HomeAway / TripAdvisor CEO's in slapfest

Monday, July 12th 2010 - comments (0)

Travel news website Tnooz has released coverage of the first shots in the upcoming war between vacation rentals behemouth HomeAway and the king of review sites TripAdvisor.

TripAdvisor is making increasing efforts to get into the vacation rentals market by buying FlipKey two years ago and very recently acquiring HolidayLettings - a major UK holiday rentals portal.

Stephen Kaufer, CEO of TripAdvisor fired an opening salvo by casting doubt over the integrity of guest reviews on HomeAway. Oh dear, the words pot and kettle spring to mind - was there ever a time when TripAdvisor was seen as the shining light of utterly honest reviews?

Brian Sharples of HomeAway fired right back, wondering why Kaufer was trashing the owners whose business he is presumably trying to win? A fair point. Go Brian.

In fairness it is probably comparing apples and pears. TripAdvisor's review system is very open; the upside is a wide range of views. The downside is a degree of malicious posting.

Conversely HomeAway's review system allows owners to validate the guest. This means a higher proportion of positive reviews (and very few critical ones) but at least they are more likely to be written by genuine guests.

Expect the war of words to ramp up in years to come as these heavyweights fight over the rentals market.  If it were a straight up slapfest, our money is on Sharples. (Going by the Tnooz mugshots, he looks way 'arder than Kaufer.)

Read the full story at Tnooz

comments (0)

more headlines...

• New HomeAway coupon code: Free Featured Listing
  Get top placement with a free featured listing at HomeAway - offer expires 30th September!
  September 8th, 2010
• Owner Chat: Weekly forum highlights
  Forum threads on Flipkey effectiveness, Facebook "likes", competing property and Owners Direct being greedy b*****ds
  September 7th, 2010
• TripAdvisor devises world's dullest rentals poll, thousands vote
  Have you ever stayed in a vacation rental home? 58% say yes (we just have no idea who they are)
  August 24th, 2010
• San Francisco follows NYC rentals ban, VRBO fights back
  US owners could be forgiven for feeling pretty victimized right now after another city moves to ban vacation rentals
  August 18th, 2010

related pages

• Subscribe via RSS news feed
• Follow us on Twitter
• More rentals news...
• Contact the editor