Integration with HomeToGo (and Free Bookings for 4 months!)

I'm still

My properties seem to be already on home to go via vrbo and other sites. So will my properties be listed effectively as book direct at a lower price than the big otas? What are the charges for Home To Go after the offer expires?

Hi Le Touquet Holid!

HomeToGo has a brilliant model - they do have partnership with the OTAs where they pull in listings automatically but they're also working with PMS systems (like OwnerRez) to integrate property owners directly. In this way, the traveler can pick between going OTA and direct with the owner. It's an ambitious idea, but pretty cool.

After the No Fees program is over, their fee structure aligns similar to Vrbo's PPB and Booking.com commission rates. It's 14% so a tad lower than the others.

They also have pretty wide exposure, so consider that angle as well. When we started working with them, we noticed how far their reach is worldwide - lot of sister websites and international variants that they operate.

When the Free part is over, and a guest chooses our property, through HTG, listed on AirBnb, is there double commission? If not who gets paid what?

If the traveler does not book direct on HomeToGo, and chooses to redirect through to Vrbo/Booking/other OTA, than there is no cost to you for that other than on the OTA side. When they redirect through, they go to your OTA list, so they are essentially using your other listings.

Just checked out HTG website and did a few searches. It appears most of the listings are from VRBO, like 95%+ . Can you dwell on that since they advertise to search all sites. I did not see one AirBnb listing, only a couple of Expedia. I searched big and small markets.

Agree mostly VRBO and Expedia. I did find my property pulled in from a local French site and Get a Room.
It would be useful to understand the business model of how HTG get paid if a guest clicks through a VRBO or other link? That could impact our pricing decisions for HTG and offer a few percent lower in order to get the guest booking direct. I'm still not clear on the cost for our direct listing. The sign up form suggest the offer is only until end Dec 2020. Its also states after the offer that its 2.5% for full integration and 14% for partial integration.
With the Owner Rez connection are we not fully integrated?

Sure, so HTG gets paid by its affiliation with those other sites - Vrbo pays them for those redirects. I believe that's how it works. I don't want to speak for HTG, but I know there are distribution agreements like that in place for others, so I assume it's the same for HTG.

In terms of why your Air or Booking.com listings aren't showing on there, you'd have to ask HTG. They may simply not have mapped that one in for your property. They have a pretty huge index of listings worldwide but I'm guessing that some of those haven't been fully mapped to every OTA. Or they simply may not want to show every OTA if the Expedia ones are more lucrative/easier to use.

Fees at 14% after the free period is not a viable option for those of us looking for ways to book with little or no fees. Vrbo has continued pushing higher fees, thus the need for direct options for customers with little or no fees. We need to continue to push direct partners that are more reasonable in pricing.

Agree HTG have to offer OR clients a better rate. Airbnb are 14% and I don't have to pay any payment fees. So airbnb will always be cheaper than a HTG client. Its a similar scenario for other OTAs. If HTG are serious about getting clients to book direct then I would like to see a rate of around 10% or less.

I agree. It would have to be a lot less than 14% for this to be attractive to me. I pay nothing to AirBNB, nothing to TripAdvisor and $500 a year to Vrbo. IMHO HTG can just send people to Vrbo.

A good thing about HTG would be IF they duplicate listings on the same channels while direct connection to channels still persists.

Can anyone confirm?

Just got a message from HTG to begin my integration - I signed up after the initial announcement from ORez back in December. The contract says 2.5% commission after the 0% promo period for full integration and 14% for partial integration.

If we use the ORez API to push all info I assume this would be full integration - can you confirm this Paul W? You must have missed being asked this question above so I thought I'd ask again.

I just now signed up via OR, somehow missing that it was as easy as a few clicks in the API Integration, but it took 2 months for them to get you connected?