Jay William
Founder | Villa Marketers
25 Years in Hospitality, Direct Bookings, and Vacation Rental Marketing
Direct Bookings • SEO • AI Tools • Branding • Advertising • Owner Acquisition • Growth Systems
- Last Updated
- July 2026
- Reading Time
- 9 min read
- Reviewed for Accuracy
- July 2026
The short answer
HomeAway was acquired by Expedia in November 2015 for approximately $3.9 billion in equity value. Over the next several years Expedia introduced traveler service fees, restructured owner programs, and eventually consolidated its short-term rental brands under a single name — Vrbo. The HomeAway brand was retired, and HomeAway.com now redirects to Vrbo. If you're looking for HomeAway today, you're looking for Vrbo, and Vrbo sits inside Expedia Group.
That's the factual sentence. The rest of this page is what it meant for the owners who had built their entire booking flow on a brand that stopped existing.
Industry shrugged: "That's just how it is." I said: "No. That's how it was."
The timeline
Every entry below is drawn from the contemporaneous coverage Villa Marketers published as each event happened. Where a specific date or figure isn't nailed down in the source material, the entry describes the sequence without a precise number.
- 2005
HomeAway launches; Villa Marketers opens the same year
HomeAway is founded and starts consolidating the fragmented listing-site landscape. Villa Marketers opens the same year telling owners not to build their business on a listing site they don't own.
- Nov 2013
HomeAway announces a distribution partnership with Expedia
The first structural link between HomeAway and Expedia. Owners on pay-per-booking start being asked to enable online booking to keep their inquiry volume — the setup for what came next.
- Oct 2014
The partnership shows its teeth — fees begin rising
HomeAway confirms that pay-per-booking owners will pay an extra 3% credit-card processing fee on top of the existing 10% commission — 13% all-in — with more program changes signaled ahead.
- May 2015
Two top executives 'step down' as the stock slides
Co-founder Carl Shepherd and COO Brent Bellm depart during a period of sinking share price and hostile owner sentiment over instant booking and the switch from subscription to per-booking fees.
- Nov 2015
Expedia buys HomeAway for roughly $3.9B in equity value
The deal announced in November 2015 folds HomeAway into Expedia's portfolio alongside Travelocity and Orbitz. A traveler service fee is introduced the following year — the AirBnB-style fee model owners had been resisting.
- 2019–2020
The HomeAway brand is retired; everything becomes Vrbo
Expedia consolidates its short-term rental brands under a single flag. HomeAway.com begins redirecting to Vrbo, and the HomeAway name is phased out of the consumer-facing product. If you type HomeAway.com today, you land on Vrbo.
- 2020s
Vrbo is Expedia's short-term rental brand
What was HomeAway is now Vrbo, operated inside Expedia Group. Owners who had built their entire funnel on the HomeAway brand had to migrate identity, listings, reviews and search equity across the rebrand.
What it meant for owners
Every fee change, every policy shift, every rebrand landed on the same people: owners who had wired their entire business into a brand they didn't own. Their booking URL was a HomeAway URL. Their reviews lived on HomeAway. Their search ranking was a HomeAway ranking. Their guest relationship was mediated by HomeAway's inbox.
When the 3% credit-card fee arrived on top of the 10% commission, owners absorbed it. When instant booking was pushed as the default, owners who wanted to vet guests found their listings quietly penalized. When the traveler service fee arrived, guests started noticing the total was higher than the nightly rate suggested. When the brand itself was retired, everything owners had built equity in — the URL, the reviews on that URL, the search results for that URL — was moved to a different name they didn't choose.
None of that is unusual. That is what happens when the brand you rent traffic from is the brand you built your business on. The platform's roadmap wins. The owner adapts.
The actual questions people ask
Most of the 500-plus monthly searches around HomeAway today are confusion, not shopping. Here are the direct answers.
Is HomeAway the same as Vrbo?
Effectively, yes. HomeAway was acquired by Expedia in 2015 and Expedia later consolidated its short-term rental brands under Vrbo. The HomeAway brand was retired and HomeAway.com redirects to Vrbo, which is now Expedia Group's short-term rental brand.
What happened to HomeAway?
HomeAway was acquired by Expedia in November 2015 for approximately $3.9 billion in equity value. Over the next several years Expedia rolled fee changes into the platform, consolidated its brands, and eventually retired the HomeAway name — folding the business into Vrbo.
Why did HomeAway become Vrbo?
After the Expedia acquisition, Expedia progressively consolidated its short-term rental brands. Vrbo — originally a separate brand HomeAway had itself acquired earlier — was chosen as the single consumer-facing name, and HomeAway was phased out. Owner accounts and listings were migrated onto the Vrbo brand.
What's the difference between Airbnb, Vrbo and HomeAway?
Airbnb is an independent public company that lists everything from spare rooms to whole homes. Vrbo is Expedia Group's short-term rental brand and lists whole-home vacation rentals — that brand absorbed HomeAway. HomeAway is not a separate product anymore; it is Vrbo under Expedia.
What should owners learn from HomeAway shutting down?
The brand you rent traffic from can disappear. Owners who had built their entire booking flow on the HomeAway name — the URL, the reviews, the search ranking, the guest relationship — inherited a rebrand they didn't choose. The one thing that never depends on someone else's roadmap is your own brand, your own site, and your own guest relationship.
The lesson
I opened Villa Marketers in 2005, the same year HomeAway launched. From day one I told owners not to build their business on a listing site they didn't own. Airbnb didn't exist yet. The industry shrugged and said that was just how it worked — the listing sites were the traffic, the traffic was the business, move on.
Then the platform I was warning owners about ceased to exist. Not because the internet moved on. Because its owner decided to retire the name. Owners who had spent a decade building HomeAway equity woke up on a different URL.
The one thing that never depends on anyone else's roadmap is your own brand, your own site, and your own guest relationship.
That was the point in 2005. It was the point in 2014 when we were writing about the Expedia distribution partnership. It was the point in 2015 when the executives stepped down and the acquisition landed. It's the point today, when HomeAway is a history question and Vrbo is an Expedia brand and the next consolidation is already being planned in a room owners will never be invited into.
I'm not writing this to gloat. I'm writing it because a lot of owners are still making the same bet. If your entire funnel still runs through a brand you don't own, the outcome you're most exposed to is the one you can't see coming.
Where to go next
Three things on this site cover what to do with that:
- The Direct Booking Goldmine
The field guide for building a booking flow that doesn't depend on a platform's roadmap.
- AI-Native Direct Booking Websites
What owning your own site looks like when the traffic layer is AI, not the blue-link results HomeAway was built on.
- The Online Booking-Fee Fight (2017–2025)
The full retrospective on the fee war that followed the HomeAway acquisition — who called what, and what stuck.
Jay William
Founder, Villa Marketers · Co-Founder, Knokx
Jay William is the founder of Villa Marketers and co-founder of Knokx, with 20+ years helping vacation rental brands grow beyond OTA dependence. His work focuses on direct-booking strategy, SEO and AI visibility, brand positioning, and owned demand systems for hosts and property managers.
Industry peers call him The Father of Vacation Rental Marketing.
- Direct Booking Strategy
- SEO & AI Visibility
- Brand Positioning
- Property Manager Marketing
- Owner Acquisition