How Does Expedia Work for Short-Term Rentals?
Expedia was among the first travel sites to support online bookings. It’s changed significantly over the years, evolving from a place to book airline tickets to a platform that helps people plan their entire vacation, including property rentals. So, if you’re a host or manager looking for a place to showcase your property, Expedia is one of the Airbnb alternatives to consider.
Learn what Expedia is and how it works in this blog post, which covers everything you need to decide whether Expedia is a good match for your short-term rental listings.
What is Expedia?
Expedia.com is a website where users can shop for all things travel. People can book stays, flights, cars, cruises, things to do, and packages. It’s an online travel agency (OTA) that provides direct services for consumers, manages bookings, and has customer support.
It has a section for hosts and managers, where they can list properties. As a host, you get access to property management tools through the Expedia Partner Central portal to distribute your listings, manage rentals, and advertise.
Expedia is a member of the wider Expedia Group, which unites multiple travel brands. This means high traffic from all around the world, bringing with it a lot of potential guests from multiple sources. So, if you list your property on Expedia, the OTA may display it across other partner websites.
It also means you can access extra tools for revenue management, performance tracking, third-party integrations, and other benefits from listing with them.
What is the Expedia Group
The Expedia group is a publicly traded company that owns multiple online travel brands, including Expedia OTA. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, USA, it provides platforms that connect travelers and service providers globally.
Each platform under the Expedia group has different functionalities, target audiences, and uses. Many of them are interconnected, providing hosts with additional benefits, like broader reach and cross-platform marketing.
Brands under the Expedia Group
Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo are the core brands belonging to the Expedia group, and the ones it promotes the most. Expedia, which we’re covering in this post, is an all-in-one OTA platform and the leading product. Hotels.com focuses specifically on hotel bookings and offers property management tools for hoteliers. Vrbo is similar to Airbnb in terms of offering vacation rentals, but it primarily centers on whole homes.
All three platforms now share the One Key loyalty program, which lets travelers earn and redeem cashback rewards (called OneKeyCash) across Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo bookings. This makes Vrbo the only major vacation rental platform with a loyalty program. Alongside these three sites, Expedia manages over 200 booking websites globally.
| Site | What they do |
|---|---|
| Expedia | All-in-one online travel website with flights, hotels, packages, car rentals, cruises, and activities worldwide |
| Vrbo | Platform focusing on whole-home vacation rentals for families and groups |
| Hotels.com | Hotel booking site with a popular loyalty program offering free nights |
| Orbitz | OTA offers flights, hotels, packages, and car rentals primarily for the US |
| Travelocity | OTA with flight, hotel, and vacation package bookings |
| Hotwire | Discount travel site providing last-minute deals on hotels, flights, and car rentals |
| Trivago | Hotel metasearch engine comparing prices across multiple OTAs and hotel websites for the best deals. |
| CheapTickets | Discount travel site offering deals on flights, hotels, and vacation packages, catering to budget travelers. |
| Wotif | Platform offering hotels, flights, and packages in the Asia-Pacific region |
| CarRentals.com | Online platform specializing in car rental bookings globally |
How does Expedia work for hosts and property managers?
Expedia cross-lists properties from the network of its travel sites, including Expedia.com, Vrbo, Hotels.com, and others. When a potential host clicks the “List your property” button on any Expedia Group website, they’re directed to Expedia’s partner signup page to create their listing. You can limit where your rentals are displayed, but most hosts and managers set up their listings on multiple platforms. You can also distribute listings to Expedia and related platforms through a partner channel manager or PMS.
Expedia isn’t an aggregator. Travelers book properties, flights, and other experiences directly through the platform. A host receives a notification to the Expedia Group Partner Central portal to confirm the property booking, either manually or automatically. Then, Expedia collects and holds the payment from the guest and transfers it to your account 1-2 days after check-in.
Host’s features for short-term rentals in Expedia:
- Listing across multiple platforms
- Centralized platform for property management
- Cross-platform availability calendar
- Market data and dynamic pricing
- Secure payment processing
- Communication tools
- Guest review monitoring
- Reporting and analytics
Who uses it?
Expedia is first and foremost the platform for global travelers. It helps people book every detail of their journey and plan trips with ease. At the same time, it offers resources for hotels, short-term rental hosts, property managers, and travel partners such as car rental companies.
Expedia is fairly universal and doesn’t have a laser-like focus on a specific type of property. Some Expedia Group websites, like Hotels.com (for renting hotel rooms) and Vrbo (for short-term home rentals), do. Yet, regardless of the property you manage, Expedia can help ensure decent traffic and reach guests globally.
Why you should get listed on Expedia
Expedia can be a solid alternative or addition to your current online rental platform by bringing more guests. Although Airbnb holds the largest market share, it’s not the only place to reach people. While the platform’s received mixed reviews when it comes to customer support and refund policies, listing on Expedia can bring plenty of benefits to your STR business.
Many partner websites
The Expedia Group, which includes Expedia, has hundreds of online travel brands. It unites over 200 booking websites in more than 40 languages and 75 markets. If you list on one of the websites, you can also display your property on others. Such cross-platform support optimizes property listing and management efforts, allowing you to get more bookings and increase occupancy.
