Articles tagged “homeaway”

If you have a company with multiple product lines and consumer strategies, you want a chairman like Barry Diller to have your back.

Three or four years ago, when Booking.com was trouncing Expedia quarter after quarter, you might have wondered why the Expedia CEO still had a job. Now he and Expedia-Trivago-Hotels.com-Travelocity-Orbitz-Wotif-HomeAway are on a big-time roll -- a rollup that's unprecedented in online travel.

From a financial perspective, charging a booking fee to travelers was the missing piece from HomeAway -- and the company telegraphed several months ago that it was coming. Charging travelers fees will enable HomeAway to lower commissions to vacation rental owners to be more competitive with Airbnb and Flipkey.

With more than one million paid listings in more than 190 countries, Expedia's pending acquisition of HomeAway is a game-changer in that it saves Expedia years of building up its own vacation rental supply in an increasingly important lodging sector.

With the relatively smallish Travelmob transaction, HomeAway is doubling down on its existing investments in Asia-Pacific.

HomeAway's acquisition of Dwellable looks like a classic employee grab to help with development of HomeAway's own apps. And having funding participation from a HomeAway board member at the time never hurts in getting the big company's attention.

Short-term rental hosts, in many cases, haven't become as adept as hotels in knowing how and when to change their average daily rates but you can bet that won't be the story for much longer.

TripAdvisor, with its hotel and restaurant reviews, hotel bookings and tours and activities, is a much more well-rounded travel site than the younger Airbnb at this stage. Still, TripAdvisor has some Airbnb envy, and wants to take advantage of the sea changes in the global lodging industry.

Dubai isn't all about 5-star hotels anymore. Now there are 3-bedroom apartments in Palm Jumeirah for $469 per night that should be suitable for a broader range of travelers.

There could be less than meets the eye in the new Kayak-HomeAway partnership. But even if that were true it wouldn't soften the speculation about a blockbuster deal for HomeAway.