Good morning,

Here’s what’s going on in the vacation rental world this week:

Airbnb keeps building its whole-trip app, now letting guests book a rental car and receive up to 20% back in Airbnb credit, AirDNA's June U.S. market review shows hosts are gaining more pricing power, and we break down how Vrbo uses its data to decide which guests ever see your listing.

Lets dive in. 

NEWS

Headline Roundup

• Airbnb now lets guests book rental cars through a new CarTrawler partnership (The Host Report)

• AirDNA published their June 2026 U.S. short term rental market review (AirDNA) 

• New data shows nearly half of pet owners have changed or canceled trips over pet policies (Yahoo Finance) 

• Airbnb expands into Coworking spaces, partnering with UK operators Oneder and Work Life (Coworking Europe) 

• A developer is converting a Texas Holiday Inn resort into 72 STR condos (Yahoo News) 

• International bookings at western mountain resorts are down 51%, but domestic demand is holding steady (Inntopia)

Repeat Bookings, on Autopilot

INTERESTING INSIGHTS

Vrbo spends millions to get you bookings. Here's where their VP of Marketing says they're spending it

Nobody knows where your bookings actually come from better than the OTAs themselves. So when Vrbo's VP of Marketing, Helen Melluish, sat down for an interview to discuss how the platform is spending its summer marketing budget, I paid attention. 

It's a rare look under the hood at how Vrbo is pulling in the guests who end up booking our properties.

Three things stood out when I read between the lines of what she was saying

#1 They're leaning into drive-to trips

She said it flat out:

"Drive-to is actually a big part of our business anyway."

Especially as gas and flights get pricey, Vrbo is shifting its ad budget toward the closer-to-home routes:

"We're also seeing some other travel routes or priority corridors open up that are a little bit more drive time. In that regard, we're changing some of our local messaging and media strategy to make sure we're talking about those destinations."

So Vrbo is openly saying drive-to destinations are core to the business, and they're buying ads to push the trips people can take without booking a flight, targeting guests by where they live:

"we understand where the key origin and destination markets are... And we're able to market at quite a local level. So we will do marketing in certain origin cities—maybe it’s Atlanta or New York... Often they have their annual vacation in the same place, and we know that trip is still going to take place."

Basically, if your property sits within a few hours' drive of a major metro, you're in the kind of destination Vrbo is spending real money to promote this summer.

#2 Vrbo’s “brand promise”

When she talked about how Vrbo sets itself apart, the same three words kept coming up:

"we want to make sure you realize when you book a Vrbo, it's going to absolutely deliver for you. It's going to be quality. You can trust the experience you're going to have." And she went on to say "that we are very focused on trust and quality and reliability in the space."

I’m speculating here because nobody knows how Vrbo's search algorithm actually works, but here's my bet:

If a company is pouring tons of money into telling the world it stands for reliability, it can't afford to send a guest to a host who cancels at the last minute. So my bet is that their search algorithm punishes hosts who cancel on guests harder than you'd expect.

That's a guess. But it lines up with how a brand protects its reputation.

#3 How they're using AI, and where they won't

This one made me laugh a little. When asked about AI, she drew a hard line:

"the houses we feature are always going to be real Vrbos—we're not going to start creating AI homes."

I mean, sure. "We promise not to use AI to invent fake houses for our ads" is a low bar. But the fact that it needs saying out loud tells you exactly where the marketing industry is heading.

So what are they actually using AI for? Speed and scale:

"maybe it's a billboard that was never really a billboard, but is a billboard that exists in our organic social. We can generate something pretty quickly using AI and be in the moment socially with something that feels culturally relevant, for example."

So the play is fast, culturally-relevant social posts. But it's interesting where they drew the line. The marketing can be fake, but the product can't be.

What to take away

We don't usually get to hear about how one of the biggest players in our industry is thinking about marketing right now. Leaning into drive-to trips, positioning the brand on trust, and testing where AI helps without letting it touch the actual product are good nuggets that are worth applying to our own properties. 

If you run your own marketing, it's good to know what the big players are doing (so you can to take this info and use it for yourself… or do the opposite of what Vrbo’s doing to stand out).

And if you don't do any marketing yourself and just list your properties on the OTAs, pay even closer attention. Because this is what you're paying the OTA fees for. The ads, the data, the local targeting. It's the machine that fills your calendar, and it's worth understanding how it actually runs.

MARKET INSIGHTS

Mortgage Rate Snapshot

Despite two cooler-than-expected inflation reports last week, mortgage rates are right back at their 2026 high as rising fuel prices from renewed fighting in Iran are causing uncertainty.

Regulations Update

• Charleston, South Carolina's Planning Commission deferred a plan to cap short-term rentals at eight guests each after dozens of owners said it would cut bookings by 25% or more

• A Wisconsin appeals court struck down Sister Bay's four-bedroom cap on short-term rentals as preempted by the state's Right to Rent law, a win for owners that the village could still appeal to the Wisconsin Supreme Court

• Reynoldsburg, Ohio unanimously approved an STR ordinance requiring an annual permit and a three-night minimum booking, with fines up to $1,000 and permit revocation for violations

• South Bend, Indiana committees heard two proposed bills to permit and regulate the city's 1,300-plus short-term rentals

See this weeks full regulations report here: (The Host Report)