Articles tagged “homeaway”

There are holes in the arguments of both the City of San Francisco and HomeAway. The new short-term rental law would indeed put HomeAway in the new position of collecting taxes from renters, and HomeAway could find a way in its business model to make that happen. Still, the new law does appear to favor Airbnb, which already collects fees from guests.

Airbnb's business model (3% commissions) is more host-friendly than HomeAway's (10% commissions). It's good news, except that it runs contrary to all the company's marketing messaging.

It's smart for HomeAway to give its users more reasons to use its mobile app to improve their local experience with rides, food, and local attractions.

Not that HomeAway isn't above doing these sorts of things, but Airbnb's lobbyists sure were adept at getting a seat at the table in San Francisco.

It's a fascinating time in vacation rentals, and not just because of yesterday's news that HomeAway is suing San Francisco because of the law its city council let Airbnb write.

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.

The HomeAway-Expedia partnership is an important milestone for HomeAway, in particular, marking a new era of expanded distribution that starts with Expedia.com in the U.S., but will likely appear in other places, as well.

While it is exciting to see the consolidation happening in the online travel booking space, the lack of new scaled startups to challenge the biggies remains a worry for anyone. And possibly consumers as well.

It remains to be seen what Booking.com does with its new Villas.com and how heavily it gets promoted, but Booking.com clearly is committed to the vacation rental sector, and will likely make many more moves. HomeAway has to do much more to get its digital act together.