www.travelweeklyweb.com
www.travelweeklyweb.com
18 | ■ TRAVELWeekly AsiA | FEBRUARY 2014
VAcATION RENTALS
HomeAway.com sees great growth potential in
Asia Pacific
The leading Vacation Rentals site has made significant inroads in the region with major investments in travelmob.com, Bookabach and Stayz.com.au over
the last year.
Over the years, my family and I rented many vacation homes
around the world, enjoying the space, amenities and flexibility to bring
friends, too. However, I found the experience of finding and booking
a home online difficult. It was out of this frustration the idea to build
the world's largest online vacation rental marketplace was born. In
February 2005, I co-founded HomeAway by acquiring CyberRentals.
com, GreatRentals.com, A1Vacations.com, TripHomes.com and the
leading U.K. site, Holiday-Rentals.co.uk. Shortly thereafter we launched
the company's flagship website, www.HomeAway.com, in 2006.
Since the beginning, it has been our mission to make finding and
booking a vacation rental as easy as a hotel, and a big part of that is to
give travelers as much choice globally as possible. To accomplish this,
our approach is to acquire the market-leading holiday home rental
businesses in new geographies that we believe are or will be profitable
and have high-quality inventory. If there isn't an acquisition target that
would make sense for us, then we look at organically building our
business in that market.
Today, HomeAway's leading network includes approximately 50
websites with 773,000 listings in 171 countries. However, that is less
than 12 percent of the estimated existing 6.1 million homes being
rented in just the US and Europe, an $85 billion industry.
I believe HomeAway's success
proves there's significant demand for
larger spaces with multiple bedrooms
and kitchens for traveling families
and groups. Not only do travelers
recognize the value of vacation rentals,
but owners also enjoy their homes as
a lucrative investment. HomeAway
estimates it facilitates more than
80 million nights booked annually
worldwide, which translate to owners
collectively generating nearly billions
in rental revenue. Specifically, owners
who list on HomeAway.com with a
subscription, which starts at $350 per
year, earn an average of $28,000 in
rental income by renting their property for 19 weeks per year – an
80x return on investment.
One of our key objectives is to keep our customers extremely
happy, which means delivering better performance, not the same or
worse, by balancing supply and demand. Therefore, we work hard
Brian Sharples, co-founder,
HomeAway.com
