Interview: HomeAway CEO on Big Players Acquiring Vacation Rental Companies
Photo Credit: HomeAway co-founder and CEO Brian Sharples. HomeAway
Skift Take
In the current M&A environment, HomeAway is both the pursued and the pursuer. And all of this takes place as HomeAway becomes an even more attractive acquisition target because it is getting aggressive and ahead of schedule, expecting a majority of its listings to be bookable online within two years.
Editor’s Note: Skift is publishing a series of interviews with online travel CEOs talking about the Future of Travel Booking, and the evolving habits and device preferences of travel consumers. Check out all the interviews as they come out here.
HomeAway is merely trying to dominate the global vacation rental marketplace, but the large market cap companies, including Expedia, TripAdvisor, the Priceline Group, and Alibaba have set their sights on global domination of the entire travel marketplace.
That's the view of HomeAway co-founder and CEO Brian Sharples, who tells Skift that vacation rentals "is the number two category in accommodations [and] then you have to suspect that some of those players are going to be eyeballing a consolidation there."
"Well, I think these are interesting times for sure because you have a combination of a lot of M&A activity in the Internet sector in general and travel in specific," Sharples says. "Coupled with that you have some very big ma
