Happy Friday!😃
This week we put out a survey that asks, "Are you going to the VRMA Conference in San Antonio in October?" Well are you?? We have held our own OwnerRez Happy Hour Hangouts in the past, and we'd like to host another near the conference. Let us know if you'll be attending by filling out the form on this page.
Want to know how to stop, dispute, force-cancel, and recover damages from partiers? Then come to our Airbnb Party Protection webinar next week! We'll sit down with Caroline Robbins, Connectivity Partnerships Manager at Airbnb, to go into detail on the Airbnb party/events policy.
Looks like another one of our first class channel API partners, may go public soon. HomeToGo has signed a letter of intent to merge with a blank-check firm, Lakestar, and go public. If the deal goes through, HomeToGo would be valued at approximately $1.2 billion.
According to a report from AirDNA, the average daily rates for short-term rentals spiked to $245.42 in April. There were 1.5 million listings on Airbnb and Vrbo included in this report. Rates were up 16.6 percent from last year, and 20.8 percent from 2019. The main reason the average rates are rising is due to guests opting for larger properties.
Google announced they are merging their hotel and vacation rental search engine. The results are ranked by the relevance of the query and known supply partners including TripAdvisor, Agoda, Sonder, Vacasa, Rentals United and RedAwning. Other travel companies like Airbnb and Booking.com have not stated if they will participate in Google's vacation rental search. On the other hand, Vrbo was part of the search engine, but pulled out in February when the CEO said it was "not particularly valuable customer experience”.
