Notes

1. Traveler want more options:
We do know HomeAway has changed quite a bit as the industry has grown. Every year we make important changes to help continue to grow the vacation rental industry and your bookings. Our job for you for the last 15 years has been to attract travelers and bring them to your and other customers’ listings. Best match is the most recent change because we know travelers are having a hard time finding the right rental to book and we want to fix that so it means more bookings. We will test all of the changes to ensure the changes mean more bookings overall. Your platinum subscription level remains the most important thing you can do to influence where your listing appears within search results, and unless a traveler has applied a specific filter such as "sort by price" you are appearing within your subscription level. If you are noticing fewer page views or inquiries, it is likely because you are already booked for that period that travelers are booking for, and it wouldn't make sense to send you a booking request that you have already fulfilled. So that may put another subscriber above you for a certain time, but you above others another time.

2. Service Fee:
The service fee is paid by the traveler when booking through the HomeAway websites. This fee covers the cost of providing 24/7 customer support, enhanced site and mobile features for both owner and travelers, plus expanded marketing efforts to generate more exposure to global audiences. All these services will improve the experience of the traveller bringing more people to our site.

3. Travelers personalized experience.

4. Online booking not getting anything:
Online booking is the best way for travelers to book and securely pay for your vacation rental. It is also vital for increasing exposure and get you on the road to more bookings. Some important points you might want to consider are:
*Directly impact your booking performance. Listings with online booking get more bookings than those without.
*Make sure your travelers are protected. Paying through HomeAway checkout ensures they are covered by our Book with Confidence Guarantee. Peace of mind can be a tremendous advantage over your competition.
*Maintain Control over who stays at your property. Online bookings still allow you 24 hours to talk to your potential guest and ensure it is a good fit before accepting the booking.
*Manage all your booking request and payments through your dashboard. Plus, we automatically add the reservation to your calendar so it is always up-to-date. You can sync your calendar with other site calendars using iCal.

5. Paid to be at the top
Our goal is to deliver you bookings, let's take a look at how your overall bookings are looking.

We need to know about your bookings - Because we are optimizing for successful bookings, we need to know about your bookings to ensure your listing to is showing up as high as possible. The best way to do this is by adding and using online booking.

Traveler preferences are important - data shows that travelers have clear preferences, some of them are explicit as filters an individual traveler enters, some are based on data from other travelers and some might be based on demographic information like location of the traveler, device they are searching on and more. We are just beginning to cater to these specific preferences and sort order will become more variable for each of these types of preferences over time. Because of this, default search, or what search displays without any filters, shouldn't be your perceived performance indicator.

Of all of the search signals or information travelers send, dates are one of the most important because a large majority of booking requests and inquiries come from searches where travelers enter dates. This means you're more likely to get bookings when travelers enter dates and so searches like dates, when you are available, might be a stronger indicator. We are working hard to continue to get more and more traveler to search by dates and use other filters.

Travelers send us signals based on what they are likely to book. For example, certain properties in a particular part of town are more likely to be booked, so they may show higher within their subscription level.
Search position alone will be variable by time of year, as well. For example, best match looks at your availability. If your booked over the next few months, you might appear lower because travelers are searching within the next few months. When a traveler enters dates where you are available, you might notice your search position to change.