Spunky Vrbo Is Outpacing Airbnb in Listings Growth

Online Travel This Week

There’s something happening here — In the arms race for stockpiling listings and presumably new hosts in a hot short-term rental market in parts of the world, the much smaller Vrbo is adding vacation rental listings in 2021 much faster than market leader Airbnb.

Expedia’s Vrbo, which focuses on whole homes, saw its total listings increase 21.1 percent to 1.93 million in April compared to January 2021, according to new statistics from AirDNA. When it came to active listings, or those with at least one booking, Vrbo saw a 9.9 percent jump to 1.02 million.

You can quibble with AirDNA’s numbers, but they show a clear trend. Officially, Vrbo.com states it offers “2+ million whole homes,” as does its most recent financial filing.

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On the other hand, during the same period, from January to April 2021, Airbnb’s total listings increased just 1.13 percent to 7.13 million while its active listings nudged upward just 1 percent to 5.49 million. Airbnb has stated publicly that its listing counts have been “stable.”

For context, though, Vrbo’s active listings fell much harder than Airbnb’s during the course of the pandemic. While Airbnb’s active listings grew 9.6 percent in the last 12 months, according to AirDNA, Vrbo’s dropped 11 percent.

“The search for new hosts is heating up and in April the combined supply of Airbnb and Vrbo reached 1.5 million in the U.S. — even surpassing pre-pandemic peaks,” said AirDNA Vice President of Research Jamie Lane in a statement.

U.S. urban markets such as New York, Los Angeles, and Boston have each seen a more than 25 percent decline in listings, AirDNA stated.

It’s interesting to note that only 52 percent of Vrbo’s total listings have received a booking so some of its listings growth appears to be not impactful — but they could be later.

“Both platforms deal with a significant number of listings that get added to the platform, but aren’t actively accepting bookings and many of those are cross-listed on both platforms,” Lane said. “It just makes up a larger percentage of Vrbo’s total listings.”

Is it the law of large numbers or maybe Airbnb’s over-exposure to urban markets and a wider footprint in locked-down Europe that has led to its sluggish listings’ growth?

Or perhaps the reason has to do with a measure of host displeasure with Airbnb in the wake of its decision early in the pandemic to unilaterally provide cancellation refunds to guests, leaving hosts’ coffers nearly empty? Or maybe Vrbo’s aggressive U.S. marketing campaign earlier this year is paying off.

Then again, could Airbnb’s branding campaign on TV and video be falling flat?

The host and listings’ arms race is a focal point for virtually every company in the sector. For Airbnb, which decided coming out of the pandemic to at least temporarily abandon its plans to offer flights and to invest heavily in hotel supply, adding listings and hosts is integral to its growth prospects. And Airbnb is newly focusing on attempting to support individual hosts.

The two companies have been engaged in a tit for tat about which platform enables hosts to make more money. Vrbo has been actively wooing Airbnb super hosts, and recent add campaign explicitly trashes Airbnb. One Vrbo add states: “If you only list your vacation rental on Airbnb you might get a few people,” the narrator says. “But if you also list it on Vrbo you’ll get VRBO families who book bigger places like yours. Your dream guests await. Become a Vrbo host today.”

Some hosts are apparently listening — but in the world of short-term rental hosts, signing up for Vrbo does not necessarily mean you are abandoning Airbnb.

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