Short-Term Rental and Vacation Rental News

Vacation and short-term rentals depend on one thing: Connecting homeowners with guests. Here's how innovative technology is making that easier and more efficient.

With the competition heating up among short-term rental platforms, price parity issues may increasingly come into play, as they once did in the hotel industry. But with short-term rentals, given the ever-shifting guest fee rates, the pricing rules will be difficult to enforce.

Brian Chesky's $120 million stock grant may rankle many, but he's pledging to contribute $100 million of it to a host endowment fund.

It's never any fun when companies are reluctant to speak ill of competitors. But, when it comes to wooing hosts, little Vrbo believes it needs to explicitly tell hosts what it can do that giant Airbnb can't. The pitch may be useful in attracting a segment of hosts.

Marriott has been in the vacation rental business for nearly two years, and few see it as a threat to the likes of Airbnb and Vrbo. Recent recruitment efforts for new listings and employees show the fledgling division is on track to be an integral part of future revenues for the world's largest hotel company.

Airbnb sees recruiting new hosts as vital to its future growth but it hasn't reversed a significant decline in its ranks. Macroeconomic trends will likely reverse the trend, but the competition to win hearts and listings is getting intense.

The blank check frenzy may be sweeping up companies such as Sonder that would otherwise have had to wait their turn to go public. It would certainly be an interesting comeback for the quasi-hotel company whose prospects were not looking particularly bright a year ago.

Join us every Friday for our informal Skift team conversations on Clubhouse, happening at 11am ET on Friday, April 2. This week we'll discuss shifts in the short-rentals landscape, Airbnb's road ahead, and what investors might find most compelling.

Midway through 2020, Expedia Group and its Vrbo short-term rental unit took the high road by not wanting to appear to be taking advantage of host anger at Airbnb's early-pandemic refund policies. But when your new host recruitment plan targets "superhosts," it's clear those calculations are long gone.

This deal cements Vacasa status as the largest full-service property manager for whole-home vacation rentals in the U.S. That makes it a rare pure-play bet on alternative accommodations for its private equity backers, which have prompted Vacasa to consolidate more of the sector.