Short-Term Rental and Vacation Rental News

If Airbnb is successful with Airbnb Plus, it will ensure that alternative accommodations are no longer seen as an alternative. But making it a success will be easier said than done.

More consumers than ever are using vacation rentals. But as the line with hotels blurs and the industry enter a new growth phase, it faces unique challenges in delivering the hospitality guests expect. Technology will be key to providing an elevated guest experience and will help determine who sees the most success.

There's a new generation of property managers trying to bring hotel-like professionalism and scale to the vacation rental market. Their tech chops will play a large role in determining if they succeed or fail.

Vacation rentals are grappling with how to meet and exceed guest expectations across a fragmented market. As the industry grows, this challenge only gets tougher. A new generation of fast-evolving technologies could be part of the solution.

Can Greeley do for Airbnb Homes what he did with Amazon Prime? And if yes, is that, ultimately, a good thing? Is his appointment a sign that Airbnb is moving even further away from hospitality and gravitating that much closer to just being like any other massive online travel giant?

When will the other big hotel companies like Marriott and Hilton begin to take the sharing economy more seriously?

In which we try to make some sense out of what we know Airbnb is doing now — and what it hopes to be doing over the next 10 years.

To be honest, we weren't very surprised by Thursday's launches. In fact, we wondered why they haven't been launched sooner. But for the most part, all of them certainly seem in step with Airbnb's plans for being much more than just about any other travel brand or company out there.

Sorry, Airbnb. Those who follow the vacation rental business closely had a hunch that the business would be gobbled up by private equity and they were right.

You know the saying, "The more things change, the more they stay the same"? When it comes to Airbnb's new endeavors in the accommodations space, it is certainly being inventive, but the company is also borrowing heavily from what hotels have been doing for centuries.