Short-term rentals: alternatives to AirBnb and Booking

Airbnb and Booking.com were among the first online booking sites, making them the most sought by guests wishing to rent a house for their holiday or work stay. But there are several alternatives to advertise your short-term rental, and on the more short-term rental sites your house is highlighted, the more guests you’ll be able to reach.

Find out the differences between the several platforms for advertising houses for Short-term rentals and choose the most suitable:

Airbnb

Airbnb was created in 2008 and has since remained one of the main platforms for advertising and searching homes for short-term rentals. It has over 7 million properties advertised in over 220 countries.

Booking.com

Although it was a mostly hotel-facing website up until recently, it is now the world’s largest booking platform. On Booking.com, you will find offers not only of houses for short-term rentals but also apartments, hostels, boats and so on.

Booking.com has more than 28 million registered accommodations and a quality customer service, both for guests and advertisers. Furthermore, it is a very user-friendly website and offers several promotions and incentives to guests, which explains its success and why it is the most used platform.

Expedia

More hotel oriented, but with a great international expression, Expedia is now starting to be used by owners and managers of short-term rentals

Homeaway

Homeaway is a good website to advertise your short-term rental and it also works well with houses in less urban areas, often catching the attention of groups of friends or families looking to stay in less touristic areas.

Tripadvisor

Besides being a recommendation website for all kinds of hotels, restaurants and bars, Tripadvisor is also a great search engine for holiday properties. This platform is ideal for those who want to advertise their home, apartment or hotel, since it is used by many people to choose their holiday destination.

All these platforms work with free registration and can be used by anyone who has a house and their short-term rental number (without a number it is not possible to publish your house online). Although none of the previous websites asks you for any amount to advertise your house, you should be aware that they all charge a commission for each reservation made. Read carefully and do the math, because these commissions can vary between 5% and 25%, which makes a big difference at the end of the month…

Other ways to advertise your home for Short-term rental

Create your own website

Another alternative is to have your own website to advertise your house or apartment. Keeping a website updated and attractive always has associated costs and that platforms like Airbnb and Booking have so much visibility in search engines that hardly your house will appear when someone searches for “houses to stay in Lisbon”, for example. The good thing is that all bookings you make directly on your site are commission free…

Use social networks to promote your home

Social networks like Facebook and Instagram are great platforms to promote your property, not only with your friends and family, but also with other people who might be interested in renting your house.

Ideally, you should create a specific page for your home, apartment or hotel and share it with these two networks, also using the paid advertising solutions of Facebook and Instagram, which allow you to reach many more people.

Another advantage of having a dedicated page for your property is that it allows you to gather various comments from people who have stayed in the house, which will help (provided that they are positive) to increase the number of people who makes reservations and share your house.

Give your home to a Short-term rentals Management Company

In fact, this option does not mean that your house will not be advertised on the main short term rental platforms, but it is a way to simplify the whole process, since the management of one (or several) properties is not as simple as the owners may think (open and close calendars on each platform, manage new reservations and guest messages, check-ins and check-outs, etc.).

If you are inclined to this option, get to know the services we provide in the main Portuguese cities and discover all the advantages of working with the largest Portuguese Short-term rentals management company.

Feel free to download our ebook and find all the information you need to ensure that your home meets all the legal and tax requirements of the short-term rental law in Portugal.

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