Home and Away Acquires Owners Direct

Evening,

Wow, I cant beleive it. U.S based Home and Away Inc have now purchased http://www.ownersdirect.co.uk/ which is their fourth holiday listing site acquisition in less than a year!! Read it officially here http://www.homeaway.com/index.cfm/tgt/od_press_release_100207

This means that they now own a whole host of holiday rentals sites inlcuding holiday-rentals.co.uk, vrbo.com, abritel, cyberrentals and many others.

My thoughts on this are how is this going to affect the online holiday rentals market? And more importantly from an owners point of view how is this going to affect you?

As a lot of you know that Direct Holiday Lets is still a relatively young site as it was only established in early 2007, but already we have almost 200 properties listed which is great(big thanks to all you owners).

My main concern though for an owner of a properties listed on one of these "mega sites" is "Will they ever be seen??". Afterall, when a holidaymaker has the choice of hundreds if not thousands of properties in there chosen country or region how do you know whether yours is going to get the exposure you want and not lost in that proverbial haystack?

I think that having too many properties listed on a listing site can also have an effect on the holidaymakers whole search experience.

We already know that a lot of the big sites have special deals for placing your property further up the listings or making them more prominent on the site but WHAT NEXT with these "mega listing sites"? Well, you know about Google Adsense dont you and cost per click? Yes Mr and Mrs owner, have your property listed across our 500 sites pay per click style!!

Think im kidding? It could be the only way you will be able to have your property consistently viewed on these sites in the near future. Pay more dear owner and someone will actually see your rental property!!

Im proud to say that Direct Holiday Lets still only costs 35 GBP per year for the first property and 25 for each subsequent property. Now, that I think is great value! Oh and your property will be found!

Just a thought!

Rob