With vacation rentals opening their doors throughout the Mid-Columbia and Uber now available across the Tri-Cities, it’s becoming easier than ever for visitors to connect with locals and seek out a unique, personalized travel experience.

Nearly 150 vacation rental properties are available in and around the Tri-Cities.

Tri-City tourism is big business, generating $50.7 million in local and state tax receipts in 2016. The area’s hotel industry is also robust, showing a 62.6 percent occupancy rate in 2017, a 7.4 percent increase over the previous year.

But more vacation-goers are turning to online home rental programs like Vacation Rental by Owner, or VRBO, Airbnb and HomeAway to find and book short-term rentals.

Ralph Erath of Richland said he was the only VRBO host in the Tri-Cities when he listed a standalone home in 2009. He started flipping and renting homes in Walla Walla and listing them through VRBO in 2005. He said he got the idea from his sister, who lives in Arizona.

“We started with a condo in Phoenix,” Erath recalled. “We purchased it together and rented it for a while with good success.”

Other homeowners turned part-time property entrepreneurs have caught onto the idea of capitalizing on the growing tourism market by leveraging property assets to make extra money.

A 2014 HomeAway survey revealed that, on average, their standalone properties are available 36 weeks out of the year and rent at a rate of $217 per night, resulting in an annual gross income of $27,360 for the owners.

LeeAnne Parrish of Kennewick, who rents rooms out of her home, said she and her husband use the extra income to do more home improvement projects.

Airbnb host Shawna Holland said it’s helped pay for her daughter’s college education.

“It was my husband’s idea,” admitted Holland, who had her doubts about the new enterprise when they posted their first listing in 2015. “I didn’t think there was a market here.”

That assumption was proved wrong when they had 13 stays in their daylight basement-turned-apartment in the first month.

They’ve since added a standalone home in Richland to their offerings, and hope to add more in the future. Both of their properties are typically 100 percent booked from the first of April to the end of October, and often reserved by repeat customers who request up to six months in advance.

Parrish said she had a similar experience when they listed two bedrooms in their Kennewick home; she was concerned that as new hosts with no reviews, it might be slow going initially. Their first booking came within just two days.

So, who’s coming to stay in Tri-Cities?

Holland reported that about 30 percent of their guests are wine lovers, another 30 percent come to visit family, attend a wedding, funeral or reunion, and the rest come for business or for sporting events.

Hosts located in-city report hosting more guests who are in town on multi-month work contracts at Hanford and other construction projects, or in the medical field.

Holland, whose primary home and apartment rental is off Dallas Road, said when they joined there were only seven houses listed on the rural fringe of Tri-Cities, but now there are about 25.

She said this is a testament to increasing volumes of tourism in the area, as well as the rapid growth of the vacation rental industry.

Rentals United, a “channel manager” software company which provides advertising services for lodging, reported in 2015 that the vacation rental industry is worth an estimated $85 billion and that 14 percent of travelers booked a private home or apartment for at least one trip that year.

Airbnb, founded in San Francisco in 2008, boasts more than four million listings in 65,000 cities and 191 countries worldwide.

Rival VRBO, which was the pioneer of the vacation rental industry, made its debut in 1995 with the birth of the internet.

The company was later acquired by a five-site merger of vacation rental-by- owner platforms, and became a subsidiary of HomeAway Inc. in 2006. Almost another decade later, Expedia bought out HomeAway.

Despite the merger, according to HomeAway’s website, there are now about one million properties available through its platforms across 190 countries.

Holland and Parrish said their choice to list through Airbnb was due to VRBO’s reputation of excluding properties in which the owner lives in the accommodation. Though this rule changed when VRBO/HomeAway was bought by Expedia, it seems not to have dulled Airbnb’s competitive edge.

Holland reported that despite her property’s location in an older neighborhood, it garners more bookings than the apartment.

“I think people prefer that privacy,” she said.

However, neither rental attracted additional bookings when simultaneously listed on VRBO for a period last fall. “We only got one bite in two months,” said Holland, who decided to stick with Airbnb exclusively after that.

Erath said VRBO is not as host-friendly as it used to be. He explained how if he refuses a short-term request to book, in favor of waiting for a longer-term guest to inquire, it negatively affects his rating.

“Expedia’s going to get their money one way or another,” he said, explaining that the declined short-term guest will probably just turn to Expedia to find the lowest priced hotel in the area.

He said VRBO’s rental process has become more cumbersome since Expedia took over and travelers are turning to other venues. “I depend a lot on repeat customers now—my business has dropped 90 percent,” said Erath, who used to receive three to four bookings per week and is now down to one to two per month.

As a result, Erath had to sell two of his three Tri-City properties and is considering taking his remaining property off VRBO and converting it into a long-term rental.

He said he considered switching to Airbnb, but just found more of the same problems developing on that platform.

Parrish and Holland both talked about the increasing cost of staying in Airbnbs, due to the cleaning fee policies that most hosts are now tacking onto their price. Hosts set this cost and it isn’t reflected in the nightly rate, making it more difficult for customers browsing listings to find the lowest price.

Parrish opts to roll cleaning into her all-inclusive $50 per night room rental fee. She explained how another listing might have a lower nightly rate, but might end up costing more than her accommodations due to the hidden cleaning fee.

“We’re here to give people a place of respite and comfort,” said Holland, who is also opposed to exorbitant cleaning fees and refuses to raise prices for peak season, holidays or events. She said she feels such moves defeat the point of Airbnb, and make it so an individual can book a standard hotel, often with more amenities, for the same price or less.

Erath said vacation rentals are still the way to go for couples traveling together who can split the cost.

Despite these growing pains as the vacation rental industry continues to evolve, feedback on the overall host experience was positive.

“We’ve met some really neat people from many different countries,” Holland said.

Erath said he likes “the idea of providing top-class accommodations … I’m a customer service evangelist.”