PODCAST | SEASON 2 | EPISODE 3

Holiday homes: How they’re shaping the future of tourism

‘I think travellers continue to look for a great place to stay and, increasingly, that local experience when they travel. Vacation rentals is a category which provides that, almost by its very nature.’

Merilee Karr,

founder and CEO of UnderTheDoormat


What to listen for


Tune in for a holiday rental-packed episode of Powering Travel, featuring guest Merilee Karr, guest host Tim Rosolio and host Brandon Ehrhardt.

 

In this episode, we’re taking an in-depth dive into the holiday rental industry to learn about holiday rental market trends, dispel common myths and share advice for people starting in holiday rentals.

 

Plus, you’ll hear about the first-hand experiences with holiday rentals that inspired guest Merilee Karr to make a difference in the industry. 

A family relaxes in a holiday home, with the parents sitting on a sofa while their two children play a game laying on the floor.

Read the transcript

[00:00:04] Brandon Ehrhardt Travel providers are the backbone of the travel experience. In this brand-new season of Powering Travel, we’ll dive into industry trends, hot topics and actionable advice to help business leaders continue evolving and enhancing travel experience, one trip at a time. Hello again. Welcome back to another episode of Powering Travel. Today we have a special milestone episode of the podcast. Our first discussion about the vacation rental marketplace. So, while travel has been up and down over the past five years, vacation rentals have not. They have been straight up and in demand. The travel industry witnessed the meteoric rise of vacation rentals, also known as short-term rentals, over the past few years. Expedia data reveals that searches for vacation rentals during the winter season and in urban destinations are higher in 2022 than they were pre-pandemic. According to Grandview Research, the global vacation rental market is projected to reach 119 billion, with a “b,” by 2030. In reality, the broader sentiment around vacation rental fluctuates almost as frequently as the seasons change. Travellers love them, but the fees are frustrating. Communities are wary of more vacation rentals in their neighbourhoods, and hoteliers are sceptical of the long-term demand that vacation rentals bring. This leads to rapidly shifting traveller behaviours and new expectations from short-term rental owners. To give us some additional expertise on the topic, let’s welcome our guest host today, Tim Rosolio, vice president of Vacation Rental Partner Success at Expedia Group and contractually obligated to be here today. Tim, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Tell us about your role at Expedia Group.

 

[00:01:44] Tim Rosolio Brandon, thanks for having us. I love the enthusiasm around the category. As you mentioned, I am the VP of Vacation Rental Partner Success for Expedia Group. And in a nutshell, what that means is if you think of Vrbo and Hotels.com and Expedia as stores, it’s my job to stock the shelves with the right vacation rentals. And for Vrbo, that means just about everything that’s on the shelf. And then for Hotels.com and for Expedia, it means some vacation rentals that are next to hotels. And we hope to sell more vacation rentals in those channels going forward. So, if that’s my job, let’s talk a little bit about how exactly we do that. I have a team of 250 global account managers. That sole job is to acquire inventory, and then once we acquire that inventory, help those partners be successful on our websites. And the way that I think about doing that is what is typically yesterday’s differentiator quickly becomes today’s norm, and we help you find the next differentiator. An example I would provide would be in 2018, about a third of our inventory was Instant Booking. The rest of it was still on a 24-hour hold model, which means that a traveller would come to the website, they would make a booking request, and there would be 24 hours for that partner to accept the booking. And that was a differentiator for the partners that had chosen to already be Instant Booking, where you just click the button and you book it like a hotel. By the time we reached 2022, we saw that almost 80 percent of our listings were Instant Booking, so that’s an example of something that was a differentiator for our partners in 2018, but now it’s quickly become the norm for partners in 2022. And my team is out there to try to explain and help coach partners to understand what’s the next differentiator.

