All About Vrbo: Airbnb's Threatening Competitor

As you know, summer is already here…real summer at least. August is the chance to disconnect and enjoy time around those who you love. Many of you will be staying home, others will go to hotels and others…well, you’ll pay for a rental. A villa, cabin, lake house, apartment? Anything you want! That’s why we want to show some light onto the two vacation rental giants. We’ll tell you all about Vrbo and keep it short cause we know you have a plane to catch.

Vrbo (Vacation Rentals by Owner) was founded in 1995 by David Clause in Colorado as opposed to Airbnb, founded in San Francisco, California. While Vrbo is more your style if you want to travel with a large group of friends or as a family, with some privacy and a greater number of amenities, like a kitchen or hot tub, Airbnb is the better option for solo travelling or couples. This is because the latter doesn’t require you to rent the whole property—you can just rent a small room in it.  

As a host, many people have pointed out that Airbnb is a better option, as the platform only takes a 3 percent of your earnings, whereas Vrbo takes an 8 percent unless you pay an annual subscription of 699 dollars. Having said this, by publishing your listing in Vrbo, because it’s part of the Expedia group, you will automatically appear in all its websites, like hotels.com and booking.com . This is in other words free marketing. However, this presents a problem: if your customers come from an external website that’s not Vrbo, you cannot rate them as guests and warn other hosts if they have disappointed you in any way. 

As well as that, Vrbo operates as more of a hands-off platform, where you have to upload your own booking contract and do more work in general yourself. For most hosts it is an advantage as they can make most of the decision-making, for example, cancellation policies. Many people on the Internet believe the guest culture in Vrbo is far less risky and has lower tendencies to cause trouble. It takes more time to master the app, though. This is due to the fact that there is more information you are required to complete based on what your listing offers, and missing one of those could severely affect how you’re rated and how many reservations you book. To thrive, you must be as specific as possible. 

One of the things a lot of people struggle with is connecting calendars and reservations from different apps. Some of the hosts prefer to use platforms like Hosthub, while others use the exportation option and import it into another of the apps being used. Whatever it is, you have to make sure you don’t overlap reservations in the same listing. This could lead to negative reviews in your profile and later less bookings. 

All in all, Airbnb has 5 million listings and over half of the US market share while Vrbo has 2 million listings. Nonetheless, the latter control the majority of family-friendly rentals, with an estimated 87 percent coming from listings with 3+ bedrooms, whereas Airbnb controls 75 percent of short-term bookings, which is what they primarily focus on. 

In conclusion, although Airbnb controls more of the market share, Vrbo has thrived in what it set out to do: be family-friendly and offer long-term bookings. They both operate in the same industry, but different sectors and services within it. That’s the magic of it. Whether it’s as a host or guest, you can decide which platform suits your needs best.