VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner) was one of the first sites on the web to allow renters to book directly with owners. VRBO was then bought out by Expedia, the same one that books flights and hotels. Soon after this acquisition, they started leveraging their hefty “Service Fee” to travelers who booked through their platform.
If an owner is caught even MENTIONING the fee to guests, VRBO will remove the listing. VRBO
withholds contact information for both parties, to protect their fee by keeping us from finding each other and conducting business directly.
Just how much is this costing you? The “service fee” that YOU pay is not
small change. It's up to 20% of your rental cost, usually between $200-$1000 per booking. VRBO provides no direct service for any property; it is only an advertising platform. Owners provide your service. Why pay hundreds of dollars extra, for nothing extra??!!
I haven't said much yet about AirBnB. But as you probably know, you pay these same astronomical fees
there too. This is completely avoidable with a little effort on your part. So, what do you do?
Ultimately, you are going to find a home you like and look for clues to try to find it on a direct listing website! Many owners want to book direct but if you make contact through the VRBO/Air platforms, it is against terms for them to steer you offsite. So YOU have to do your own work. Owners will often leave hints for you, like specific property names. Did you know you can also use Google Images to search for an image? Take the lead listing image for a property, and use google to see where else that photo turns up. Owners use the same photos on all their listing sites.
You won't find MY listings on VRBO/Air anymore, becuase I'm not participating in this rip-off. But, let's pretend, for the sake of learning. My ad would say “Waterscape C203”. Search google for “Waterscape C203” (the unit number will be important
for specific search results). Owners also use names like "The Bay House" or "Camp Brooks" (examples of mine), and maybe you'd want to include the city if the house title isn't overly specific. You will likely find the rental in other places with no fees. One other tip: there are a LOT of LAZY owners that don't take the time to build their own website nor pay to list on another site. In that case, you won't be able to find them online...so just move on to another property if you want to avoid that fee. I wouldn't want to work with an owner that was lazy anyway. Haha.
Here are some sites that are attempting to provide alternatives. All of these sites allow direct communication with owners and do not charge extra
fees to book through their site. There are MANY other regional sites, but I am focusing on my area, which is the Gulf Coast (as I can't cover the entire world, but the point is the give you ideas):
Likewise, there are a ton of groups on Facebook that you can search.
Here are a few links but nowadays there is a group for just about every popular vacation place on Earth!