Skift Take
These are early days, but when a major hotel provider such as Booking.com diversifies into vacation rentals, everyone should take notice.
There's a new vacation-rental seller, Booking.com, in the market as the world's largest lodging provider has added hundreds, if not several thousand, vacation homes and apartment hotels to its portfolio of nearly 262,000 properties over the last few months.
Vacation-rental kingpin HomeAway has long argued that apartment-share maven Airbnb is not a competitor because it attracts different customers.
But HomeAway and other vacation-home companies should watch out for Priceline's Booking.com creeping up on them in the wings.
Booking.com, without fanfare and almost clandestinely, has been slipping vacation rentals, including professionally managed properties, into its lodging results.
For example, the following is a screenshot of a Booking.com listing for the Interhome Holiday House Carlo, a 2-bedroom villa, just outside Villasimius, I
