Lay My Hat

Hi all,

It seems Wimdu, (another) rentals webpage is going to start operating in Portugal.
I have been contacted by them via email for advertising my flats with them. Their commission is acceptable but I never heard of them and it would be most useful to get some feedback from other LMT users...
There are a few post in the general forum regarding Wimdu but most kind of old.
Has anyone fresh and direct news of Wimdu?

Thanks in advance

Hi,

I was also contacted by them by email and decided to give them a shot. The site is very poor and when they uploaded my apartments there was lot of mistakes. I had to redo almost everything.
For me the main problem is that we don't have calendars working so it's not possible to define the prices for season. I have complained about that and was informed that the site was still under construction and all those features would be available.
My apartments are online since the beginning of last week and I've received several inquiries. Unfortunately most of them where from people asking stupid questions and I'm starting to believe that their target is Backpackers which I'm not really interested in. I still haven't received any booking and honestly I don't expect to receive one in a near future. Let's see what will happen.
Hope I was helpfull
Kind Regards
Ana

Very interesting because that is my experience too.
I have decided to give it a try too and I find their webpage far from attractive and from user friendly.
Appart the calendar thing, I cannot find a way to change the order of the pictures (no reply to my request of clarification neither).
Price showed is for 2 people in low season and high season has just started.
Answering requests is not always easy (looks like the webpage has several bugs).
I am having several requests too but all for a large flat that accomodates 8 people. Tend to agree they are focusing on the backpackers market, which is not mine neither.
Let us wait and see!

I got a call from them today and I was busy with my old Mum taking her shopping so asked him to call back. He asked my email address so he could 'send me some info'.

I got home to find an email saying:

Hi Cindy ,

Welcome to Wimdu! Your account has been created - now you can start discovering amazing new places to stay around the world, and make money with your extra space.

Your next adventure awaits!

I checked on Wimdu and yes, I'm there, my whole advert and photos lifted from another site! I didn't ask them to do an ad for me!

This sort of thing really P**sses me off. So now I've got to spend time checking their t&Cs etc (which I don't have time to do) or tell them to take it OFF! Which I doubt they will do.

They also have created my advertises, but they had my permission because I told them I was not waisting my time with them...
If you use google calendar to control your reservations or any other ical than you won't have too much trouble. You just have to connect the calendars and they are always updated. You just have to answer your emails

I hope I've helped
Kind Regards

I signed up with Wimdu last October and up to now I've received a booking for June, from England. I can honestly say that these four months didn't count that much, because this is the ultra-low season for us. The beauty with Wimdu is that once filled out you no longer have to think about it. Not only you can keep its calendar synced with an external iCal from recognized sites, but it can also read handwritten .ics files from your own website, as in my case.

For now, I cannot speak ill of it

I've just had a look at wimdu, and it seems too good to be true!

The site looks nice and clean, and it claims to be 100% free to list, they say they have checked every property, and that owners are insured for up to E500,000 damages.

So how on earth do they make their money?

Is it just me:

I get a feeling that this site is a very amateur clone of Airbnb.

Their target owners are people who have never rented before, but may have a spare room in their apartment and want to make a but of spare cash but have no clue on how to go about it.

They are very opaque about how they make money. I'm sure they must top up your rates and take it from the guests somehow, but I'm blowed if I could find that anywhere on their website. Can you? Why is their source of income so well hidden?

e-richard wrote:Is it just me:

I get a feeling that this site is a very amateur clone of Airbnb.

Their target owners are people who have never rented before, but may have a spare room in their apartment and want to make a but of spare cash but have no clue on how to go about it.

They are very opaque about how they make money. I'm sure they must top up your rates and take it from the guests somehow, but I'm blowed if I could find that anywhere on their website. Can you? Why is their source of income so well hidden?

Wimdu works on a fee per booking. They charge a percentage both on the host and on the tenant.
Nothing new. It is the way Airbnb works as well for instances.
My personal experience is that they deliver much less than competitors like Airbnb and Housetrip.
In any case no investment in advance, nothing lost.

FadoFlats wrote:Wimdu works on a fee per booking. They charge a percentage both on the host and on the tenant.

Oh yes, I believe you and I'm not surprised.
But why is it so well hidden?