FAQs

Our easy-to-use owner dashboard will be the primary location for managing your reservations, updating rates and keeping your listing up to date. Some partners choose to use a software provider to link our systems. They still log in to the owner dashboard to leverage our more advanced tools like MarketMaker and Boost.

Yes. Please select your language below.

• Brazilian Portuguese
• Dutch
• English – US
• English – GB (UK, SG, AU, NZ)
• French (Abritel)
  
• German (FeWo-direkt)
• Italian
• Portuguese
• Spanish

Our mission is to bring the world within reach through our partners. Our goal is to provide our partners with the most bookings possible and, to do so, we need to provide travellers with a simple and secure online booking experience.

What we ask of you

Our marketplace standards help make it easier to book, giving travellers trust in their booking experience, so they are more likely to return in the future. 

What we give you in return

• Worldwide exposure. When you list with us, your property is being shown not just to travellers searching on our platform but across our entire network of sites. This gives you access to potential travellers making over 600 million site visits each month*.
• High-quality travellers. We often hear that we are chosen by the most reliable and responsible travellers. 
• Protection for your holiday rental. When you accept online bookings on our platform, we offer protections like USD 1 million of liability insurance at no additional cost. We are continuing to explore and invest in protection to make our platform the safest and most secure it can be.
• Secure payment processing. Our payments allow travellers to pay you in the most secure way possible.

*Monthly visits based on average monthly data for Brand Expedia (including Travelocity and Wotif), Hotels.com, Orbitz, Vrbo, trivago and Hotwire combined during 2016.

If you haven’t found what you are looking for, visit our Help Centre for step-by-step guidance on how to use our products.

Integrated property managers use third-party or proprietary software that they have connected to our travel platform to manage their listings. Integrated property managers can manage their listings directly from their software by an integration feed that automatically updates reservations, amenities, photos and more.

Visit your local laws page in your dashboard for more information.  

If you’d like to get involved or learn more about the policy landscape in your community, please reach out to GovernmentAffairs@Vrbo.com.

Be accommodating to individuals with special needs and their service animals.

Do not add security deposits or pet fees – service animals are not pets.

Do not request documentation for a service animal. However, you may ask whether the service animal is required because of a disability or ask about specific functions that the animal performs. 

The Customer Advisory Board (CAB) is an exclusive group of trusted advisors made up of partners like you. CAB members meet over video call monthly to offer input and expertise that help shape the future of our products and services. Currently, we have CABs in the US and EU markets.

You can communicate with your guests by going to Reservation Manager on your dashboard or your owner mobile app. You can also communicate directly by email or phone as those details are given to you after the traveller has booked. Although, we do recommend that you keep all communication on our secure messaging platform. 

Three days after your guest checks out, we’ll send you an email asking you to review their stay. When you submit your review, we’ll let your guest know via email and will invite them to leave their own review within 14 days.

More than four out of five travellers (82%) assume that criticism is true if the property fails to respond (Wakefield/EG, 2020). When you receive negative guest feedback, we recommend you respond with a plan to correct the problem and offer a sincere apology. You can also add any clarifying information about the negative review content if you feel it is important for future guests to consider. 

Compared with using your dashboard on a desktop, there are some limitations. You can use your owner mobile app to edit your listing, adjust property settings and review your performance.

Your virtual tour will appear on your property listings page in the photos section.

High-quality photos can lead to more bookings, as photos help travellers decide if the property is right for them. They also help describe the property, so expectations are set if the traveller decides to book. 

Yes! Open the app on your device, log in and follow these instructions:

1. Tap the Listings or House icon.
2. Select the property you wish to edit.
3. Tap any photo to open the photo editor.
4. Tap Add photo or +.
5. Choose either photo gallery or camera.
6. If taking a picture, select Use Photo or Save. If not, select a photo from your photo library.

House rules are displayed on your property listing so travellers can decide if they're the right fit for your home. Travellers are required to accept your house rules before they book with you.

The owner mobile app makes it easy to manage your holiday rental. Stay connected with travellers, manage your bookings and run your business, anytime and anywhere. You can also edit your listing, update your house rules and policies and stay in control with the convenience of an app.

We advise you to contact customer service during the guest’s stay if you need further advice. 

