Articles tagged “short-term rentals”

Airbnb and HomeAway clones are a dime-a-dozen. But we found a handful carving out niche market segments that seem promising. These startups focus on travelers interested in corporate-friendly lodgings, architecture and design properties, Asia's top destinations, and exclusive luxury residences.

Online hotel bookings remain much more valuable than online short-term rental bookings and will see larger long-term online growth as more travelers use their devices to book a room and move away from alternative booking methods.

This is a clear sign that the sharing economy isn’t in its infancy anymore.

Can such a thing exist? Yes, but if we want it to work, we need short-term rental platforms and local governments to cooperate with each other.

As power shifts toward distributors, property managers will need to embrace new technology tools to better leverage these channels while working to preserve direct bookings and repeat visits.

Even as CEOs of major hotel chains argue that Airbnb doesn't threaten their bottom lines, the projection that some short-term rental companies will have higher room sales than some hotels by 2020 makes their footing less secure.

Many U.S. cities remain relatively problematic for short-term rentals as 38 of the 59 largest U.S. cities part of this study have no legal foundation for short-term rentals and 32 have restrictions in place.

Hotel Urbano is now offering short-term rentals while Expedia is showing HomeAway's vacation rentals and Booking.com has lots of apartment hotels. Convergence extraordinaire.

It is interesting to see that the Travel Technology Association, which takes the online travel agency side on the hotel tax issue, is siding with members HomeAway and Airbnb on short-term rental legislation.