The vacation rental industry's largest annual gathering, running this week in Nashville, is dominated by hallway math on new platform commissions and a fresh push to formalize operator training.
Vrbo plans to relax the clause forcing hosts to match its prices elsewhere, after raising host commissions drew complaints that guest fee cuts were just cost-shifting.
Vrbo plans to roughly double what it charges hosts in commission, moving its take rate closer to Airbnb's while leaving the guest-facing fee structure untouched for now.
Vrbo is roughly doubling the commission it charges hosts to move its pricing closer to Airbnb and Booking.com, but it will keep charging guests a separate fee at a rate it has not pinned down.
Airbnb is adding AI-powered search and trip-planning features already running at Booking.com and Expedia, shifting the competition from timing to execution.
Expedia Group says it will change how Vrbo compensates hosts and partners on October 29, 2026, though it has not yet published the new rates.
Commissions, cancellation overrides and guest-vetting tools still work differently on the two platforms, and hosts running both are absorbing the gap heading into 2026.
A distribution partnership pushes StayTerra's listing count past 2,000 properties, with new inventory concentrated in Hawaii, California and Washington.
Geneva, New York's city council is weighing a new occupancy tax on short-term rentals, a move that would add a per-stay fee for local hosts if it clears a vote.
A new downloadable short-term rental agreement template aims to give hosts who take bookings outside Airbnb and Vrbo's built-in terms of service a signed contract to fall back on.
A boutique Wine Country operator has pulled all three dozen of its luxury estate rentals off Airbnb and Vrbo, taking bookings only through its own channels at rates averaging $1,295 a night.
Expedia Group says it wants to speed up growth in vacation rentals, but has released almost nothing on fees, tools or timelines for Vrbo hosts.
Expedia has rolled out a batch of new features for Vrbo hosts, led by a tool for building discounts and promotions aimed at budget-conscious travelers.
Irvine, California will require booking platforms to submit exact addresses and assessor parcel numbers, closing a gap hosts have used since the city's 2018 short-term rental ban to stay off the radar.
Clark County commissioners voted 5-0 to bar booking platforms from taking payments on short-term rentals without a county license, starting with an enforcement rollout aimed at Airbnb and Vrbo.
Woodstock, Illinois will start taxing short-term rentals on January 1, closing an exemption that let Airbnb and Vrbo hosts skip the lodging tax hotels already pay.
Flagstaff, Arizona, is raising short-term rental registration fees and requiring insurance and background checks, but hosts booking exclusively through Airbnb and Vrbo are exempt from parts of the new rules.
Airbnb, Booking Holdings and Expedia Group report second-quarter 2026 results in the coming weeks, and the numbers behind the headlines matter more to hosts than the headlines themselves.
Supplier-funded promotions have jumped from roughly a third to more than 40% of Vrbo bookings in a single quarter, which makes the platform's growth partly a transfer from owner margin.
An analysis of Expedia Group's second-quarter 2026 results argues Vrbo's booking gains lean on discounts and promotional funding that hosts pay for, not the platform.