Short-Term Rental and Vacation Rental News

The short-term rental market is a long-term growth sector. Yet its dynamics are being upended as professional management becomes popular and online travel companies seek smarter ways to sell the lodging. Here are several takeaways from Skift's first event to focus on the sector's opportunities.

People may see short-term rentals as a good get-rich-quick scheme. But according to former Airbnb CFO Laurence Tosi, it's not a simple business. The most successful companies in the space, he said, are also the most sophisticated.

Hospitality giants moving into the short-term rental space hasn't always gone smoothly. But Marriott's vice president of Homes & Villas said that the company isn't getting its feet wet anymore — it's found a business model that works and wants to grow it.

CEO Francis Davidson is clearly very, very ambitious — and has identified a path for Sonder to go on and challenge the very biggest names in hospitality.

Airbnb has intensified its testing of Google's vacation rentals business. Does this mean Airbnb will fall down a rabbit hole of Google dependence? Not necessarily. Romances can be so fleeting.

It's all about its anticipated public offering at Airbnb these days. Shore up the plethora of safety issues, make peace with regulators, and bring in seasoned operational executives that the Wall Street crowd will look favorably upon. Was Belinda Johnson a casualty in that push?

Airbnb — and other players in the short-term rental space — have a daunting task in trying to verify millions of home listings, along with an expanded array of tours and activities. With this push, it might just open up more players to liability from content offered on their platforms.

In a very crowded and highly competitive short-term rental field, it makes sense that Expedia Group's Vrbo would try to stand out, albeit as a travel business serving families. Why go after the backpackers and younger generation when that isn't your core customer anyway?

No pain, no gain, right? Expedia's Vrbo unit, which is almost an afterthought when it comes to discussions about Airbnb, Booking.com, and Google, has been undergoing a difficult transition. In itself, changing the leadership isn't the answer, but along with other changes, perhaps it won't hurt.

Airbnb has avoided these policies under the guise of being just a platform, much like the rest of the tech platform companies. We just hope at some point that tragedies are not the only way to propel change that lots of stakeholders have been asking for all along.