Skift Celebrates Pioneers in Vacation Rentals with Top 250 Awards

Skift, a leading travel research company, recently reviewed its 2019 report on the short-term rental space. With the industry seeing moew growth and change over the past four years, the updated awards list now celebrates 250 companies shaping the future of vacation rentals.

Methodology Behind the Rankings

From a pool of nearly 430 vacation rental companies, Skift devised a ranking method to spotlight the top 250 industry game-changers. Given the wide-ranging nature of these companies, from global giants to small startups, Skift employed LinkedIn metrics, namely followers and employee counts, as indicators of prominence.

While these metrics aren’t direct signals of revenue or scale, they offer insights into a company’s impact and stature within its specific sector. Importantly, companies were evaluated within their respective sectors, ensuring a more apples-to-apples comparison.

Key Insights from the Breakdown

The results encompass a wide range of sectors within the vacation rental universe:

• Business-to-Consumer Platforms, such as Listing Sites, had 30 top performers, with Whimstay making its mark as a notable last-minute booking platform.
• Metasearch had 8 leading players.
• The Property Management category saw 19 Host Service Providers and 23 Vacation Home Managers. Urban Rental Managers had 15 standouts.
• The Business-to-Business category was further broken down into sub-categories, including Property Management and Distribution Tech (41), Revenue Management and Market Intelligence (19), Marketing Tech and Website Builders (15), and several more.

Skift knows that no list is perfect and said that there may be potential missing mentions or overlaps. Many companies, after all, wear multiple hats or extend their reach beyond the vacation rental domain.

Airbnb & Niche Market Players

While Airbnb’s powerful brand strength and appeal make it an industry leader, Skift’s top 250 list shows that there’s ample room for specialized platforms. Luxury offerings like Le Collectionist, business travel platforms such as AltoVita, and homeswapping sites like Kindred have all found their niche. Moreover, sites like Whimstay, focusing on last-minute bookings, prove that the vacation rental space is vibrant, versatile, and ripe with opportunity for change.

Click to view the entire report from Skift

Skift recently revisited its influential 2019 report and celebrates 250 companies shaping the future of vacation rentals.

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