Skift Take
It took years of hemming and hawing for Expedia to decide to sign a vacation rental distribution deal with HomeAway. Now Expedia still can't decide if it really wants to go through with it.
Expedia's partnership with HomeAway to sell HomeAway's vacation rentals on Expedia.com has been such a dud after more than a year of testing that at times it is really difficult, if not impossible, to find any evidence of it.
After hearing Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's noncommital assessment last week about the role of HomeAway's vacation rental inventory on Expedia.com, we went looking for some of the listings yesterday in vacation markets such as Orlando, Aspen, and Phoenix and couldn't find any.
We asked HomeAway to point us to some of the listings on Expedia.com and HomeAway sent us a screenshot of what HomeAway's presence on Expedia.com looks like -- when it is there.
As you can see in the screenshot below of one of the latest experimental incarnations of HomeAway vacation rentals on Expedia.com, the vacation rental listings don't run down the page as hotel results do. Instead users would have to click on the single grid labeled "Vacation Rental" and branded "HomeAway" to finally get a glimpse of the 333 properties in Hilton Head,
