It really wasn’t that long ago that if you were traveling somewhere and needed a place to stay, your only option was to book a hotel (or motel or bed & breakfast). But after its 2008 founding, online booking service Airbnb quickly gained traction throughout the 2010s by offering travelers an inexpensive hotel alternative with room and home listings from everyday people.
As Airbnb grew, the lines between its offerings and those of traditional hotels started to blur. In the spring of 2023, in an effort to return to its roots, the company rolled out a “Rooms” feature that made it easier to book single rooms in a person’s home, rather than promoting the number of faux hotels that had increasingly taken over the site in recent years.
But Airbnb is not the only hotel alternative out there. There’s also the online vacation rental service Vrbo. Vrbo was actually founded considerably earlier than Airbnb — in 1995, to be exact — but it’s never had the same popularity or name recognition. But following a 2019 rebrand by current owner Expedia and an ongoing aggressive advertising campaign that began with the 2022 Super Bowl — and included some thinly veiled shots at Airbnb during the 2024 NFL playoffs — Vrbo’s profile has risen considerably in the public consciousness and is now more of a serious competitor for Airbnb’s crown.
Vrbo Only Offers Entire Homes
So if you’re trying to decide between Airbnb and Vrbo to book your next vacation, here’s everything you need to know before deciding which is for you.
This is the biggest difference between Airbnb and Vrbo, as the two sites actually offer different types of lodging. Vrbo actually stands for “Vacation rentals by owner,” and the site only offers entire homes for rent. There are no single rooms, no guest houses, no sections of homes occupied by an owner, no bed and breakfasts, no de facto hotels. If you’re looking for any of those things, then Airbnb is the better bet, as it has all of those types of listings in addition to entire homes.
