Airbnb, Expedia mix holiday rentals and traditional nightly rooms

Airbnb acquired Luxury retreats, a Canadian company that specialises in high-end villas and also was in talks with global online travel agents like Trivago, the German hotel search site majority-owned by Expedia, about including Airbnb homes in their search listings.

Expedia, had begun a closer integration with Home Away, the online holiday rental market-place it acquired for $3.9bn in 2015.

Dara Khosrowshahi, Expedia’s chief executive, has said it is proceeding on a “test and learn” basis, to determine if customers are happy to be offer a mix of traditional hotels alongside holiday rentals in the same list of search results.

Priceline is trying to take a greater share of the growing home-sharing market through its Booking.com site, famous for hotel room listings. Data from All TheRooms, an accommodation search engine’s inventory of vacation rentals almost doubled.

Majority of Airbnb listings are private homes, more than 35,000 hotel rooms are now listed on the site.

 

Expedia, Airbnb and Priceline are all trying to consolidate and make a booking home-share like a hotel stay “instant Book” feature that allows guests to immediately confirm a room rather than wait for the host to approve the guest’s request.

This puts enormous pressure on the hotel groups as  Airbnb and HomeAway, flood the market with alternative accommodation.