The Best Sites to Advertise Your Vacation Rental: The Definitive Guide

If you have already put a vacant property or room to rent and make that extra income with tourists in high season – either on the coast when it is summer, in the mountains when it is cold or in Rio during World Cup and Olympics – you already had a small sample of how the vacation rental market is a profitable business in Brazil.

After receiving some guests, you have certainly stopped to think: what if most nights of the year were booked? How much would that bring in income for you?

The result of these calculations is so tempting that professionals have left their fixed jobs to dedicate themselves 24 hours to the seasonal market in the capitals. They rent rooms on their own property – or one of friends and relatives – and even buy other properties that they transform into mini-hotels to receive travelers from inside and outside the country.

Why is this market worth it?

On Airbnb, for example, a site that needs no introduction, 70% of the seasonal properties listings in Brazil are for properties in their entirety and not for apartments where the owner himself lives. In other words, the business has been attracting more and more people who can make a greater profit in this way rather than renting their properties annually with real estate agents.

But despite being an attractive business and simple to start – if you have used Airbnb to advertise, you know what we are talking about – filling every night of your property throughout the year can be challenging. Even more without the appeal of events like the Olympics to lend a hand.

With the growing offer of apartments and rooms in the capitals, competition is growing and it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract attention on sites such as Airbnb or on seasonal groups on Facebook, which are growing in number of advertisers every day. To get an idea, Airbnb already has more than 95 thousand listings in Brazil alone.

Have you not started investing in this market yet? We recommend that you read the article “Why Vacation Rentals Are Profitable Even with the Crisis” in the first place.

Now, if you already advertise and want to make your extra income more consistent, know that the first step is of unanimous opinion among seasonal property managers who have already grown in the business: advertise on more vacation rental sites.

Diversifying the dissemination channels is a basic marketing rule. If you think about it, the technique is simple to understand and foolproof: the more you advertise your property, the more people will see your offer and the more bookings you will have. Even more so if you give preference to sites that already have a lot of traffic of travelers.

Why advertise your property on multiple channels?

Another benefit of this diversification is that it does not depend on the success of your listing on just one of the sites to guarantee your monthly profit.

Heidelberg, the largest vacation rental company in Rio de Janeiro, does this. It has 70% of its property bookings coming from 6 different listing sites, in addition to traffic from its own site.

Property manager Márcio Costa also recommends the route. He owns more than 15 properties in Rio and only started betting on rent as a business when he increased guest traffic with the help of the Booking.com website. Until then he considered rent to be an extra income and advertised only on Airbnb. Today he also has its own website, Jump in Bed.

What we want to show here is that if you want to profit more from your bookings, you need to consider advertising on at least more than one listing site.

Are some listing sites not too tiresome to advertise?

Some are. Even more so if you are used to the ease of Airbnb. The possibilities of websites are also several, which can complicate the process a little more, as each has a billing model and a particular way of publishing the listing.

Where to begin?

To facilitate this next step to grow in the market, we have created a list of the 5 most used sites for promoting vacation rentals in Brazil and some others that you need to keep an eye on. Below, we detail what you can expect from each of them.

Airbnb

One of the fastest growing listing sites in Brazil due to the ease of publishing a room or property there. If you still do not use it to advertise, know that in 10 minutes your listing can be published after registering as a host.

It is usually the entry channel for the vacation rental market.

How much do I pay for the site?

3% per booking, which is a low rate compared to other listing sites.

Do I need to have the registered number (“CNPJ” in Brazil)?

No.

How does the site pay the advertiser?

Airbnb receives payment from the guest, subtracts the amount of 3% and transfers the payment 3 days after the guest’s check in.

Is the booking instant?

No. You have the option to accept or reject a reservation within 24 hours by default. If you want, however, you can provide instant booking.

What else you should know:

• It has a guided step by step to publish a property, which makes the process the easiest of the sites on this list.

