HomeAway

Same thing, I mean, Airbnb.

Have you ever heard of VRBO? Have you ever heard of HomeAway? Have you ever heard of Craigslist? All of these solutions existed before airbedandbreakfast.com.

Yeah, that was the full name when Joe O'Brien started the company.

It existed, but they decided to approach it anyway, so.

And she's like, what the fuck? So she's calling, trying to get a hold of the place or wherever the contact Airbnb number is.

or Airbnb.

There's

And today she's the head of tax.

Before Morgan was senior tax accountant at HomeAway.com. And she started her career at PwC, like myself.

And she is based in Texas, US.

And in this episode, we will discuss the role of AI in tax and whether we should be worried or not.

We were doing something kind of silly, and we were blocking the entire hospitable account if one of your connections or one of your channels on Vrbo had... a non-supported Vrbo brand.

This is commonly HomeAway.

So if you had a legacy listing on any of your Vrbo channels connected to Hospitable, we didn't allow you to upgrade any of the channels, even if some of those channels did not have a HomeAway listing or another unsupported brand.

We removed that.

It's a bit smarter now.

Mm-hmm.

I, when I was at, um, HomeAway VRBO, I was there for 11 years.

I had eight promotions in those 11 years.

I had 15 managers during that time.

Welcome to the show.

Annie Holcombe has spent her career refusing to pick a side in the hotel versus vacation rental debate, working her way through property management, Expedia during the HomeAway and Vrbo years, channel management, and business development for Marriott Homes and Villas.

She is founder of Annie and Co, where she coaches independent vacation rental operators on distribution and business development, and serves as a brand ambassador and US market consultant for booking.com. She also sits on the Vacation Rental Management Association board and co-hosts Alex and Annie, the Real Women of Vacation Rentals, a podcast that I have been on, and that is closing in on episode 300.

Today, we are going to talk about the growing convergence between the hotel and vacation rental industries.

I would I mentioned two.

So the first one is, you know, I was around when Expedia bought HomeAway and Vrbo at the time.

And at the time, I thought of Expedia as, oh, that's where you bundle and save.

So at the time, I'm like, this is gonna be amazing.

I mean, we only really operate Provincetown.

But it's the type of thing that when you had that direct relationship for many years ago, and then Airbnb comes in, Vrbo comes in, you know, HomeAway at the time and disrupts that industry.

makes it easier for people to find these properties and book them directly with guests and then or with the host.

And the host realized that they don't own any of the data of the people who are booking.

That was my first job out of college for Vrbo, if you're familiar, the vacation rental company.

They went by HomeAway as the flagship brand back when I was there.

And so just one thing led to another.

And yeah, we're here like about 20 years later doing the same thing, but a little bit different.