Next to destination, price is one of the most important factors for travelers when choosing a vacation rental. For this reason, HomeAway includes a structured rate table in each listing to make it easy for travelers to find and compare properties by price.

If you do not currently use the structured rental rates table, you may be missing out on potential renters.

Here's why:

1) Structured rates are sortable. HomeAway now allows travelers to sort their search results by price, number of bedrooms and special offers, to help them find your property easily. When a traveler sorts properties by price, properties that do not have structured rates (entered in to the table on the owner dashboard) will automatically move to the bottom of search results. Please update your rates table to ensure your property is displayed where it belongs when a traveler sorts by price.

2) Rates show up on the search results. If provided in the rates table, your nightly, weekly, and monthly rates show up on your search property summary. Rates are displayed as ranges based on the minimum and maximum prices listed in your rates table. If no rates are entered, nothing displays in the summary. Many travelers look for these rates in the search results when perusing the site.

3) Travelers can easily compare properties with structured rates. Look at these four properties.

If a traveler knows which dates they would like to travel and how long they would like to stay, they can easily compare these two properties to see which is the most economical.

Property #1: Completed Rates Table

Property #2: Completed Rates Table

This property lists rate in the free text field, but does not use the rates table and does not give specific dates for each rate. This makes it very difficult for travelers to compare two properties.

Property #3: No Rates Table

This property, on the other hand, lists no rates whatsoever and is incomparable (and not in good way).

Property #4: No Rates

Since rates on HomeAway are entered by date, once the date has passed, the rates no longer show up. Therefore, if all of the dates in your rates table have passed, you will be left with no rates (like the property listing above.)