HomeAway Quietly Launches Overhauled Owner-Guest Communications System, Expected Backlash
Skift Take
HomeAway's new communications' system was a year-and-a half in the making, and likely was very costly, but it was necessary not only to corral wayward owners, but to restore confidence in light of a phishing epidemic. HomeAway customers will be happy to know the company assembled a war room to deal with their backlash, but battle averted, for now.
For security reasons and to address vacation rental owners going rogue and abandoning the site to escape credit card processing fees for online bookings, HomeAway quietly launched a new closed-loop communications system -- and the company assembled a war room, ready for a backlash.
"I thought it was going to be a complete nightmare, to be honest," HomeAway CEO Brian Sharples told those assembled at the Citi 2014 Internet, Media and Telecommunications Conference in Las Vegas January 7.
"I thought there would be a pretty big backlash," Sharples said. "We assembled quite a war room when we launched this stuff."
HomeAway last month quietly launched the new system, which has all communications between individual owners using online booking and their prospective guests running through internal servers, on the HomeAway.com site, and plans to roll o
