Short-Term Rental and Vacation Rental News

Airbnb is going with huge brand marketing campaigns in 2021 to take hosting mainstream. But when travel recovers and rivals turn on their performance marketing on Google, will Airbnb de-prioritizing search engine marketing come back to haunt it?

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said what the company's customers really want are unique stays and experiences offered by individual hosts. That means expanding Airbnb's hotel business doesn't seem to be the priority it once was. And, oh yeah, the proliferation of corporate hosts like Sonder and others, doesn't mesh with what Chesky believes travelers desire.

Savvy consumers used to searching for hotel stays and seeing how rates change based on alternative dates may be disappointed in this Airbnb feature. That's because it doesn't do precisely that for a specific property. Still, the tweak is a nice twist in short-term rental trip planning.

In this Skift Online Travel and Distribution Summit video we hear from Julie Brinkman, CEO of Beyond Pricing, about how short term rental owners, managers, and key stakeholders can optimize their short term rental distribution strategy for the rapidly changing travel environment of 2021 and beyond.

Airbnb felt the heat in 2019, pre-Covid, when it leaned into performance marketing on Google, and didn't get the results it hoped to achieve. In its first major campaign of 2021, Airbnb is mounting a global branding advertising blitz on YouTube (owned by Google) and television in five countries. The campaigned is geared toward expanding the ranks of hosts.

Expedia has no plans to spin off whole-home site Vrbo following Airbnb's blockbuster IPO. Instead, the company is doubling down on expanding the site through its various channels amid a strong pandemic vacation rental market.

Airbnb is smart to focus on its core accommodations' business, if that is indeed what it is really doing. The company has time to deal with all of the other stuff, from flights to hotels and experiences, once a real-life travel recovery has a pulse.

The coronavirus has hit Europe hard, but the region will continue to receive accolades as the largest destination and largest source market for many years to come. Let's brush up on our understanding of European travelers, and see how COVID-19 has impacted their travel patterns.

In a push-and-pull scenario, short-term rentals are even more of a mainstream option in 2025 despite cities around the world increasingly regulating their growth.

Whether it is Alaska Airlines putting unruly passengers on no-fly lists, Marriott defunding politicians who sought to decertify a fair presidential election, or Airbnb kicking hate group members off its platform, parts of the travel industry are trying to fight back against right-wing terror.