Affiliate data feeds: messiah of vacation rentals?
Monday, July 19th 2010
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The vacation rental landscape is changing dramatically with the increasing availability of affiliate schemes and now XML datafeeds by the major players. Owners may be blissfully unaware of these developments but they are set to change the game over the next couple of years... and in a good way! This could massively increase the exposure of rentals across the web.
Bear with me, this stuff ain't all that simple but it is very important. For the uninitiated, here's a quick run down on these technologies:
XML is a standard for transporting data across the web. In practical terms it means a rental site can make their property inventory available to third parties, in a format that's easy to transfer into any database. Hey presto - you can build a rental website with no property of your own.
Affiliate schemes have been around for years. They are sophisticated tracking systems that monitor referrals and sales from one website to another. In essence if I advertise a product on my website that produces a sale for the vendor site, I get paid.
Now put the two together and anybody with the technical nouse can build a rentals website and get paid for the leads/bookings they generate. No more messing around trying to attract property owners - just build a site, attract traffic, get paid.
What it means for owners
The hotel industry has been extremely adept with this technology. Remember the explosion of great hotel/travel sites 5 years ago? Thank affiliates and datafeeds. This success is set to be replicated in the vacation rentals market and it means wider distribution for second home owners.
Right now owners flounder around, essentially in the dark, over which sites are delivering and how high their search engine rankings are.
In a couple of years time, you may not be asking where a site is positioned in Google. Instead ask them "How wide is your affiliate distribition?"
How it works for webmasters
We've started dabbling with a few of these feeds. It's too early to quantify an overall pay rate and many of the affiliate options are still hopelessly inadequate. BUT they are getting better.
Here's some we're aware of and our experience so far:
Villarenters.com
These guys take a booking commission rather than an advertising fee from owners. This meant they were able to implement affiliate payment technology a long while ago and their feeds are a joy to work with.
The good: Mature, easy-to-use feeds and a relatively simple management console. Payout rates look salivatingly good at 2.5% of booking fee.
The bad: Service is poor. Support requests are dealt with in days rather than hours - if you get a reply at all. Data quality is also poor - they seem to have little editorial control on their adverts, which are littered with poor descriptions and awful photos.
Conversion rates on straight referrals to their property pages have been surprisingly bad. High quality traffic that garners a 5% enquiry rate on our own sites delivered an EPC (earnings per click) rate of just 5p (approximately 7.5¢) in the first 90 days.
AlwaysOnVacation.com (aka Vacation Renter Solutions, LLC)
We got approached by these guys a little while ago and they pay per lead i.e. for each visitor who generates an enquiry. The rate varies from $1 - $2.50. It's still very early days, we've only just implemented it but here's what we know so far.
The good: Nice developers who were happy to tweak the feeds for us and remove extraneous data e.g. property with no prices (?!)
The bad: No management console, we only get a monthly report. Right now we're shooting in the dark but will report back our findings.
Belvilla (aka @Leisure group)
We tried this Dutch firm about a year ago and re-visited it recently. Again they offer an attractive rate of 5% of booking fee, unfortunately they've been pretty hard to work with.
The good: The referral rate of 5% is excellent. Their data is clean with good write-ups and nice photos.
The bad: Unlike their attractive public websites, the management console looks awful. However the real flaw is having to use multiple (massive!) XML data files that use a complex structure. It takes my Quadcore about 90 minutes to process the files into a meaningful format, and there's no ability to filter by destination.
Requests for an easier format have fallen on deaf ears so we've dropped this site for now, it's too much work. Approach only with a lot of patience and a super-computer!
HomeAway.com
We've saved the beast till last - the big boys have just entered the fray with their first stab at an XML data feed. To get it, you need to sign up to their affiliate scheme at Commission Junction. HomeAway pay per lead at $2 per enquirer.
Given that this is a massive site with 180k+ properties, the feed is enormous but it is broken into bite size chunks. We haven't yet implemented it but data quality is fair. It could do with some filtering options to attract boutique sites that want a single destination.
We'll report the results once we've experimented with it.
HolidayLettings.co.uk
This UK firm, recently acquired by TripAdvisor, already have a scheme via AffiliateWindow in the UK (who promote lots of other rental websites too) and they are currently paying £1.25 per enquirer.
A data feed has been promised for the future and no doubt won't be too far away now that HomeAway's has launched.
This list is bound to grow so please feel free to add any we haven't mentioned below. It's still early days and we'll continue to report our experiences. It's a promising time.
comments (2)
Fred wrote...
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