HomeToGo Buys E-Domizil for $45 Million In Homes Strategy Shift
Photo Caption: Patrick Andrae, co-founder and CEO of HomeToGo, said the company is shifting from metasearch toward an integrated marketplace.
Skift Take
Other than at exception-to-the-rule Google, metasearch has been on a downward spiral in vacation rentals for years. HomeToGo is turning itself into a series of booking sites instead, which just might work in that holiday home sector.
HomeToGo is acquiring vacation rental booking site e-domizil for about $45 million (40 million euros) to accelerate its shift toward a marketplace strategy that may end up working for holiday homes, but has failed elsewhere in online travel.
Founded in 2014 as a vacation rental metasearch or holiday home comparison-shopping business that sends site visitors to third-party partners to finish making their reservations, Berlin-based HomeToGo has been moving toward a hybrid model combining what it calls "onsite" bookings and offsite metasearch referrals to partner sites over the past few years.
Co-founder and CEO Patrick Andrae said during HomeToGo's fourth quarter and full-year 2021 earnings announcement Thursday that the acquisition of e-domizil, which is based in Frankfurt, will accelerate HomeToGo's onsite strategy. That's the model fully in use by e-domizil, which has some direct relationships with holiday home property managers that HomeToGo doesn't have, an