Broader audience
According to Expedia, they have over 10 million average daily visitors across their websites and apps, while average monthly searches exceed 1 billion. To put that number into context, Airbnb’s site receives around 100 million visitors in an average month. By listing your property on Expedia, you can reach a large target audience that may not have otherwise seen your property.
Powerful marketing support
The Expedia Group invests significantly in promoting its three core websites — Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo. They have strong digital advertising, SEO, and social media exposure. You don’t need to do anything on your own, like when running a direct booking website. If you still want to boost STR marketing, you can use the Expedia Group Partner Central portal. It has built-in tools that enable property managers to run featured ads, offer a higher commission to show at the top of search results, and launch special deals.
How to list your property on Expedia
So, for hotel managers and rental property owners who want to create a listing, how does Expedia work? It’s quite simple to set up: to start, visit the List your property page and follow a guided process to publish your listing.
Here are the main steps to take:
1. Prepare to list your property
Before starting the listing process, have all the necessary information and images ready for publication. Write a property description highlighting the best features and amenities, take professional pictures, and think about the critical property rental rules to indicate in the profile. You might also need to include your STR registration number, as many local laws in the US and globally require such details to meet legal requirements.
2. Start the listing process
Go to the List your property page and select your property type. Note that Expedia may forward you to one of its websites, depending on your selections. How does Expedia work? If you are about to rent a vacation property, you will be redirected to Vrbo. Expedia prefers Vrbo for individual vacation rental owners or owners listing a single property. To list a hotel, motel, or B&B, you will use the Expedia Group Partner Central portal.
During the following stages, you indicate the property address, rooms, and amenities, upload photos, set pricing, define policies, and submit the property for review. It usually takes a few business days to get a reply.
3. Consider getting protection
Expedia doesn’t offer the same property damage protection as Airbnb’s Aircover. You’ll get some extra protection by listing through Vrbo, but it might not be enough to recover the damage in many cases. With this in mind, you’ll probably want to check out specialized damage protection for short-term rentals after listing your property on Expedia.
| Protect Your Property with Truvi Get up to $1 million in Damage Protection and let our resolutions team handle incidents so you don’t have to chase guests for reimbursement. See pricing and get started today. |
4. Track and optimize
Once you start getting first bookings, use Expedia’s analytics tools to monitor your performance, including occupancy rate, average daily rate, revenue per available room, and number of bookings.
Occupancy may be slightly lower right after you launch rentals, but it should grow as you promote the listing. You must also track your expenses and income to achieve a high return on investment and build an optimal property management strategy.
How much commission does Expedia charge?
Expedia doesn’t have a flat rate or set charges. The fees vary from 10% to 30%, with most hosts reporting a 15% fee per booking. The rate depends on the property type, location, demand, and your terms of agreement. The rates are comparable to similar short-term rental platforms like Booking.com.
If you rent a vacation home, you’ll likely do it through the Vrbo website, which belongs to the Expedia group. The commission fee here is 5%, with an additional 3% charge for payment processing. There’s also an annual subscription model with a $499 fee per property paid in advance. This might work better for hosts with high occupancy and rates that make up for the charges.
Expedia vs. Airbnb vs. Vrbo compared
Expedia, Airbnb, and Vrbo are three popular options for short-term property rentals. As they both along to the overall Expedia Group, Expedia and Vrbo have a lot in common. While Expedia is a universal platform for online travel booking, Vrbo is primarily dedicated to vacation homes.
Meanwhile, Airbnb features more basic short-term rentals. It’s a standalone platform unrelated to the Expedia Group, focusing on short-term rentals.
| Expedia | Airbnb | Vrbo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focus | Hotels, vacation rentals, resorts | Short-term rentals, shared spaces | Whole-home vacation rentals |
| Listing Type | Hotels, apartments, vacation homes | Entire place, private rooms, shared rooms | Entire place (no shared rooms) |
| Audience | Travelers booking everything in one place | People looking to rent an apartment | Families and groups |
| Fees | ~15–18% | 3% (host-only) or ~15% (shared model) | 5% + 3% payment fee (pay-per-booking) |
| Listing free | Free | Free | Free or $499/year for subscription model |
Your choice depends on your property type, location, and target audience. Determine what you’re offering and the types of guests you want to attract. Once you know, choosing the most suitable platform should be easy. Actually, you can have listings across all these platforms, especially if you have a property channel manager that automatically synchronizes listings across platforms.
How to protect your property when listing on Expedia
Short-term rentals come with increased risks, as you never know who will enter your property. Expedia is an instant booking platform, which doesn’t allow you to double-check the guest before accepting their request. As a result, your property is more likely to get damaged.
Truvi offers protection specifically designed for vacation rentals, with coverage up to $1 million in damages. Whether it’s accidental or intentional guest damage, smoke damage in non-smoking properties, unauthorized parties or pets, excessive cleaning costs, or replacement of broken accessories and linens, you’re covered.
| Secure Your Rental Investment Today Customize your level of Guest Protection from small damages to $1 million — and get fast payouts without chasing guests. See pricing and get started today. |
