Expedia will change its operational model for vacation rentals.
The Expedia group takes another step and unifies its platform for vacation rentals on the Vrbo portal. This new model will be applied to accommodations in Europe, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
How can this affect you as an owner?
Basically this means that the Expedia Group will remove some listings belonging to the vacation rental segment of its Expedia portal. These listings will be incorporated into Vrbo – a platform exclusively dedicated to this segment.
The owners affected were notified yesterday, December 1st 2020 and will have one month to move these listings to VRBO. The affected accommodations will be as follows:
- Hostels managed directly by an individual owner.
- Accommodation that does not qualify as a Hotel, Aparthotel, Resort or Residence.
- Accommodation without a valid VAT-ID valid in Austria, Italy, Spain and Portugal.
All accommodations managed directly by individual owners will be permanently removed from Expedia.
Click here to go to the Vrbo portal »
A bit of history: Expedia vs Homeaway vs Vrbo
In May 2019, Expedia changed the name of its global division from HomeAway to Vrbo.
The time has come for the Expedia Group to clearly outline its business units. This means that all vacation rental accommodations will be officially transferred to Vrbo, leaving the Expedia portal exclusively to hotels.
Click here to find out more about Expedia Group »
How does this change affect synchronisation with your Channel Manager?
You can keep all your listings synchronised through Smoobu. You just have to add Vrbo as a new portal if you haven’t already.
The synchronisation of your bookings will remain as simple as before. Just make sure you have your accommodation listed correctly.
