Expedia vs. Booking.com: How They Work for Vacation Rental Hosts

Expedia and Booking.com are popular OTA platforms offering a vast global reach. Which of them is a better option for listing your vacation rental property? In this blog post, we’ll compare Expedia vs. Booking.com and talk about how they differ and what they offer for short-term rental hosts and property managers.

You may also want to check out our article comparing Agoda vs. Booking.com, where we focus on their target audiences, service fees, and benefits for owners of vacation rental properties. 

Whether renting out your own lakefront vacation home or managing multiple vacation rental properties as a co-host, your job will be easier if you automate repetitive daily tasks using vacation rental software like Hospitable. Our tool can save hours a week so you can focus on providing an exceptional experience for your guests and growing your business.

Expedia vs. Booking.com: Key Differences

Look at this comparison chart of Expedia vs. Booking.com to see how these OTA platforms differ and what each offers for vacation rental hosts. We compare these popular travel booking websites across categories: number of listings, global reach, types of property you can list, target audience, service fees, and benefits for hosts.

Expedia vs. Booking.com: General Overview

Expedia is one of the world’s largest online travel agencies, operates globally, and boasts more than 200 travel booking sites across 70+ countries. Expedia’s site is a comprehensive travel marketplace where visitors can search and book accommodation, flights, cruises, car rentals, experiences, and vacation packages.

Expedia attracts leisure and business travelers from across the globe, but over 90% of the site’s traffic comes from the United States. The website attracts families, business professionals, luxury seekers, and budget travelers looking for discounted packages and last-minute deals.

As a full-service travel brand, Expedia is a member of Expedia Group, which also owns and operates an extensive portfolio of brands, including such well-known brands as Hotels.com (provider of online hotel booking services) and Vrbo (the vacation rental brand).

Expedia’s competitor, Booking.com, is part of Booking Holdings Inc. and is one of the leading digital travel companies in the world. Booking Holdings owns five primary consumer-facing brands: Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK and OpenTable, and a network of subsidiary brands.

Booking.com connects travelers searching for accommodation to a broad network of hotels, vacation home rentals, and other unique places to stay. They also help travelers book flights, car rentals, airport taxis, and experiences in different cities worldwide. Booking.com attracts travelers from across the globe, but its core audience is located in the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France. The platform appeals to business professionals, families, and leisure travelers.

Expedia vs. Booking.com: Property Types

Expedia allows travelers to plan their trips from more than 3 million properties, from luxury hotels and resorts to budget-friendly hostels and motels to vacation rentals. Many vacation rental listings include apartments, condos, cottages, cabins, vacation homes, ranches, castles, villas, chalets, farm stays, treehouses, and glamping.  

Booking.com states that the OTA platform offers more than 28 million accommodation listings, including more than 6.6 million homes, apartments, and other unique places to stay. Travelers can book stays in different vacation rental properties, including villas, cabins, cottages, serviced apartments, ryokans, riads, country houses, farms, tiny houses, luxury tents, and even boats.

Expedia vs. Booking.com: How They Work for Property Owners

Property owners who want to list their STR properties on Expedia can visit Expedia Partner Central. It’s a separate platform for property owners to manage their listings, communicate with guests, update their calendars and rates, and access different resources. Advanced marketing programs and tools, including competitive set analysis, real-time market pricing, and more, can help you make informed business decisions.

On Expedia Partner Central, property owners must choose what they want to list: lodging or private residence. If they select the Private Residence option, they’ll be redirected to the Vrbo platform to complete the process following the on-screen prompts.

If you enable Instant Booking on your Vrbo listing, your vacation rental property will also appear in searches on Expedia.com and some other localized websites owned by Expedia Group. You don’t need to create separate new accounts.

Listing your beach house or a ski rental on Expedia will extend your reach to more diverse travelers and increase your chances of attracting vacationers interested in booking a stay at your property. If you opt for Hospitable, our tool can help you manage bookings on Expedia and many other niche websites with iCal imports, which allow you to seamlessly sync calendars across various booking platforms and prevent double bookings.

Watch the explainer video to learn how the iCal imports functionality works, and check out our help article for more guidance.

Booking.com allows property owners to register on the platform and list their properties for free to get access to a global audience of guests. Hosts can manage their properties from an administrative dashboard called Booking.com Extranet and use the Pulse app to run their properties on the go. Booking.com gives hosts paid tools like Visibility Booster that can help you increase your revenue. All hosts receive protection against liability claims from guests and neighbors up to $1,000,000 for every reservation.

To learn more about how Booking.com works for STR property owners, check out our Booking.com host guide.

Expedia vs. Booking.com: Service fees

Expedia charges commissions on each booking made through its site, and the fee varies from 10% to 30%, depending on the accommodation type, the location of the property, and other factors. Generally, the average commission rate for hotels is around 20%.

Each vacation rental property site owned by Expedia Group may have variations in host fees and commissions. For example, Vrbo’s pay-per-booking fee is 8% of the total amount of the reservation, and it consists of a 3% payment processing and 5% commission fee.

Booking.com is also a commission-based platform. It charges a fixed percentage booking fee for each booking subtotal paid on the platform. The commission fees that Booking.com charges hosts typically range from 10% to 25% and can vary based on the property type, location, performance, and market program participation. On average, the commission fee is about 15% of the booking subtotal.

As you see, while global OTAs like Expedia and Booking.com allow you to reach more travelers who can become your potential guests, they charge hefty commissions for their services. So, to maximize your revenue and grow a sustainable business, you should also create a direct booking website and focus on building stronger relationships with guests to encourage direct repeat bookings.