Articles tagged “vacation rentals”

Both Sonder and Vacasa need to clean up customer service issues, but they are probably not so acute as to give investors much pause.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky presented his vision for a dramatically changed travel industry of the future. The issue that no one can answer right is how enduring some of these trends will be.

With Marriott Bonvoy making loyalty inroads, and subscription programs having a moment, Expedia Group is consolidating its far-flung loyalty programs in a move that coincides with its strategy to simplify its operations.

The vacation rental market is big enough to accommodate multiple players with digital and operational savvy, including both Vacasa and VTrips.

Vacasa has reached a remarkable milestone with its plan to go public, having parlayed the booming interest in vacation rentals during the pandemic. Yet the full-service property management sector is crowded, and going public is only the start of the journey.

While climate change and the pandemic clearly ratcheted up travelers' concerns about factors other than price, are we at the point that Airbnb will compete against Vrbo, and Booking will battle Expedia over which companies have the lighter carbon footprints? That would indeed be progress.

HomeToGo's move to go public is a validation of the booming vacation rental sector. It's also a rare accomplishment for a German-based startup. Europe had been playing a catchup game with Silicon Valley, but no longer.

Vrbo was leaving money on the proverbial table by sticking with whole homes. That seems to be changing, but it remains to be seen how far Vrbo will meander into hotels and other inventory types.

In Skift's top stories this week, Hawaii's domestic U.S. tourism roared back, Accor's CEO said the biggest hotel investment bargains are yet to come, and HomeToGo could go public in a blank-check-company deal.

At a time when some big hotel brands seek to increase average daily rates, Booking Holdings' expansion of its Genius loyalty and discounting program could hurt that effort. Some individual properties, hungry for increased exposure as they compete with vacation rentals and other hotels, will welcome the move.