Tell your guests to download the traveller app and log in with the same credentials that they used to create the reservation. Your guests will be able to access the information under “My Trips.”

If your guest does not want to download the app or is unable to download the app, they can access the information on the web. Your guest will log in to their account from a computer and select “My Trips” from the dropdown where their name appears at the top of the page. Then they’ll select your property to see your welcome guide content.

Welcome guide is replacing Mobile Hospitality Manager (MHM). You can set up your welcome guide to include most of the information that was available in Mobile Hospitality Manager. However, you might notice a few changes. We’ve streamlined the welcome guide to include only the information that guests find most useful and left out information that’s already provided to guests in other places. 

Virtual tours help travellers decide if a property's layout will fit their needs. It’s also a more immersive experience, and they can imagine themselves in the holiday rental. 

You'll receive an email notification of the booking, containing the below traveller details: 

• Name 
• Phone number
• Email
• Additional information such as whether the traveller has ever booked with us before

Once you enter the house rules page to make updates, any changes you make won't be saved until you fill out all the house rules. We encourage all partners to visit and update their house rules today, but not updating them will not result in any changes at this time. 

You can post a response to your review that will be displayed on your listing. 

• Multiple calendars getting difficult to manage
• Distributing/advertising properties on multiple sites
• Accounting becoming cumbersome across multiple sites

Your reviews are displayed in the Reviews section of your property listing.

Your cancellations policies are displayed in the ‘policies’ section of your listing. 

You can add your cleaning practices to your listing under the ‘Health & Safety’ tab in your Property Editor.

You can enable Instant Booking by clicking on the Property icon from the left navigation menu in your dashboard. Next, click on "Rules & Policies" and then "Booking type." Select "Instant Booking" as your booking method and click "Save."

You have the option of switching back to 24-Hour Review by changing your settings at anytime.

To capture your virtual tour, you'll need to work with a third-party provider who can provide equipment or photography services. There are four providers who use virtual tour technology integrated with our platform so that you can easily add your virtual tour to your listing.

Travellers want a complete description of a property through photos, so we recommend uploading at least 25 high-quality photos to your property listing.

Cleaning practices will be displayed under the ‘Policies’ section of your listing.

After the traveller inputs the travel dates and number of guests, they can view the fees by clicking on View details or after clicking Book now.

The new rules are currently only available to those who use the platform. If you use software to access your listing(s), more details will follow on when the new house rules will be available to you.

Yes. Complete and accurate house rules in the shopping experience help travellers easily determine whether your property will meet their needs while reducing potential rule violators from enquiring or booking. 

It may be because you haven't completed all the house rules. You must complete all the house rules to save your changes. If you navigate away from the page without doing so, it will not save your changes. If you want to add additional notes later or make changes to your rules, you can always return to update your rules later. 

To help ensure that you’re getting bookings you’re comfortable with, we offer house rules for you to clearly communicate expectations with potential guests. House rules help avoid unexpected surprises during the stay by attracting guests who fit your property.

There are predefined rules that you can set:

• Maximum overnight guests
• Minimum age requirement
• Events
• Pets
• Children allowed
• Smoking

Make sure your house rules comply with all central government and local laws. You also have the flexibility of adding up to three custom rules.

A virtual tour is an immersive tool that enables travellers to experience an interactive view of your property. Unlike a video, virtual tours use a sequence of 360-degree images compiled together to create a simulation of your property. Virtual tours allow travellers to navigate through your property at their own pace, controlling what they see and where they go next.

We focused on the most common events that partners allow for their guests. Use the “Other” section to include additional events that you may allow on your property.

The details you share about your property—types of amenities, policies, proximity to popular destinations—are used when travellers narrow a search down to find a holiday rental that meets their specific needs. The visibility of your property is increased when you provide more detailed information. Great photos and information about the area help travellers imagine their stay and prompt them to book. Keeping your listing up to date with photos and amenities will help you stay competitive. 

You can edit your cancellation policy in the ‘rules and policies’ section under the ‘cancellation’ policy tab. 