• The site offers, in some capitals of Brazil, a professional photographer free of charge to take pictures of your properties.
• It has an educational and informative area for the hosts.
• Airbnb charges the traveler a fee of 6% to 12%, which ends up making it more expensive for tourists. You may run a promotion, for example, and it may not be attractive to tourists because of the fee, which does not happen on other sites, such as Booking.com.
• It has a communication channel with the traveler, for you to combine details and explain doubts. The culture of the site encourages conversation before hosting, which can be a little tiring for those who do not like to answer questions or just want to rent quickly.
• When placing your apartment, you determine how long in advance you need to know about a guest. This eliminates bookings at the last minute, in case you do not want them.
• Due to the ease of advertising and the low collection rate, competition is high. There are more than 95 thousand listings in Brazil alone. We advise you not to depend only on this channel.

Stays is:

Booking

Booking is usually a watershed for those who rent by season professionally. This happens because as it is tiring to publish properties, the offer is lower; however, the demand for tourists is the highest of the sites listed here.

In many cases, Booking becomes the sales engine for those who work with vacation rentals.

How much do I pay for the site?

13% per booking.

Do I need to have the registered number (“CNPJ” in Brazil)?

No. But we recommend opening a MEI to offer the credit card option, as this helps to sell more.

[Translation note: “MEI” stands for the brazillian equivalent of “individual microentrepreneur”, and is a program in Brazil that works so that informal workers are within the law and, mainly, promote this formalization with a reduced tax burden.]

How does the site pay the advertiser?

You can disponibilize any form of payment to customers in your Booking listing and set up payment details through messages with the traveler after the booking is confirmed.

If you accept payment by card, the process can be very quick and there is no need to talk to the traveler, which is an advantage for many vacation rental administrators. Since Booking already asks for your card information when booking, you can charge with that data.

At the end of each month, the company sends an invoice with the amount of the commission for bookings with check-out in the reference month for you to pay.

Is the booking instant?

Yes. You commit to accept all bookings. For some, this can cause insecurity. However, if you want to turn the vacation rental into a business, the more bookings you have, the better. The tourist hardly wants to wait long when he finds a lodging he would like to rent. That is why most choose Booking when planning their trip.

What else you should know:

• The site is one of the most sought after by travelers and has a much more plural audience than Airbnb. This is because there are several types of advertisements: inns, hotels, hostels, etc.
• You can define the cancellation rules: how many days in advance the guest can cancel without charge and how much they will pay if they exceed the term (e.g., the amount referring to the first stay).
• Booking visits every property to be placed on the site, which makes the publication process time-consuming. In case you have a lot of properties, you can facilitate this process by talking directly to the company’s customer service.
• They are very demanding about the quality of the photos of the property and do not allow publication if the quality is low. So prepare good photos before starting the advertiser registration.

Stays is:

TripAdvisor (ou FlipKey)

Those who have already Google searched “what to do” in the city they are visiting for sure have come across a TripAdvisor page. Today they are one of the references in content and review of places to visit and this brings qualified traffic from travelers to the site.

Property manager Thais Valente, of Easy Rent Rio says that advertising on FlipKey, TripAdvisor’s property publishing tool, is very easy. The best thing about this site is that you do not have to manage guest payments, as with Airbnb.

How much do I pay for the site?

3% per booking, one of the lowest. However, it is the only one which also applies this percentage to the cleaning fee you charge from the traveler.

This is just one of the company’s charging models, which is the most recommended for those who do not want to invest high at the beginning.

It is also possible to pay a fixed amount per listing or pay for each booking request received.

Do I need to have the registered number (“CNPJ” in Brazil)?Precisa ter CNPJ?

No. And you do not need a card machine either. It can be done by bank deposit and PayPal.

How does the site pay the advertiser?

The site receives from the guest and already deducts the commission amount before transferring the payment to us after 24 hours of check-in by bank account or PayPal.

Is the booking instant?

No. You have 24 hours to answer and approve an order.

What else you should know:

• It does all the payment administration for you, as well as Aribnb, which reduces the day-to-day operation.
• Followed by Airbnb, it has the simplest step by step to register properties out of the portals on this list.
• You are the one who determines the number of days the guest has to pay before the booking is canceled.
• You have the autonomy to define how flexible or not your cancellation policy is.
• The advertiser can talk through chat with the guest after the booking is confirmed with the payment.
• It is possible to advertise up to 5 properties with ease. From there, they have a special program for administrators and agencies, which you can find out about on this page.

