Trivago Looks to HomeAway Vacation Rentals to Regain Some Mojo
Photo Credit: This vacation home rental in Surat Thani, Thailand, has ocean views and a private pool. Properties like this are now appearing on Trivago, which formerly was a hotel-only search site. HomeAway
Skift Take
This move could be a modest win-win for Trivago and HomeAway, which both fall within the broader Expedia Inc. orbit. But Airbnb and Booking.com remain fierce competitors for rental search, with Google waiting in the wings.
Trivago rose to prominence as a website to search for hotels — and just hotels. But the Expedia-backed company is expanding into vacation rentals. It's all part of a bigger trend which has metasearch sites and online travel agencies blurring their differences and adding a hodgepodge of accommodation types.
Trivago now reveals that it has begun testing searches for vacation rental listings from HomeAway, -- which is the vacation rental brand owned by Expedia Inc. and the largest rival to Airbnb outside of China. Trivago has been testing vacation rentals for some users and destinations in Germany, Italy, Canada, the UK, and the U.S. It plans to slowly add more HomeAway inventory over the next year.
The move is not a surprise. Since acquiring HomeAway in 2015, Expedia has added up to 95,000 HomeAway properties to 28 of its points of sale as of the end of S
