Airbnb Alternatives in the UK: 7 Options Worth Considering for Your Property
Airbnb is a very popular online marketplace that makes it easier for property owners to rent out their homes, apartments, or spar rooms to travelers, but it’s not the only player in the game. Numerous other websites provide hosts with opportunities to showcase their properties and connect with travelers seeking accommodations that feel like a “home away from home.”
So, if you’re already hosting your house on Airbnb and looking for an Airbnb alternative in the UK to expand your reach to a broader audience, here you’ll find a list of top short-term rental platforms.
Airbnb Alternatives in the UK: What Are Your Options as a Host?
Relying only on Airbnb to market your vacation rental property is one of the most common Airbnb mistakes you should avoid because it can prevent you from building a successful and sustainable STR business. If you list on other OTA platforms and create your direct booking website, you can increase your visibility and potentially get more bookings.
When choosing a direct booking website provider, it's essential to ensure it is the official partner of Google Vacation Rentals. This way, your website will appear on Google Travel, a trending metasearch engine, as well as on Google Maps.
Managing a vacation rental involves numerous responsibilities and ongoing work, so many hosts utilize software tools like Hospitable to automate their hosting routine. With Hospitable, you’ll be able to streamline your business operations and save many hours of your precious time every week.
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Now, let’s look at the vacation rental sites popular among STR hosts and travelers in the UK.
Vrbo
Owned by Expedia Group, Vrbo is a popular vacation rental platform that attracts families traveling together and vacationers seeking longer stay options. Vrbo has been in operation since 1995 and currently boasts over 2 million listings in 190 countries worldwide. It also has almost 100,000 holiday lettings from across the UK and Ireland.
Remember that the platform focuses on entire properties and doesn’t allow property owners to list shared spaces. The common types of property listed on the website are houses, condos/apartments, cottages, cabins, villas, and chalets.
Vrbo has two different service fee models for hosts. You can pay the annual subscription fee of $499, which covers unlimited bookings for the whole year, or the pay-per-booking fee. Then, you’ll be charged a 5% commission per booking and a 3% credit card processing fee.
You may also want to check out our blog article, where we compare Vrbo vs. Airbnb and explain key differences in their features, fees, cancellation policies, and the types of properties they allow.
Booking.com
With more than 29 million listings, Booking.com is one of the largest online travel agencies in the world. Traditionally, this was a website for hotels and resorts. Still, now it also focuses on vacation rentals and has more than 6.6 million listings for private homes, apartments, cabins, villas, and other accommodations.
Hosts on Booking.com pay commission fees based on the total value of their bookings. On average, Booking.com takes 15% off your charged price for all confirmed bookings made through their platform. However, the commission rate may vary depending on your location and cancellation policy and range from 10% to 25%.
You may want to check out our blog post to learn more about Booking.com’s pros and cons for hosts to determine whether it’s the right listing site for your vacation rental business.
Vrbo and Booking.com are excellent options for listing your Airbnb property and reaching a wider audience of travelers. If you opt for Hospitable, you can efficiently manage all your listings on these major booking websites from a single dashboard and never worry about juggling calendars, messaging, and cleaners across bookings.
All you need from a channel manager is here
TripAdvisor Vacation Rentals
The world’s largest travel guidance platform, TripAdvisor, boasts millions of travelers who visit the website daily to plan and book trips. It’s probably the first website that you think of when it comes to travel-related reviews.
However, it also features listings of vacation rental properties in various countries worldwide, ranging from chic apartments to cozy cottages and spacious villas, providing travelers with a wide range of options to choose from. In the past, Tripadvisor managed vacation rental bookings directly, but now it focuses on displaying listings from its booking partners, such as Vrbo, and travelers are redirected to partners’ websites to complete bookings.
Glamping Hub
Glaming Hub is an online booking platform offering a diverse range of luxury glamping properties worldwide. Although the core audience of this website is in the US, it’s also popular in the United Kingdom.
Glamping Hub targets adventurous travelers looking to escape to nature without sacrificing comfort and amenities. The platform currently features 33 different glamping categories, including pods, igloos, barns, caves, boats, safari tents, treehouses, villas, luxury log cabins, and even designer rentals and castles.
You can expect that you'll get most of your bookings from your listings on major platforms, such as Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com, as well as your direct booking website. Still, you may consider Glamping Hub as an additional booking channel for your vacation rental property if it offers luxury amenities and has direct access to nature.
Adding niche channels like Glamping Hub, Expedia, or Hipcamp will enable you to gain more exposure, connect with a broader audience, and increase your occupancy rates. And if you opt for Hospitable, our STR super app can help seamlessly sync calendars across your various booking platforms and prevent double bookings with iCal imports.
Watch the explainer video to learn how this Hospitable’s functionality works, and refer to our help article for more details.
Homestay
Homestay is a platform that connects travelers with local hosts who offer affordable accommodations in their homes, reminiscent of what Airbnb was when it first started. This site can be a good alternative to Airbnb in the UK if you want to rent out your spare room to tourists, international students, and professionals who wish to live with a local host and truly experience their destination.
Homestay now offers guests a selection of over 63,000 rooms in over 176 countries. Property owners can list their rooms for free. However, it's essential to remember that Homestay is a hosted experience, so you’ll be actively involved in making your guests feel welcome in your home and helping them immerse themselves in local life.
Coolstays
Coolstays attracts travelers seeking an extraordinary place to stay. The website features a selection of unique accommodations, including houseboats, treehouses, barns, castles, cool cottages, villas, and eco-lodges.
It can be an excellent option to list your UK property with “something different” about it. You’ll need to pay a subscription fee (annual, quarterly, or monthly) to showcase your property, and there will be no commission, so everything you’ll earn via Coolstays will be yours.
Snaptrip
It’s a UK-based vacation rental platform that offers a wide range of holiday properties across the country, including holiday cottages, log cabins, and apartments. The Snaptrip Group now owns over 18 websites and boasts of receiving more than 20 million visitors annually.
Property owners in the UK and Ireland who want to list their properties must complete a form specifying which sites they would like to list on. After you inquire, Snaptrip will respond within three business days and provide all of the necessary information you need to list with them.
If you decide to proceed, you’ll be given access to an online portal to set up your listing. Snaptrip doesn’t charge a commission or booking fee; you’ll only need to pay a listing fee.
Final Thought
Airbnb has revolutionized the hospitality industry, and it’s a trusted global platform, popular among travelers in the UK. However, the vacation rental market is constantly evolving, and numerous Airbnb alternatives offer UK hosts the opportunity to showcase their properties to a global audience.
If you want to attract more guests to your unique home, consider listing it on major booking platforms, such as Vrbo and Booking.com, as well as local and regional platforms that can help you tap into niche markets. Having a website that can help you build relationships with guests and drive repeat direct bookings is also essential.
You may also want to check out our blog article comparing a vacation rental metasearch engine HomeToGo vs. Airbnb.
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