Articles tagged “vacation rentals”

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.

The homesharing giant is only partnering with websites that attract at least a million visitors a month. Airbnb is calculating that the revenue upside would be worth the brand sacrifice that comes with affiliate marketing.

Vacasa spent years building a business before venture capital came along for the ride at this level. Its fate now depends on how well it executes the sometimes-cumbersome task of on-boarding new properties at scale, and whether it can avoid hubris.

This makes perfect, if long overdue, business sense for Airbnb. But can Airbnb really make sure these tools won’t be abused by commercial operators running illegal hotel businesses in cities like San Francisco or New York?

It may soon be possible through Hyatt to earn hotel-loyalty program elite status by staying in a vacation rental.

Booking.com has long experimented with vacation rental inventory. Its inventory has been growing rapidly, but vacation rentals still remain a small part of Booking.com's business.

In tests involving about 7,000 property listings in Europe, Google is checking if travelers would like to use it to search and book vacation rentals. Online travel rivals should be on the alert.

For years, Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia's HomeAway, and TripAdvisor have been scrambling for market share in vacation rentals to drive consolidation. But TripAdvisor says it is now focused on "quality" listings, rather than quantity.

In other words, there’s plenty of opportunity out there for third parties or the big players like HomeAway and Airbnb to capitalize on offering more ancillary guest services for professionally managed vacation rentals.

Booking.com grew its vacation rental supply at a hyper clip, 51 percent in the first quarter. But vacation rentals are different than hotels, where the company has excelled, and the same formula might not be a slam dunk.