Expedia

How much do I pay for the site?

15% per booking.

Precisa ter CNPJ?

No.

How does the site pay the advertiser?

The customer’s payment comes directly to you by bank transfer or PayPal. The following month, Expedia sends a payment slip with the amount to be paid, the 15% commission.

There is another type of system, if you have the registered number (“CNPJ” in Brazil). In this case, Expedia charges 20% but manages payments for you.

Is the booking instant?

Yes.

What else you should know:

• It does not accept the registration of rooms, only of properties in full.
• It is a site aimed at hotels, although many people advertise and search for properties for season there. For this reason, you need to make it very clear in the advertisement that your property is an apartment, so as not to have problems with customers.
• It is a network of websites. When you advertise there, your property appears on search portals for travelers like Trivago, Hoteis.com, Decolar and other partners that you can see here.
• The advertiser registration process is not instantaneous like the other sites on this list. You must complete the “Contact Us” form talking about your interest in advertising.

AlugueTemporada (VRBO)

AlugueTemporada works differently from other listing sites, as it does not charge a commission. Instead, it works as a publicity channel. You pay a monthly fee to have your listing posted and get more or less prominence according to the amount you pay.

How much do I pay for the site?

It depends on the contracted plan for the listings, R$249,00 per quarter being the most basic plan. You can see more details of each options here. Apart from the plan, the site does not charge commission on bookings.

Do I need to have the registered number (“CNPJ” in Brazil)?

No.

How does the site pay the advertiser?

You have full autonomy to arrange payment directly with the customer. When making the booking, the customer can see the payment methods you offer.

AlugueTemporada is part of the HomeAway group, one of the largest in the world in vacation rentals. When the package includes Global Listing (which makes the monthly fee more expensive), your listing appears to tourists outside Brazil, in the foreigners’ versions of AlugueTemporada.

Is the booking instant?

No. The customer sends a request or makes a pre-booking and you can approve or reject it within 24 hours. In other countries, HomeAway already works with instant booking, which should arrive in Brazil soon.

What else you should know:

• You can subscribe to one of the advertising plans directly on the website and the prices are attractive if you have one or a few rooms/properties. With more properties, the monthly fee is quite high, but it is possible to get discounts by talking directly to the commercial department. For this reason, many managers choose to advertise only their best properties. Since AlugueTemporada provides the information of the guest already in the booking request, there is the possibility for you to offer other properties to the client and even send the link to your own website.
• The more expensive the contracted plan, the better positioned your listing is. This possibility does not exist on the other listing sites, which guide the list of results according to filters such as proximity or guest rating.
• It has a step-by-step guide to help you publish your listing. Every listing undergoes a quality assessment, so it is not published immediately.
• It has a blog to help advertisers.
• They are very restrictive about changing information about the apartment after the listing is posted.

Other sites you should consider advertising on vacation rental

The TemporadaLivre, which is specific to the season branch and is growing in the market. It works with monthly fees with a very interesting price with the competitors in mind and does not charge a commission.

Decolar, which is starting to make room for season rentals, and has a high traffic of visitors, but still works much better with hotels and inns. The site works with instant commissioned bookings.

ZapImóveis, which has a recent vacation rental area, is expected to grow in the coming months. It is already a very profitable channel for annual rentals and has proved to be a great player in the seasonal market. Zap does not charge a commission, it charges only for the listing.

Mercado Livre, which despite being a channel to offer anything, already has many seasonal property listings and has very considerable traffic, which can yield some bookings.

And in your experience, what are the best sites for vacation rentals? Share with us here in the comments!

If you already have more than one listing channel and want to optimize your routine, we recommend reading this article on channel manager.

Check out other articles from us that will help you advertise in the vacation rental:

• 7 Secrets to Make a Listing On Airbnb That Attracts Travelers

• 6 Informations a Welcome Book for Seasonal Guests Cannot Lack