Homelidays Reviews 332

I am an owner, and I have recently discovered that homelidays has not passed on any of my rental income for 1 whole year - since last summer in fact (so they can't use the Covid excuse). I have eventually been paid but have had no compensation or explanation.

Avoid at all costs, this is a scam organization. Been trying to get my cancellation refund for three months now. Several hours of emailing and contacting the helpdesk has only yielded apologies. I cancelled on time and was promised full refund. After three months I have yet to receive my several hundreds of euros. I am considering legal action. Avoid this company at all costs

As an owner, I have been listing my property on the original Homelidays site since 2009 and initially it met with great success in attracting rentals.
Homelidays.com renter response has fallen markedly since Homeaway Group/Expedia acquired Homelidays more than 2 years ago. Listing fees were increased, new booking/service fees have been introduced, all of which are taken by Homelidays. Owners have no control or input to these changes and receive nothing from these additional charges now demanded and paid to Homelidays by renters.
Over this time my Homelidays enquiries and subsequent bookings have dwindled to next to nothing (from full in summer, to only 2 over the entire year in 2017). The rental costs have increased due to these new fees and are now less attractive. Renters are either resisting the increase or must be booking elsewhere.
One other very obvious reason is that back in 2009 there were just over 200 properties listed on Homelidays in the town of our listing. After combining listings on multiple sites now owned by Homeaway Group, on Homelidays site alone for our same town there are over 1,000 properties now listed, an increase of over 500%. We are assured by Homelidays we can gain higher list ranking (and enquiry level) by buying other "add-ons" and activating "Instant Booking".
It's true it improved my ranking and placed it closer to the first pages of Homelidays search result for my town, but this has done nothing to improve the number of bookings I've received. I have upgraded the property, not increased my rents in 9 years and previously received excellent reviews. The model that was once so successful for us has been broken and we are left powerless.
I am now in a very difficult situation. The past bookings proceeds I used to help cover my owner's costs have all but evaporated. I shall need to sell my property in 2018. Have other owners had the same shared experience with the new business model now in use at Homelidays, or have I just been out of luck and others have enjoyed positive outcomes?

they lie, and cheat..... they take money from the renters and do not pay the owners.....
do not book with them, do not work with them

I have been using Homelidays as an owner, and was until recently satisfied by their services. Then two things happened that made me lose my trust and that showed appalling lack of professionalism from their part:

1) My listing was not visible online: I did a random search for my listing, since bookings and contacts were pretty low, and was flabbergasted to see that my property was nowhere to be found online. I asked my husband to look it up too, from a different computer and IP, and he could not find it either. When I contacted their customer service, I was pretty much told that this was impossible, despite me giving them a printed screen of my search, and that they could not justify or do anything else to help me.
2) In January, I chose to list my property on Homelidays and paid a substantial annual subscription, so that my guests would NOT have to pay a commission. Either way, I could have gotten my ad for free on AirBNB and TripAdvisor. In April, Homelidays unilaterally announced they would start charging guests a fee of 8% (!) from June 2016 – peak season for most of the property owners. This was done without leaving me an option to get a refund of my subscription and without further justification. This is appalling and disgusting and it sure means that I will never be using Homelidays services again, and I will not desist from my right to get a refund as they did not obey their contractual obligations to provide my paid listing for free to my guests.