Roomorama.com

by Emma

Roomorama was founded in 2009, and is originally based out of Singapore with new headquarters in New York city. And over the past few years, they have successfully grown to over 60,000 properties, in over 4,000 locations across the world!

Already generating some 1.5M visitors a month only 5 years after it’s launch (according to thisstat.com), Roomorama is now one of the fastest growing vacation rental websites in the world.

Features
100% free to list!
Hosts keep 100% of the money from their booking, making Roomorama a great choice for people with room to spare. You can list your properties for free as well, and benefit from social media services as well as the review system in order to promote their properties. Anything from rooms, to homes, to villas can be rented out, though the site does seem to cater to both business class and thrifty travellers.

Property ranking factors
Wether or not you choose to use the instant booking feature, the ranking of your listings is based on your response time. And the website encourages hosts to respond to every request, even if it’s only to decline.

For property managers
There are many property managers using Roomorama.com to handle multi-unit listings. And their interface is probably one of the best for multi-unit properties out there. Managers can easily add multiple units into the same group, respond to booking requests, and accept payments, all within the same account.

Host Protection
Roomorama offers a its host a unique kind of protection, by giving you the full name of anyone applying to visit your property. This allows you to complete a background check on your expected guest, and cancel the reservation if need be. Roomorama itself on offering a safe community that promotes accountability.

“Shout Out”
Roomoram offers a “Shout Out” feature lets travellers post requests for potential hosts to contact them and offer their availabilities. A unique feature that gives eager vacation rental owners a fighting chance to actively solicit bookings from very willing travellers.

What travellers are saying

The good
Roomorama offers awesome features for travellers as well as hosts. The streamlined secure payment system requires that the guest successfully check in before the host gets paid, so the success of the booking is partially determined by the guest. They also have a “Shout Out” feature lets travellers post requests for potential hosts to contact them and offer their availabilities. Not only does this drastically cut down on search time, but it often speeds up the booking process with quicker confirmations. Roomorama also has partnerships with local businesses that support their “Perks and Promotions” program. With this program, travellers can find discounted services like car rentals, laundry, as well as many others, making it truly an all-inclusive way to plan a trip.

Last but not least, Roomorama also has a great referral system that allows anybody to make money by referring hosts. The referrer gets 10% of the booking fee, for every guest who successfully completes a booking.

The bad
Because Roomorama is a marketplace site, and just like any other site like it, misrepresentation can be a problem. But with that said, they do offer 24/7 customer service, which is hard to find in this industry. The review and referral system are meant to create a safe and secure way to book properties, but as with anything, there are always bad apples.

All in all, there really isn’t much negative feedback about Roomorama, except for their somewhat confusing cancellation policies;

The Booking Process
We headed over to Roomorama.com and typed in where we were going, our dates and the number of guests. The two of us chose to use Roomorama for a 1-night stay in Melbourne so that the commute for Kieron’s first day at work would be non-existent and we could enjoy some of the city’s best eats and activities such as ice-skating.

Overall, there is very little negative feedback about Roomorama, on either side of the booking process. Travellers love using it, and their number of active users is constantly growing. Thus making it a great new option vacation rental owners who want to advertise their properties. But the real kicker is this; if their average traveller books for 9 nights or longer and spends $1,000 or more per booking, that’s more than double the industry average! And considering it’s 100% free to list your properties, there’s no doubt that Roomorama should be the next vacation rental website to add to your advertising portfolio.

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