Short-Term Rental and Vacation Rental News

Expedia partnered with HomeAway on vacation rentals last week. One day it is going to partner with or acquire a sharing economy company built in the Airbnb mold, depending how the market shakes out. When you are as big as Expedia, you can afford to sit back and see how things shape up.

By launching this new luxury site, HomeAway is leveraging existing assets and tweaking them a bit with a dose of curation. Given the rise of vacation clubs and the supposed boom in luxury travel, this move makes a lot of sense.

The presence of established players such as HomeAway and TripAdvisor, plus a market that isn't as addressable as it might appear, will make the vacation rental startup sector the next bubble.

If Expedia was worried about angering hotels by pushing into vacation rentals, the cat is now officially out of the bag. Another factor behind the Expedia-HomeAway deal is that Booking.com has been making inroads in the U.S. with its 356,000 properties, and Expedia is hungering for more supply.

Regardless of the growing pains, peer-to-peer services such as Airbnb are on track for dramatic growth. NYC and other cities are going to have to find ways to deal with it.

TripAdvisor isn't an online travel agency because it doesn't take flight or hotel bookings. But, given its desire to expand further into a solution for in-destination tours and activities, you can make the argument that it is a more well-rounded one-stop shop for travel than many of the travel booking sites.

The launch of TripConnect is a really big deal. In much the same way that Booking.com led the way in bringing on board apartment hotels, condos and villas, TripAdvisor will now enable that vast long-tail of smaller properties to participate and vie for direct bookings.

Airbnb's current stance would likely be much different if its path to an IPO was uncluttered by web of local and state laws that could trip it up.

The subpoena will likely be pared down before it is issued. Some big issues will be coming to a head in this probe, including whether an apartment rental by an individual renders the apartment a hotel that is subject to occupancy tax.

Airbnb is entering its first year with David Hantman in charge of figuring out its approach to the patchwork of laws that Airbnb largely ignores. Expect a smarter approach from the company as it tries to win more support and prep for an IPO.