To stand out in search results, make sure to take the following actions: 

1. Create high-quality content. How travellers respond to your headline, photos, amenities and descriptions affects your rank. 
2. Set competitive rates. Set prices appropriate for your property, area and goals. Tools like MarketMaker can help! 
3. Accept and honour bookings. Responding promptly to enquiries and booking requests, accepting bookings or enabling Instant Booking and having a low cancellation rate will also help boost your market rank. These actions show our ranking system that you’re committed to creating great traveller experiences even before they book. 
4. Earn great reviews. Positive reviews help travellers know you take pride in your property and that their holiday is in good hands. Four- and five-star reviews show you’re committed to your guests and can influence your rank.

We use machine learning to understand what travellers want for an upcoming trip. Our ranking system looks at all the properties in the area, comparing amenities, number of bedrooms, location, reviews and other criteria. Then it ranks all properties — including yours — by how well they fit the traveller’s needs. This ranking is combined with an individual traveller’s preferences to determine where your property shows up in their search results. Learn more.

Your competitive set is determined by your property's location and is grouped with similar properties based on their amenities and features. We encourage you to keep your property details and amenities up to date — this will help make your competitive set more accurate. 

Boost is a programme for Premier Partners designed to help improve their listings' search position for select days. This means a property of their choice can show up higher in traveller search results!

Earn power-ups on a listing both when bookings are accepted and after a traveller completes a stay. We then surface boost opportunities, or date ranges where we think Boost could help you get a booking. You then redeem your power-ups to accept Boost opportunities. Set up a boost up to one year in advance of the booking dates.

Redeeming  power-ups for a boost doesn’t guarantee a booking. Once power-ups are applied and the boost is confirmed, the boost cannot be cancelled and power-ups cannot be returned.

You'll no longer be able to use the power-ups if you lose your Premier Host status. However, you'll continue to earn power-ups as travellers book and complete stays at your property. So if and when you regain Premier status, you'll also regain access to all of the power-ups dating back one year.

The best times to boost are during a low season when you typically don’t get many bookings or have a gap in your calendar. You can also review the traveller supply and demand data in MarketMaker to help you choose the best dates to use Boost. 

Competitive sets can help you determine how you set rates. Your rank is also informed by how competitive your rates are in your market.

Travellers can contact you directly with cancellation or booking change requests by email, allowing you and your traveller to connect more quickly for a faster resolution.

There's an API available for cancellation requests only (Cancellation Service - REST API) that's a great option for partners with high volumes of requests. Please contact your software provider to learn about this API and whether you currently have access.

1. You’ll see the new booking in your inbox and reservation list. You’ll also receive an email notification and an SMS or push notification in the mobile owner app if you have those enabled. 
2. A booking will also appear in your calendar. 

By setting a cancellation policy, you may choose to keep a percentage of the booking if a traveller cancels outside of your cancellation window. 

No, you can manage your base rates but you cannot edit your fees in the owner app. 

No, you may keep the same rates as before. 

Your payouts will typically be disbursed one business day after your guest checks in.  The money should be available in your bank account 5–7 business days later. If you’re a new partner, the payout for your first booking should be disbursed to your bank account 30 days after the guest’s payment. If your first booking is more than 30 days away, the payout should be disbursed one day after the guest’s scheduled check-in. 

There are several ways to make sure your listing availability is accurate to avoid declines and cancellations that could negatively impact your search ranking. 

• Make sure you’ve blocked your calendar when your listing will be unavailable.
• Utilise iCal sync, a file format that you can use to import and sync calendars across multiple platforms like Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and other booking site calendars. 

Visit the help centre to learn more.

Payments are managed through our secure payment platform, and payouts are typically disbursed one day after the guest checks in. To find the disbursement date for a payment, view the payments section of the reservation. You can also look in your payout summary report to see an overview of the funds you have received after commission and fees withheld from rental amounts have been deducted.

The Booking Update Service is an API that leverages XML. This technical language allows your property management software to communicate updates to our system.  If a reservation is attributed to us, your software will automatically pass updated reservation data through the API on your behalf to ensure the two reservation systems are in sync. Regardless of which software product you use, the Property Manager is responsible for reporting offline bookings.

For accounts that pay on a per-booking basis, we charge a 5% commission on each booking. This commission is charged only on your nightly rates and any optional fees you charge.

If possible, offer to reschedule dates that work for both you and your traveller. 

Fees are any extra charges beyond your nightly base rate and are often used to compensate holiday rental owners or property managers for additional services or amenities. You can choose two types of fees to charge: standard fees and custom fees. 

