Excerpt from Bloomberg
Home rentals are the hottest part of the online travel-booking industry, and Expedia Group Inc. plans to make it even hotter.
After spending three years upgrading the technology of its HomeAway unit, Expedia is ready to step up its efforts to add more house listings in a bid to catch up with the scale of competitors like Airbnb Inc., Chief Executive Officer Mark Okerstrom said in an interview.
"Phase one was just getting the platform working and getting people online," Okerstrom said. "Phase two is about property acquisition."
Though renting homes in beach and mountain destinations has always been popular, Airbnb changed the market by convincing regular people to rent out their own homes in cities. Expedia jumped into the sector in 2015 with its purchase of HomeAway, but has had to invest time and money to improve the site's technology and bring more offerings online.
Okerstrom said Expedia doesn't have a specific number of listings it wants to add over the coming years, though he hinted at chasing targets his competitors have already hit.
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