Can you list on both Airbnb and Vrbo?

You’ve furnished your vacation home. Stocked it with all the guest necessities. And now you’re ready to open the doors to your first guests. But where do you find those guests? Or, rather, where will they find you? Airbnb? Vrbo? Or someplace else?

Travelers today have more places to browse vacation rentals than ever before. The key to your success is to diversify, instead of simply listing on one site. The equation is simple: More websites your home is listed on = More exposure + more potential earnings.

Let’s break down your options for vacation rental listing sites, then compare the two biggest players.

Where should you list your vacation rental?

Here are some of the biggest booking sites where you can list your vacation home. Focus your efforts here first.

Airbnb

Now a household name in travel, Airbnb has hosted 1.4 billion guest arrivals¹ since they started in 2007.

Vrbo

Owned by the Expedia Group, Vrbo garners 15.9 million unique worldwide visitors² each month.

Vacasa

That’s us! What makes us different? Our guests can trust our vacation rentals are fully cleaned, stocked, and ready for a great stay—thanks to our local vacation home management team. Even better, guests can reach out to us anytime, 24/7 for assistance.

Booking.com

Booking.com is one of the longest-standing travel booking sites in the world. More than 1.5 million room nights are booked on their platform every day.³

TripAdvisor/Flipkey

TripAdvisor boasts 463 million monthly users worldwide⁴, one of the largest audiences of any travel site.

Additional vacation rental listing sites for niche travel

After considering the top sites, you can post to vacation home sites that market to specific travelers. These can include:

• American Snowbird
• HomeToGo
• Cottages.com
• Homestay.com
• Kid & Coe

Airbnb and Vrbo: How do they compare?

How are Airbnb and Vrbo different for vacation homeowners? Let’s compare the two.

Costs and fees

Airbnb

On Airbnb, hosts have a choice:

• Pay the entire fee, generally 14-16% of the booking.
• Or, split the fees with your guest (which will increase the cost of the rent by about 14%, while charging the hosts around 3%). According to Airbnb, the split fees arrangement is most common.

Vrbo

Vrbo also offers two payment models:

• Pay per booking. A benefit of this option is not having to pay any upfront costs. Hosts pay 5% per booking plus a 3% credit card processing fee.
• Or, pay an annual subscription fee for unlimited bookings. If you have multiple vacation homes, you’ll need a subscription plan for each listing.

Guest reviews

Airbnb

Guests have up to 14 days to leave you a review and can’t edit a review beyond that. As the Airbnb host, you’ll also have up to 14 days to leave a review of the guest, if you’d like. The reviews are then posted after both you and your guests leave a review (or after the 14-day period has ended—whichever happens first).

Vrbo

Vrbo allows both guests and hosts up to a year after the stay to leave a review for each other. However, once one party fills out a review, the other party has 14 days to complete their own review. Both reviews are kept private during this 14-day window and no edits are allowed once the reviews are submitted and published.

Read more: How to get good reviews on Airbnb and Vrbo

Property types

Airbnb

While Airbnb offers traditional vacation homes, they’re best known for unconventional properties including treehouses, castles, yurts, barns, and even boats. Plus, they allow hosts to rent out private rooms in a shared house.

Vrbo

Vrbo specializes in private vacation rentals, what they like to call ‘whole vacation homes’. This means that hosts are only allowed to post properties that are fully used by only guests, not shared with hosts.

Main audience

Airbnb

Airbnb is especially popular with millennial travelers looking for unique, local experiences. Airbnb’s city homes are well-suited for travelers who want to be in the middle of the action and business travelers looking to be close to businesses and urban centers.

Vrbo

Families and large groups looking for multiple rooms and beds under one roof like to turn to Vrbo’s collection of private vacation homes.

Pitfalls of multiple listings

While listing on multiple sites offers vastly more exposure over listing in just one place, you’ll now have even more details to oversee. Multiple listing sites means multiple log-ins, calendars, bookings, guest emails, and more opportunities for overbookings (and chaos).

If you’re overwhelmed with juggling multiple listings and calendars, we’re here to help. Vacasa will handle all your listings for you—managing, syncing availability and bookings, responding to guest inquiries, and marketing your listings across Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and more. (It's all automatically included in our management fee, so you get maximum rewards with minimal effort.)

If you want to rent out your entire home, consider listing on both channels to reach the largest audience possible. At Vacasa, we list all our vacation homes on top booking sites, including Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, and of course our own platform, Vacasa.com. Select properties are chosen to be listed on Homes & Villas by Marriott International as well.

Sources (3/27/2023): ¹ Airbnb.com, ² Expedia.com, ³ Booking.com, ⁴ Tripadvisor.com