Interview: HomeAway CEO on Big Players Acquiring Vacation Rental Companies
Skift Take
In the current M&A environment, HomeAway is both the pursued and the pursuer. And all of this takes place as HomeAway becomes an even more attractive acquisition target because it is getting aggressive and ahead of schedule, expecting a majority of its listings to be bookable online within two years.
Editor’s Note: Skift is publishing a series of interviews with online travel CEOs talking about the Future of Travel Booking, and the evolving habits and device preferences of travel consumers. Check out all the interviews as they come out here.
HomeAway is merely trying to dominate the global vacation rental marketplace, but the large market cap companies, including Expedia, TripAdvisor, the Priceline Group, and Alibaba have set their sights on global domination of the entire travel marketplace.
That's the view of HomeAway co-founder and CEO Brian Sharples, who tells Skift that vacation rentals "is the number two category in accommodations [and] then you have to suspect that some of those players are going to be eyeballing a consolidation there."
"Well, I think these are interesting times for sure because you have a combination of a lot of M&A activity in the Internet sector in general and travel in specific," Sharples says. "Coupled with that you have some very big market cap players like Expedia and TripAdvisor and Priceline and now, oh by the way, probably Alibaba that all have their mind set on global travel dominance."
"But it is unlikely to think that one of those players wouldn't want to get more aggressive and develop a competitive advantage in the space," Sharples adds.
This indeed a very compelling moment in time for HomeAway as certain things are speeding up and others are slowing down, including HomeAway's usually very aggressive merger and acquisition activities, which are at a lull in terms of agreeing to acquire something because "value expectations have gotten a little bit out of whack," Sharples says.
On the other hand, Sharples says HomeAway is aggressively prodding vacation rental owners to enable online booking to the extent that he believes a majority of HomeAway's listings will be online-bookable within two years -- and that's a much faster pace than the company previously expected.
Skift spoke with Shaprles about the future of travel booking in vacation rentals, its new Expedia distribution partnership, the rapid advance of mobile traffic, and the M&A climate. An edited portion of the interview follows:
Skift: I think over the years HomeAway has acquired about 30 companies. There hasn't been much acquisition activity on your part so far this year. Are you guys exhausted? Why the change?
Brian Sharples: Well, we are always exhausted because of the business we are in, period [laughter]. With res
