* Updated June 15th, 2021
Understanding the latest trends is key to how customers interact with travel companies and what improvements should be made to increase bookings. The rise of online travel agencies has been one of the most dramatic examples of the digital transformation of business and society over the last 25 years.
There are hundreds of vacation rental listing sites and hosts wonder where to best list their properties. Which ones are likely to attract more bookings? Which ones bring quality guests? We try to shed some light per the graph below.
Are you ready?
We have collected booking data from Hosthub customers from 78 countries from the past 3 years – more than 500.000 bookings in total, and broke down the data per source channel – these are the results:
Percentage of bookings per channel per month
Click the graph to zoom in
Airbnb dominates the global market, as, for the last 4 years, over 40% of total bookings come from it. They have finally succeeded in capturing maximum market share and become the quintessential travel conglomerate.
One should not fail to notice the share decrease of Booking.com. Before the pandemic outbreak, it held the second-largest share on the market, second only to Airbnb. However, starting last year, it started losing ground as Vrbo & direct bookings started gaining ground.
In the United States, during the pandemic, travel between states was not prohibited. This means that STR bookings held their ground and sites as Vrbo increased in popularity securing 12% of total bookings in June 2021.
More importantly, direct bookings have also been on the rise. More specifically, 16% of total bookings in June 2021 are from direct bookings – a percentage that can’t be ignored. This movement originated in Europe a few years ago and has been spreading since.
It seems the pandemic outbreak created a breach in the dominance of the two major players making room for two new ones: Vrbo & direct bookings. Hosts were now able to increase bookings by listing their properties on multiple channels.
You can choose between:
📌 Niche channels or
This article will be updated monthly.
Distribution of booking sources per month – USA
Distribution of booking sources per month – All the world excluding the USA