Standard fees are the most common types of fees owners and property managers use and include extra guest fees, cleaning fees and pet fees. Custom fees are any additional fees beyond standard fees.

Booking data for your properties will be used to provide better insights. Other MarketMaker users will only see market data in aggregate. Your competition will not be able to see the details of your individual bookings.

MarketMaker is a comparison tool that shows detailed data of your market’s average nightly rates 365 days into the future for both booked and unbooked properties. By viewing your market’s nightly rate averages, you can make more competitive decisions around your listing’s rate per night. The data is taken from your competitive set, which are properties similar to your own. 

Data about your properties listed on our site — location, amenities, what bookings were made and when, price paid and price advertised — is not passed through your property management software integrations. Booking-related data will be kept at an aggregate level, and individual booking details won't be shared at an individual property level with other MarketMaker users.

You can choose two types of fees to charge: standard fees and custom fees. Excessive fees can greatly reduce a traveller's likelihood of making a booking. We recommend keeping total fees less than 50% of your nightly rate and that you keep fees consolidated to two fees or less.

Revenue management is a pricing strategy that balances supply and demand in order to maximise profits. The holiday rental market continues to evolve and become more competitive, so setting rates informed by real-time market data is even more critical — MarketMaker makes that easier.

If you're a smaller property manager, you can manage enabling Instant Booking in your owner dashboard.  If you're a larger property manager, we recommend you call your account manager to get set up.

Your property manager will be able to manage the listings as usual once the booking is made — the main difference is that bookings will be automatically accepted instead of requiring a manual review and acceptance.

Our payment platform is the fast, safe and easy way for guests to pay for their bookings — and for you to get paid. Our payment platform leverages world-class systems to detect and prevent fraud. Guests can pay with major credit cards, and our teams are working on additional payment methods for guests.

You can set up your payments account when you initially set up your listing or renew your subscription. In either case, log in and select the “Payments” step to complete set-up. You’ll need to enter the following information: 

• What country you conduct your banking in
• Whether you’re an individual owner or a property manager business acting on a client’s behalf
• Your contact information
• Your bank account information (sort code, account number and currency)

The process should only take a few minutes, and then you’ll be able to accept payments safely and securely.

We’ll email the guide’s content to your guests ten days before they check in.  

Yes, all booked guests will receive this information before check-in. The details will no longer be available after guests check out or if they cancel. 

To avoid double bookings and save time, we recommend you sync your calendar with any other platform or calendar you might be using. Enable Instant Booking on your preferred platform if you're listed on more than one site. When your calendars are synced across multiple platforms, you can view all your reservations, high-demand dates and local events across all your calendars. We support iCal, a file format you can use to import and sync calendars across multiple platforms like Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and other booking site calendars.

Go to Availability Settings. (From the left-hand navigation, select Calendar, then click on the gear icon in the upper right hand corner of your screen.) Set your preferences for the timeframe you want your property to be bookable, and set limits on the booking window to give yourself enough time to prepare for a booking.

Many factors impact your search position, and Instant Booking is one of the top factors to help improve your performance. This is because Instant Booking will help you improve your booking acceptance rate, since the booking is automatically accepted. Instant Booking listings typically also have a higher conversion rate and perform better in search results.

The Reservation Details for each stay include several line items such as:

Taxes: Tax amounts and how they’re collected and remitted vary depending on your location. In some locations, we will collect taxes and remit them to the appropriate government agency on your behalf. In other cases, you’ll be responsible for collecting taxes and paying them. It’s even possible to have a mixture of both in some cases. Each jurisdiction may set different rules that will define on what amount we need to apply the Lodging Taxes when we collect and remit them. Some jurisdictions may require us to collect taxes on the damage deposit or on the service fee.

Service Fee: The service fee is a percentage of the total amount of the reservation, excluding taxes and refundable fees. This fee is charged to guests when they book through our site and helps cover the cost of running the site. Additionally, travellers who book through our site receive our Book with Confidence Guarantee, which allows guests to have a worry-free holiday.

The only thing that’s missing is the Refundable Damage Deposit (RDD). Owners and property managers can require an RDD with every reservation. This works as a deposit would work with a long-term rental: a guest pays an amount up front that is held for them. If your property is left unharmed, they’ll receive the RDD back within 14 days of their check-out date.