EXPLORE Connect Vacation Rentals: on the ground in Austin

Expedia Group’s EXPLORE Connect Holiday Rentals conference blazed a trail this week in Vrbo’s hometown of Austin, Texas. This year’s theme centred on how meaningful connections begin with genuine hospitality, where every guest interaction is an opportunity to create lasting memories.

Over the past two days, we’ve engaged and collaborated with our partners, working towards our collective mission of improving the traveller experience together. Dive into key takeaways from this week’s event below and learn about opportunities to grow with Expedia Group while creating exceptional traveller experiences.

Great hosting isn’t optional – it’s the Vrbo standard. With 85% of consumers more likely to book a holiday rental or hotel that consistently delivers excellent service, connecting travellers to their perfect stay has never been more important.

Vrbo’s Premier Host programme highlights hosts who consistently deliver exceptional guest experiences and helps your property stand out in the crowded holiday rental marketplace. In early 2026, we’re raising our programme standards and transitioning qualifications from host-level to an individual listing-level recognition – a step to better empower high-calibre hosts to achieve more bookings and repeat visits.

At Expedia Group, we are committed to providing the right tools and support that enable Vrbo hosts to deliver hospitality excellence and reward those who go above and beyond. Our new Performance Milestones track progress and unlock exclusive recognition for hosts while providing enhanced coaching based on traveller feedback, empowering partners to deliver improved guest experiences.

Today’s holiday rental travellers consider a property’s reviews just as important as the price tag when deciding where to book their stay. Research from our 2025 Traveller Value Index reveals that 75% of consumers would pay more for a holiday rental with better customer reviews and 24% would pay a lot more.

Expedia Group’s next generation of trust-building features – powered by generative AI and authentic guest voices – equips travellers with the insights they need to book with certainty. Our AI Guest Review Summary feature instantly scans and summarises all guest reviews for a property, giving travellers better visibility during the booking process and hosts clearer insight into top feedback, priorities and preferences from past guests.

Explore our full suite of AI-driven features and learn more about how you can best leverage the latest tech, built to cultivate personalised, seamless travel experiences.

From capturing real-time demand and increasing bookings to managing payments and reaching diverse traveller segments, our latest tools empower you to have full control over your business.

Leverage Vrbo Promotions through your software of choice: Vrbo is actively integrating promotions with software providers to make it easier for more hosts to use its new promotional capabilities. This includes early booking, last minute, mobile and Members-Only deals. Promotions help boost visibility and revenue with eye-catching, targeted discounts that captivate potential guests and drive bookings.

Streamline payment processing: Scale your business with Vrbo Payments, our new payment processing solution that helps protect hosts’ revenue from fraud and chargebacks, unlocking the ability for One Key® members to use OneKeyCash® on more holiday rentals than ever before.

Manage content and onboarding: With self-service at the forefront, you can easily onboard new properties and oversee content and policies seamlessly within your software. The new capabilities reduce the onboarding time for properties from days to hours and enable near real-time content updates.

Expedia Group supercharges visibility for holiday rental hosts through its globally recognised brands and powerful B2B network.

To make it easier for travellers to find and consider holiday rentals across our ecosystem, Expedia Group is investing in new marketing and search capabilities on Expedia.com. In addition, eligible holiday rentals are now being distributed through Private Label Solutions, Expedia Group’s B2B network of 70,000 partners and more than 160,000 travel agents.

Partners such as Delta, Alaska Airlines and Revolut are among the first to distribute Vrbo inventory and deliver diversified demand for holiday rental partners. Vrbo Expanded Distribution enables partners to manage their properties on Vrbo or in their software provider without having to list on multiple sites.*