HomeAway has been positioning themselves to be bought by Expedia for about 12-20 months.

If you are in the travel industry you'd not actually think this news is a suprise.

The timing is also 3 days after the close of the VRMA (a large travel exhibition for vacation rental managers this year held in New Orleans)

I had the severe misfortune of going to last years VRMA. I travelled over from England... anyway, the VRMA (which is suposed to be a somewhat neutral organization looking after managers best interests) decided in their infinite wisdom to give the spotlight to HomeAway's COO (Brent) and CEO (Brian).

The keynotes speech shocked everyone!.. Essentially, Brian Sharples turned an event that was suposed to be generic advice for the betterment of the entire industry into a marketing pitch about HomeAway and it's vision for the future. This wasn't abstract advice.. this was specific details about how managers will use HomeAway in the future. This was the KEYNOTE of an event that 800 managers paid several thousand dollars to attend.

Anyway, he told all managers that within 24 months they will be on "Instant Book". This is a shock because the transition to Instant Book signalled that they are trying to phase out the listing model.. (The listing model has always been in favour of managers because it meant that they can handle their own enquiries and bookings/payments). Pushing people down the instant book route has always visibly been because they need the numbers to be attractive to Expedia and because after increasing the listing modules from $300 to over $1000 per listing (this is for platinum) they need more ways to increase shareholder value.

PS. On return back to England, the forums and community boards were in uproar about this. Our company paid to get the recordings of the event.. guess which speach out of 48 different lectures and presentations were missing... the keynote by Brian Sharples.

It's actually obscene that we were paying over $100k per year to HomeAway for platinum listings and then users on a basic listing were being ranked higher than us because they had "Book in Now" enabled on their properties. This is all because transparently, they need the bookings to be processed through their system to prove they are a valuable purchase for Expedia. (It's been no secret that everyone has known it's going to be Expedia buying HA).

Further proof/conjecture(?), is that for a long time they stopped providing us emails of enquiries made for our properties through their system. This is as they assure the community because of "phising" fears etc...

I've long said, the best thing that can happen to the industry is for Expedia to buy HomeAway. I think this is going to be a really good thing. Expedia is going to force book it now, which isn't practical for managers who can't handle the instant bookings (due to real time availability and calendars issues).

Bit of a rant. I've never hidden my criticism of HomeAway. They've always been the gorilla in the room who force you to play by their rules and demand control of the entire booking process. (Keep in mind that they are long before AirBnb. They might not be as glamourous, but HomeAway and VRBO have done amazing things for the short term rental travel industry.... which can't be forgotten.)