Articles tagged “homeaway”

A lot of things are falling into place for HomeAway, and now it is set to really build a brand.

The entrance of Airbnb, TripAdvisor and HomeAway into the ranks of the heretofore online travel agency-dominated Travel Technology Association is a sign of the sharing-economy times, and will give the newbies added clout when the butt heads with local regulators.

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.

Vacation rentals and alternative types of accommodations is such a hot space that it is fairly clear that HomeAway is likely to be joining forces with a major player sooner rather than later. With a $3.2 billion market cap, HomeAway is relatively affordable.

The "little guys," in this case owners of a vacation rental property or two, feel powerless and at the mercy of the giant vacation rental sites. The sites have to balance the needs of the professional property managers and the individual owners and guess who is coming out on top.

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.

Who's going to catch HomeAway? TripAdvisor is going to give it a try, as it acquired the smallish VacationHomeRentals.com to its portfolio, but unlike HomeAway, TripAdvisor has a lot of other irons in the fire.

HomeAway is not about to be another Booking.com, but Google is going to get a new and large global customer when the vacation rental site ramps up its search engine marketing, probably next year.

HomeAway's pay-per booking model is picking up steam, given the relatively large numbers of listings to date, but the vacation rental company is definitely in transition mode with lots of uncertainty about the outcome.

Priceline could execute an expensive acquisition of HomeAway if it wants to, and is in a better position to do so than Expedia or any other travel brand.