Articles tagged “vacation rentals”

The presence of established players such as HomeAway and TripAdvisor, plus a market that isn't as addressable as it might appear, will make the vacation rental startup sector the next bubble.

If Expedia was worried about angering hotels by pushing into vacation rentals, the cat is now officially out of the bag. Another factor behind the Expedia-HomeAway deal is that Booking.com has been making inroads in the U.S. with its 356,000 properties, and Expedia is hungering for more supply.

Expedia's focus will remain with hotels for the forseeable future, but this pilot partnership with HomeAway on vacation rentals is the very beginning of what could be a dramatic change.

Airbnb's current stance would likely be much different if its path to an IPO was uncluttered by web of local and state laws that could trip it up.

When the vacation rental site encourages you to eat like a local, they also mean you're going to need to cook and shop like one too.

The TripAdvisor CFO says the company has no intent of becoming an online travel agency. But, now that TripAdvisor has introduced Kayak-like hotel metasearch, the question looms whether TripAdvisor will make a large acquisition or two instead of sticking with its traditional penchant for travel startup bargain-hunting.

Venture capitalists are increasingly making bets that vacation homes and timeshares are a tremendous growth opportunity as an alternative to hotels.

Convergence is coming to the vacation and urban rental sector with more direct bookings happening online and sites cross-contaminating inventory. Expect a merger of markets and payment methods on all rental sites.

It looks like that supposed great divide between vacation rentals and Airbnb-style apartment rentals and shares isn't so immense. Or at least HomeAway will find out if it is cut out for the sharing economy.

HomeAway's transition to offering a pay-per-booking model, with some parallels to but not a carbon copy of Airbnb's, may be more difficult than HomeAway and investors expect.