VRBO and HomeAway tend to be better for higher-end properties. People that spend a lot of money want to talk to the owners prior to booking and VRBO/HomeAway fa

VRBO and HomeAway tend to be better for higher-end properties. People that spend a lot of money want to talk to the owners prior to booking and VRBO/HomeAway facilitates that. People that own high end properties want to talk to the renters too. They also have custom rental agreements baked in to the booking process. I rent a 6BR and everyone wants to get a better deal. That's part of the dance. I tend to favor last minute / higher yield since I have a solid product and an automated home. AirBnB prevents pre-booking contact because their model is different. They make money on bookings, mostly from the consumer. For HomeAway I pay them ~$1600/yr and get featured placement and no booking fees. That is actually a small marketing expense for my property so the consumer can actually pay quite a bit less by booking my property on VRBO instead of AirBnB which charges the consumer 6-12%. AirBnB has the problem of being seen as the platform for renting shared space. I think they will do a good job branding as a place for entire home rentals but that may take some time with the older crowd. They have a good renter review system which doesn't exist on VRBO. They are prioritizing hosts that respond quickly because they know that in order to take real share from hotels/resorts and HomeAway/VRBO they will need to provide a better booking experience and also excel at last minute bookings. HA/VRBO doesn't have a lot of checks in place to ensure the consumer receives adequate service and this is mostly due to their chosen business model. I don't know how this will shake out in full but as an owner, you should be on both. Expedia bought HomeAway so I think that is huge for them because they could launch a really compelling reward platform and provide owners more distribution. I would bet AirBnB would get scooped up by someone as well or finance a strategic acquisition of their own. Once business travel falls to AirBnb/HA/VRBO due to incentivized rewards programs, hotels will be extremely scared, esp since most are franchises who are losing power. This hasn't happened yet. They're telling the story that AirBnB/VRBO has simply provided more room-nights that wouldn't have happened without them but I don't buy it. Regardless, there is plenty of space for two heavyweights and I'm bullish on both.