What am I paying for? HomeAway Fees Explained

HomeAway is a company offering short-term rentals for travelers with listings from around the world. Travelers can book anything from an apartment to a beach home to a condo directly through the property owner. This company specializes in offering entire Homes and Apartments rather than shared spaces.

Fees for Property Owners

Property owners who want to rent their home have two available fee structures:

1. The first is an annual subscription fee and within that model you can choose one of two different fees depending on whether you want to allow online reservations.
2. The second is the paper booking model where you don’t have to pay the annual fee but they do charge you more for every individual booking.

Annual subscription fee model

As mentioned that there are two prices for the annual subscription. If you want to allow online booking, the cost is $349 per year. If you want people directly looking through you as the owner, the cost is $499 per year. The reason they charge you more if you don’t allow online bookings it’s because the company loses the service fees that it would have charged to travelers who booked online.

Pay-per-booking fee model

The pay per booking fee model takes 10% per transaction, which breaks down into a 2% International surcharge, a 3% credit card or ECheck processing fee, and a 5% Commission.

Fees for Travelers

When you book a vacation home the fee is between 6% and 12% of the total rental amount but, depending on the reservation it can be higher or lower.

Why did I get charged an extra fee after cancelling, what is it for?

If you cancelled a reservation, you might still see a charge. The owner is not able to waive a service fee unless the owner uses the cancellation refund feature because of a cancellation.

Are there other hidden fees I’m being charged for this that I’m not aware of?

Property Owners can hit you with additional fees based on the property such as cleaning fees or pet fees. It’s very important that you verify what extra fees you will be charged before you complete your booking.

Can I refute fees related to cleaning, pet, or other service fees?

As the traveler, you can try to go through the company to refute these charges but it likely won’t help you because they are things controlled by the property owners with whom you are working. If you decide to go for a property you should know ahead of time what extra service fees the property owner is charging and it should be explained before you finish payment. However, if it wasn’t, there are still options.

What can I do if I was incorrectly charged a fee?

If you were incorrectly charged a fee and have tried to fix it but to no avail you have two options.

The first is to go through a small claims court. With a small claims court you are responsible for sending a demand letter first explaining what the problem is and how you want the company to fix it, going to the courthouse to file the paperwork, officially serving the company, attending your court hearing, and paying any fees. However, not every case qualifies for a small claims court.

The second option is to use consumer arbitration. If your case doesn’t qualify for small claims court or that simply seems like a bit of a headache after what you’ve already been through, consumer arbitration is a great solution. It’s an option outlined in your user agreement and we make it easy with our online portal.