CEO Interview: Why Wyndham Is Going After Urban Rentals
Photo Credit: A street in Chelsea, London. Wyndham has invested in Veeve, which offers upmarket properties in the UK's capital. Flickr / Cristian Bortes
Skift Take
This has been the year that Wyndham stepped up its interest in urban rentals. It still lags behind Airbnb in terms of the overall numbers but is banking on its tag-line of "peer-to-peer plus" winning over potential hosts and travelers.
Having steadily built up a dominant position in the more traditional side of vacation market, Wyndham Vacation Rentals has turned its attention to the fast-growing city breaks sector.
The recent acquisition of German-based Wimdu and the purchase of a stake in upmarket specialist Veeve gives Wyndham much more firepower in an area of the holiday market that has grown in popularity.
CEO Gail Mandel says the move into urban rentals is not strictly a change in strategy but rather a continuation of an existing policy to offer a broad range of properties to consumers.
“We know that there's an increasing trend for travelers, that they're combining a resort destination vacation with an urban stay. People are doing those combination trips where they may stay four nights in a Tuscan villa, but then they want to go and stay three nights maybe in Rome,” she says.
“Those are the type of changing trends that we stay on top of in order to ensure that we're meeting the needs of our co
