garcia house vr cut the ties to vrbo / homeaway

Originally I published this on December 22 on our facebook page as well as to a Vacation Owners Rental Group.  I must be absolutely clear here:  We are NOT shutting our doors!!!  I'm working away at getting Garcia House VR up on quite a number of assorted listing sites (more on that another time) and, of course, the website is here too!  We're not going anywhere for years yet!  . . . .

"That's that. Our subscription with VRBO/HomeAway expired today. I anguished over what to do and how to handle this since February 2016 when they suddenly dropped the the big bomb of the service fee on us. I immediately felt this was to drive us out of business. Why should Expedia want us in business?? They want hotels with standard rates and not some unwieldy group of hodge-podge vacation rentals. Vacation Rentals are and were hurting the hotel industry. Simple.

They're doing a good job and they won another tiny battle but tiny battles add up. It was hard to make this decision and tears were even shed. For this first of two VR's we have, there was such anticipation and and anxiousness of what was to come when our advert originally went live. It was so exciting! We actually got bookings without even having pictures!! I loved VRBO and believed our relationship would carry long beyond today.

Both of our VR's our budget-conscious.

Luxury, huge and destination VRs will ride this out and do just fine but budget-conscious, Mom and Pop type of VRs will keep falling by the wayside. We simply can't compete when all these fees are added to the traveler or us. Let's also take a quick mention of the ever-bigger and ever-higher hoops they keep expecting us to jump through! OMGosh!!! It's like they've got a whip snapping at us now to do as they say or they'll yank our listing or penalize us. Are we children? It's atrocious.

It's like my wonderful friend betrayed me and I have to come to terms with it. It's not going to be easy but I will survive and I will get past it and I'll be better off in the end and I know that.
Six more months before the other subscription expires -- I so hope by then I'll be clicking my heels and yelling Good Riddance to this bully and most greedy company.
I'm not there quite yet but I've got to take the reins over my little business and property and stop their control."