Google Signals Its Vacation Rental Ambitions With Vacasa Direct-Connect
We’ve seen this playbook before. Google isn’t making much money off its vacation rental business, and doesn’t need to sweat it. With its domination of search, Google will take its time, build its global property numbers, and test what works.
Like Airbnb, Expedia, and others in the sector, Google is making a push to professionalize and increase its portfolio of vacation rental offerings, and that means enlisting property managers, and entering into new partnerships.
Along those lines, U.S. vacation rental property manager Vacasa announced Thursday that it has directly connected to Google, delivering its more than 14,000 vacation rentals as listings in Google Hotels, which currently offers both hotels and vacation rentals.
Vacasa, which has grown organically and through acquisition, and has a $162 million purchase of Wyndham Vacation Rentals pending, is the first vacation rental software platform to connect directly to Google using its own application programming interface (API). The largest vacation rental manager in North America, Vacasa said it will eventually get those 9,000 Wyndham vacation rentals into Google search, as well. While Vacasa's strength is in the U.S. and Canada, it also offers homes in Europe, Latin America, and Africa.
