Airbnb Vs VRBO Vs Booking.com?

For the US at least, hands down, start with Airbnb. Add Vrbo shortly after that. If you're using Hospitable, you might as well wait to add Vrbo until their full integration is rolled out, it's in progress right now. Only add booking.com if you hate yourself LOL. 

I wouldn’t see Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking as “choose one” — they’re just different channels, and the right mix depends on your property.

Airbnb is usually the best place to start. It works well for most properties (especially small to mid-size) and is easy to get traction on, with decent host support overall.

Vrbo is a great add-on if you have a larger place (house, villa, 2+ bedrooms). It attracts families and longer stays, but it’s less useful for small urban units. Support is more traditional but stable.

Booking.com is very powerful for visibility and international reach (especially with partners like Agoda), and works well if you have larger properties or multiple units. But it comes with more price competition, less control, more transactional guests, and more rigid support. It can also compete with your own website on Google vacation rental, meaning you may pay commission on guests who were already looking for you.

Because of that, it’s often better to set up your direct bookings (your own site + Google Vacation Rentals) before going big on Booking.com.

In terms of strategy:

• Small property (studio, 1-bed, urban): start with Airbnb, maybe add Booking later for occupancy, Vrbo usually less relevant

• Medium property (2–3 bedrooms): Airbnb + Vrbo is often a strong combo, Booking if you want more volume

• Large property (house, villa, 4+ bedrooms): Airbnb + Vrbo is key, Booking can help internationally but should be added carefully

• Multi-unit / professional operation: you’ll likely need all channels, but with strong pricing, channel management, and a solid direct booking strategy

In short: Airbnb is your base, Vrbo is a strong complement for larger/family-oriented properties, Booking is a powerful but demanding volume channel, and direct bookings are what make your business sustainable long term.

Airbnb Pros: The Short-Term Rental company to beat. Incredibly popular everywhere, but particularly stronger than others when it comes to younger guests and newer Short Term Rental markets (not just those classic vacation rental markets). They are a design-first company, so everything sort of works in a way that makes sense. At a $78.24B market cap and 8,200 employees, they have the power to move fast with their product.

Airbnb Cons: Their support has gotten markedly worse over the past 5-10 years and they are very quick to side with guests over issues (whether it be pandemic or natural disaster related cancellations or review issues). They gained power by aggregating customers and at the end of the day, it is the customer that will always be the focus.

VRBO Pros: Very popular with old people and traditional vacation markets (the kinds of markets where people were going on one week vacations pre-internet). Some people like the notion that there is less risk to your property with older guests. The fact of the matter is that your property will be seen and booked by guests who never looked on Airbnb.

VRBO Cons: The product: VRBO was founded in 1995 and their product very often feels like it is stuck in the mid-1990s. It is clunky, frustrating, and difficult to work with. They move slowly and have very poor communication with their partners. In 2015, VRBO was bought by Expedia for $3.9B. The entirety of Expedia Group is a $28.81B market cap with 16,000. So roughly twice the number of employees as Airbnb with ~37% of the value. There are ~2000-3000 employees working at VRBO but sometimes it feels like there is nobody working there. Their support isn’t any better than Airbnb’s.

Booking.com Pros: Popular with Europeans (and perhaps with certain markets in Asia through Agoda). In the US, some guests who are visiting from Europe or who are simply Europeans living in the US will see and book your property who otherwise wouldn’t have looked on Airbnb or VRBO. At a market cap of $136.96B and 24,300 employees, they are a juggernaut of travel tech. They move faster than VRBO and have better partner integration than VRBO, but they aren’t as good as Airbnb.

Booking.com Cons: The product of Booking.com is very hotel-centric and very Euro-centric (while the company is based in Connecticut, the corporate entity is a vestige of The Priceline Group and renamed to Booking Partners when it was clear that the Amsterdam-based Booking.com was the real prized asset of the company). There are issues with Booking.com’s settings in their Extranet that most seasoned STR hosts wouldn’t even think that they would need to check: weird European KYC issues, mentioned of collecting VAT when there is no VAT in the US, issues with having multiple room types for a single STR, options for collecting payment in cash that seem baffling, having (by default) to pay separately for their commissions rather than simply having it taken out of your payout, and the fact that it seems like none of the tax rates are in Booking.com by default for STRs but there is no option to edit it online (one must call in to verbally tell them the multiple different tax rates that must be on the listing). There are honestly so many issues that one must be prepared for it to get weird. Most of the issues come from Booking.com simply trying to bolt on the hotel model to STRs and the European norms to the US.

Agree, Airbnb until fully maxed out. Once you do that, VRBO, then potentially try to max again your listings, and finally then do booking