{"id":48158,"date":"2026-09-08T14:41:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T14:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/?p=48158"},"modified":"2026-09-08T14:41:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T14:41:45","slug":"what-is-homeaway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/es\/blog\/what-is-homeaway\/","title":{"rendered":"What is HomeAway? The Vrbo guide for property managers in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-heading-1-color has-background-9-background-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-elements-a3cf2aadbcbb591af66ded7759a42a33 wp-block-paragraph\">HomeAway no longer exists as a standalone brand. <a href=\"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/connected-listings\/expedia\/\"><strong><mark style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)\" class=\"has-inline-color has-cta-2-color\">Expedia Group<\/mark><\/strong><\/a> folded it into<strong> <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/connected-listings\/vrbo-channel-manager\/\"><strong><mark style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)\" class=\"has-inline-color has-cta-2-color\">Vrbo<\/mark><\/strong><\/a> back in 2020. If you&#8217;re searching for HomeAway today, Vrbo is where you&#8217;ll land, and your old account, listings, and bookings carried over automatically when the switch happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s the short answer. The more useful one, if you manage listings for a living, is what this kind of platform consolidation quietly does to your channel sync, and how to make sure yours survived it intact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"key-takeaways\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Key takeaways<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>HomeAway no longer exists as a standalone brand. Expedia Group folded it into Vrbo in 2020.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>HomeAway and Vrbo were connected long before that: HomeAway acquired Vrbo in 2006, and Expedia acquired both companies together in 2015.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Old HomeAway accounts, listings, and bookings transferred to Vrbo automatically. No rebuild was required.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Platform transitions like this one are a common point where calendar sync quietly breaks, so it&#8217;s worth confirming your current connection is direct and real time, not a legacy workaround.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>HomeAway&#8217;s disappearance is a concrete example of why property managers shouldn&#8217;t build their entire distribution around a single OTA.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"what-was-homeaway\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">What was HomeAway?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">HomeAway was one of the original vacation rental listing platforms, founded by Brian Sharples and Carl Shepherd, launching out in 2006 in Austin, Texas. At one point it operated roughly 50 individual websites across 23 languages, making it one of the largest players in the industry before Airbnb reshaped the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">HomeAway was a pre-Airbnb-era vacation rental marketplace that no longer operates under its own name. It exists today as part of <a href=\"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/connected-listings\/vrbo-channel-manager\/\"><strong>Vrbo<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"are-homeaway-and-vrbo-the-same-thing\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Are HomeAway and Vrbo the same thing?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, for all practical purposes today. Vrbo was actually the older brand: HomeAway acquired it in 2006, and when Expedia bought HomeAway in 2015, Vrbo came with it. Expedia ultimately kept the Vrbo name going forward rather than HomeAway, largely because of its clearer positioning around whole-home rentals for families and groups, and because internal research showed travelers found it easier to remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"what-happened-to-my-old-homeaway-listings-and-bookings\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">What happened to my old HomeAway listings and bookings?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you managed a listing on HomeAway, you don&#8217;t need to rebuild anything. Your account, listing history, and bookings transferred to Vrbo automatically as part of the 2020 consolidation. The login changed, the underlying account didn&#8217;t disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That said, the transition is a good moment to check something a lot of property managers skip: is your current connection to Vrbo actually direct and real time, or is it still running through an older, unofficial integration that never got updated for the new brand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This matters more than it sounds like it should. Platform consolidations like the HomeAway-to-Vrbo merger are exactly when calendar sync problems creep in. An integration that worked fine under one brand doesn&#8217;t always carry over cleanly, and a delayed sync is one of the most common causes of double bookings across multiple channels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A few things worth checking on your end:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Is your Vrbo connection a direct, certified API integration, or is it routed through a legacy or third-party workaround?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Does your calendar sync in real time across every platform you list on, or is there a lag between a booking coming in and your other channels updating?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Are guest messages from Vrbo landing somewhere you actually check daily, or scattered across logins nobody opens?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you manage listings on more than one or two platforms, this is where a<strong> <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/vacation-rental-services\/homeaway\/\"><strong>channel manager<\/strong><\/a><strong> <\/strong>earns its keep, not as a convenience, but as protection against exactly the sync failures that cause double bookings and missed guest messages. Rentals United connects directly to Vrbo and more than 90 other channels, syncing rates, availability, and content from one dashboard so a rebrand on the platform side never becomes your problem to untangle manually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"what-this-means-if-you-re-relying-on-one-platform\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">What this means if you&#8217;re relying on one platform<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">HomeAway&#8217;s disappearance is a useful, concrete example of a broader risk: building your entire business around one OTA&#8217;s brand. Property managers who listed on HomeAway didn&#8217;t get a vote on the rebrand, the new URL, or the new app their guests would need to find them on. The underlying business kept going, as Vrbo, but the interface their guests knew disappeared overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s the same argument for not depending entirely on any single channel today, Vrbo included. Distributing across multiple certified channels, with your rates, calendar, and content synced centrally, means your business isn&#8217;t at the mercy of any one platform&#8217;s next rebrand, algorithm change, or fee restructuring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"frequently-asked-questions-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Frequently asked questions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Is HomeAway still operating?<\/strong> No. HomeAway shut down as a standalone platform in 2020. The HomeAway.com website and app now redirect to Vrbo, which is the active platform for all former HomeAway hosts and guests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Are HomeAway and Vrbo the same company?<\/strong> Yes. HomeAway acquired Vrbo in 2006, and Expedia Group acquired HomeAway, Vrbo included, in 2015. Expedia consolidated both brands under the Vrbo name in 2020, so they&#8217;re now one and the same platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Do I need to create a new account since HomeAway is gone?<\/strong> No. Accounts, listings, and bookings from HomeAway carried over to Vrbo automatically during the 2020 transition. You&#8217;ll use a Vrbo login going forward, but nothing needed to be rebuilt from scratch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Why did Expedia keep the Vrbo name instead of HomeAway?<\/strong> Expedia cited Vrbo&#8217;s stronger brand recognition and its clearer focus on whole-home rentals for families and groups, versus HomeAway&#8217;s more generic positioning, along with research showing travelers found Vrbo easier to remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Does my old HomeAway connection still sync properly with my other channels?<\/strong> Not necessarily. Platform transitions like this one are a common point where calendar sync breaks down, especially with older or unofficial integrations. Confirm your current Vrbo connection is a direct, real-time sync rather than one that predates the 2020 consolidation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HomeAway no longer exists as a standalone brand. Expedia Group folded it into Vrbo back in 2020. If you&#8217;re searching for HomeAway today, Vrbo is where you&#8217;ll land, and your old account, listings, and bookings carried over automatically when the switch happened. That&#8217;s the short answer. The more useful one, if you manage listings for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48160,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,35,1],"tags":[],"blog-tag":[],"class_list":["post-48158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-channels","category-rentals-united","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48158"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48162,"href":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48158\/revisions\/48162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48158"},{"taxonomy":"blog-tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog-tag?post=48158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}