Short-Term Rental and Vacation Rental News

Spain needs to balance regulating the black-market economy with making it easier to start a business or keep one running.

With the U.S. hotel industry performing well, it is losing some business from the sharing economy, but there isn't a lot of hurt yet. That could come later.

Trivago's new shared-room search reflects the born-again trendiness of hostels -- which are no longer called youth hostels -- and apartment shares. Booking.com and Kayak already have it, and others will add it.

In startup land, B2B companies providing services to the vacation rental and apartment-sharing industry are hot, hot, hot.

TripAdvisor isn't exactly a wild-eyed daredevil, but the fastest growing category on its Flipkey accommodation site is apartment rentals, a category that flirts with illegality in large, urban markets like New York.

The claim that Airbnb has taken some demand away from major hotel groups is indisputable, but the significance and depth of its long-term impact on the industry is yet to be determined.

With requests narrowed down to satisfy the judge, Airbnb will need to make new arguments to battle the subpoena.

A more narrowly tailored request from the Attorney General will strip away some of the fishing expedition elements and focus on the information it does have from the data dive.

It remains to be seen what Booking.com does with its new Villas.com and how heavily it gets promoted, but Booking.com clearly is committed to the vacation rental sector, and will likely make many more moves. HomeAway has to do much more to get its digital act together.

Until the judge rules, there is going to be a great deal of activity from Airbnb's PR team, as well as its 'grassroots' group, Peers.