 

[00:03:37] Brandon Ehrhardt Tim has a great passion for the industry, and I think our guest is going to match that passion. So let me tell you about her now. Her name is Merilee Karr. Merilee is the founder of UnderTheDoormat, an award-winning luxury home accommodation business offering modern travellers the quality of a hotel with the comfort of home. Merilee founded UnderTheDoormat after 13 years with Shell, including stints as Global Strategy Manager and Global Retail Maintenance Manager. This is the interesting part. It was her experience during her travels for the company and the many places she stayed that created her desire to make a difference to the home stay sector. So, Tim, I think it is true there is business demand for short-term rentals. Merilee is also a regular commentator in the media and at events and was elected as the founding chair of the industry body the Short Term Accommodation Association (STAA).

 

[00:04:26] Tim Rosolio It’s pretty exciting to have Merilee on this podcast because Merilee is pretty close to being like a celebrity to a certain extent in this industry because she was one of the four founders of the really professional space that leveraged OTAs in Europe. I first heard of Merilee when I was listening to a Skift podcast that was on the development of the short-term rental industry, which had a bunch of folks that were my mentors at HomeAway at the time, like Jeff Hurst and Jon Gray and Brian Sharples. And I actually heard Merilee on that podcast and I said, ‘This is somebody I need to meet.’ I was at the Short Stay Summit in London last week and did get a chance to do that, which was super exciting. And then shortly after I met her, she actually went on stage with Ariane Gorin, who is the head of Expedia for Business, and they had a great fireside chat. It was an exciting moment for me because I think it was a good representation, you have an industry veteran like Merilee talking to someone like Ariane, who has such a great vision of what’s happening in the hospitality space, in the technology space, and I thought it was a good preview of some of the things that might be happening at Expedia. If we can bring all of the VR knowledge of people like Merilee and maybe some long-time Vrbo or HomeAway employees like me, and we can incorporate that into what we’re doing for the larger Expedia Group, I think there’s going to be some great things for the category.

 

[00:05:57] Brandon Ehrhardt One other special note. We will take Merilee wherever we can get her. It doesn’t matter if she’s dialling in from the moon. She’s not quite on the moon, but today she’s dialling in from vacation in Majorca. We appreciate her taking the time out of her vacation to chat with us today. So, without further ado, let’s jump into it. Here’s Merilee Karr. Alright. We’re joined here today by Merilee Karr. Merilee, you’re joining us from the beaches of Majorca. Thanks so much for making time.

 

[00:06:25] Merilee Karr Yeah, fantastic to be here.



Meet the experts


A headshot of guest, Merilee Karr.

Merilee Karr

CEO and founder, UnderTheDoormat Group 

UnderTheDoormat Group is an award-winning prop-tech company recognized by JP Morgan as one of the top Female Powered Businesses in the UK and by Skift as one of the top companies globally shaping the future of
short-term rentals.

As the elected chair for the UK industry body, the Short Term Accommodation Association (STAA), she regularly speaks on behalf of the sector with UK and EU governments. She is an industry spokesperson on the BBC, Sky News, the Times, Guardian, Which?, Huffington Post and Skift, and has received awards from Estates Gazette, European Builtworld, VRMA and Travolution.

A headshot of guest host, Tim Rosolio.

Tim Rosolio

Vice President of Partner Success, Vacation Rentals, Expedia Group

Tim Rosolio has a comprehensive end-to-end view of the short-term rental business. He is a subject matter expert in holiday rentals, and his leadership and involvement include working on a number of key projects and initiatives at Vrbo such as our monetisation strategy, VR competitiveness, acquisition, readiness and the Fast Start programme.


In addition to his eight years of experience in the holiday rentals line of business, Tim understands what our Vrbo hosts need because he is one! Prior to being VP of Partner Success, he worked on the Expedia for Business Strategy & Transformation team.

A headshot of Powering Travel host, Brandon Ehrhardt.

Brandon Ehrhardt

Vice President of Marketing and Host of Powering Travel, Expedia Group

Brandon heads up B2B lodging marketing at Expedia Group and has played an integral role in scaling our partner programmes, leading strategic initiatives and expanding the use of revenue insights to drive partner success. Brandon resides with his wife and child, a young travel enthusiast, in Chicago, IL.



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