Holiday rental cabin attracts more high-value guests with Vrbo

Jenny Myers has built a successful holiday rental business over the last fourteen years. With a cosy cabin on her family’s property near the university town of Wooster in rural Ohio, her satisfaction comes from helping people create memories to last a lifetime.  

Jenny has learned how to manage a holiday rental home from scratch. From marketing and booking the property to cleaning the cabin and welcoming guests, Jenny is hands-on, filling every role and making sure that everything is perfect. Her consistent 5-star reviews showed that she had the right formula—she just needed the right platform to help take her business further.

Jenny’s cabin had been listed on several booking sites, including Airbnb and Booking.com, but then she considered giving our platform a try. Jenny had just finished an enjoyable personal stay at a property listed on our platform, and her research showed that travellers were increasingly trending towards booking with us.  

After making the decision to jump in, she found our onboarding process very simple and was delighted to see bookings coming in almost immediately. 

Jenny takes her business seriously and has found many resources that help keep her on top of trends, connect with other hosts to share ideas, and constantly hone her property management skills. 

One thing she has learned is that she prefers to have guests book through a trusted marketplace rather than directly with her. This frees her up to focus on what matters most: making sure her guests have a great experience. Working with us provides an additional layer of protection with carefully vetted guests and fraud prevention tools. In 2022 alone, we prevented almost £1.6B in fraud attempts on our Expedia sites.*

One of Jenny’s main observations since listing through our platform is that the quality of guests really does vary across each holiday rental marketplace. Holiday rental bookers on Vrbo spend more, stay longer and have a higher booking value than competitors.** On Vrbo, Jenny earns more bookings from guests who stay longer and book again and again—and Vrbo has become the top source of bookings for her property.

Jenny’s business is thriving. In fact, she’s currently expanding, adding a ‘glamping’ option on the property. She and her husband are also planning to build an additional cabin down the road to help meet demand.   

They’re even considering expanding to other locations by buying another property. Knowing they can acquire a second home, then use our platform to generate revenue with it when they’re not using it, makes it easier for Jenny and her husband to make their second-home dream a reality.

Jenny continues to learn and grow as a businesswoman and has even begun offering her expertise to others who are considering starting a holiday rental business. One of the key insights she shares? She tells them that knowing what she knows now, she would have listed with us from the start!