacts with a property on VRBO and then books directly with the host within 30 days.
My concern is how VRBO identifies and attributes those direct bookings.
PMSs process reservations from OTAs and direct booking sites through the same underlying infrastructure, and reservation webhooks are not always scoped by source. If an OTA receives data about reservations made outside its platform, it could potentially identify and charge commission on transactions occurring through competing sales channels.
More importantly, a later direct booking does not necessarily mean VRBO generated it. The guest could have found the property again through Google, the host’s marketing, an aggregator, or another source.
I operate an aggregated direct booking platform covering over 214,000 listings. Guests are sent directly to the host’s existing booking site and I take no attribution. To the PMS, it simply looks like a direct booking from the hosts website. If that guest previously interacted with VRBO, VRBO may have no way of knowing which channel actually generated the reservation.
There is a striking parallel with Epic v. Apple. Apple allowed users to leave the App Store and purchase directly from developers, but attempted to collect a commission on those external transactions. Courts found its 27% external-purchase commission, as implemented, had a prohibitive effect.
VRBO similarly allows users to leave its marketplace and book directly while potentially claiming commission on the resulting transaction. The difference is that a later direct booking may not have even been generated by VRBO.
If other major OTAs follow the same model, the antitrust implications become much harder to ignore. Direct bookings could effectively become subject to OTA commissions even when the OTA did not generate the transaction, raising the cost of competing distribution across the entire market.
At some point, attribution stops protecting business an OTA generated and starts taxing business generated through competing channels.
TL;DR: VRBO can claim commission when a guest later books directly, even though that booking could have been generated by the host, Google, or another aggregator. If VRBO uses PMS data to identify and charge commission on those transactions regardless of who generated them, and other OTAs follow the same model, independent distribution becomes increasingly difficult to compete on. Epic v. Apple provides a remarkably similar case to look at.
I have to rent a minimum of 30 days/nights and because of that I am not legally classifed as a "short-term" rental, which is legally classified within the Hotel Industry category and has different state laws and sales taxes compared to the Midterm, which falls into the "Long Term" rental category, which in my state means the stay has to either exceed 29 nights or be 30 nights or more (this law can be different based on the state the property is in).
After this intro to provide some background, I want to express my dismay with how this is affecting vacation rentals like mine where people need a temporary home for an extended period as in traveling for work, transitioning, winter retreats, etc. My property is ideally situated for this type of demand. I therefore bring in more rental revenue per booking than a short-term rental does, but the new fee structure is going to add an exponential cost to rent my property that can run from 500.00-1000.00 for a 1- 2-month booking, where my rate was competitive before the new rate, to cover what was previously the booking fee paid directly to VRBO by travelers, added to my rental rate pushes me out of the competition and is simply outrageous. Midterm vacation rentals that bring more revenue to VRBO per booking should receive an adjusted or sliding-scale fee based on revenue or the total days booked or a reasonable flat fee. There's a lot of business out there for midterm rentals, and VRBO is not going to tap into that market if they price us out of the competition. Next, they lose our business too.
