TL;DR: Expedia ranks listings based on offer strength (pricing, reviews) and quality score (completeness, professionalism). Optimize with high-quality photos, complete property details, instant book, competitive pricing, and strategic promotions. Vacation rentals outperform hotels on value and space—position accordingly.
A relatively late entry to the vacation rental marketplace, Expedia carved its way onto the scene with Expedia Group’s acquisition of HomeAway and Vrbo in 2015. Despite being under one roof, they each remain separate brands with Expedia more recently expanding deeper into the short-term rental space.
While traditionally Expedia has been optimized for traditional accommodations, this creates an opportunity for property managers. In direct comparison against a standard hotel, vacation rentals are typically less expensive with better amenities and a more authentic experience.
That isn’t just better value, it’s also a better fit for what many travelers are looking for.
So here’s what you can do to better position your listings on Expedia to perform well and stand out from the competition.
Craft high-quality listings
You already know that an eye-catching listing with beautiful photos, a great headline, and a detailed description is a strong starting point that also influences Expedia’s algorithm. Here are two additional factors the site uses:
| Ranking factor | What it measures | How to optimize |
|---|---|---|
| Offer strength | How your listings compare to similar properties in terms of average pricing, reviews and recommendations | Price competitively, generate reviews, maintain high ratings |
| Quality score | Your professionalism: listing completeness, cancellation rate, competitiveness | Complete all fields, never cancel bookings, respond quickly |
To underscore the importance of getting the basics right, Expedia offers a number of tools through their Partner Central dashboard to help you fine-tune your listings, such as:
- The content score evaluates property details, identifying areas where more information might be needed.
- The photo score helps optimize images by assessing the number of photos for each area, photo resolution, and other best practices needed to create a visually striking listing.
Adding points of interest to each listing is also a smart move and it’s one the company has tested itself: Travelers respond to facts and photos that go beyond basic requirements to capture their imagination.
“When (travelers) find pictures of slides or pools or places to go and things to see — this is where the delight happens because this is actually why people travel,” said Scott Jones, Expedia Group’s VP of Global Design and User Experience. With accurate details, engaging photos and reviews from other travelers, you create a stronger connection between the potential guest and what they’ll do on their trip.
Another tip? Take a critical eye to your listing and make sure that, where possible, it’s in line with what hotels have to offer.
“You should make sure that your listings reflect the essential amenities of a hotel, and you can meet the basic expectations of someone who is looking for a hotel (i.e. Wifi),” suggested MyVR product manager Brent McCullough. “You likely already provide (these basic amenities), but when you’re structuring the listing, taking time to call out the items that might make people less worried can go a long way.”
Improve your visibility with promotions
To list your property on Expedia Group sites, you need to enable the Instant Book feature. This is an effective way to position your property for last-minute bookings as well as travelers booking well in advance who want a quick and easy way to confirm their reservation.
What other options do you have so your listing shows up more prominently in search? Like other channels, Expedia has paid options that offer a quick solution:
Accelerator increases the commission you pay to Expedia Group in exchange for better visibility over a set period of time.
Promotions help bring in more bookings:
- Offer discounts to stir interest (last-minute, early bird, length-of-stay)
- Value Add Promotions let you offer enhanced packages without discounting your rates
- Members Only Deals may be highlighted among Expedia Group’s more than 160 million members
Your best long-term strategy is to ensure your listings are consistently at the top of their game. But for a temporary boost, these promotions are an effective way to respond to market conditions and get in front of your ideal customers before they book somewhere else.
How do you rank higher on Expedia and get more vacation rental bookings?
TL;DR: Expedia ranks listings based on offer strength (competitive pricing, reviews) and quality score (listing completeness, low cancellations). Optimize with high-quality photos, complete property details, instant book, strategic promotions, and Guesty’s direct integration for real-time rate and availability synchronization.
A relatively late entry to the vacation rental marketplace, Expedia carved its way onto the scene with Expedia Group’s acquisition of HomeAway and Vrbo in 2015. Despite being under one roof, they each remain separate brands with Expedia more recently expanding deeper into the short-term rental space.
While traditionally Expedia has been optimized for traditional accommodations, this creates an opportunity for property managers. In direct comparison against a standard hotel, vacation rentals are typically less expensive with better amenities and a more authentic experience.
That isn’t just better value, it’s also a better fit for what many travelers are looking for.
So here’s what you can do to better position your listings on Expedia to perform well and stand out from the competition.
Craft high-quality listings
You already know that an eye-catching listing with beautiful photos, a great headline, and a detailed description is a strong starting point that also influences Expedia’s algorithm. Here are two additional factors the site uses:
| Ranking factor | What it measures | How to optimize |
|---|---|---|
| Offer strength | How your listings compare to similar properties in terms of average pricing, reviews and recommendations | Price competitively, generate reviews, maintain high ratings |
| Quality score | Your professionalism: listing completeness, cancellation rate, competitiveness | Complete all fields, never cancel bookings, respond quickly |
To underscore the importance of getting the basics right, Expedia offers a number of tools through their Partner Central dashboard to help you fine-tune your listings, such as:
The content score evaluates property details, identifying areas where more information might be needed.
The photo score helps optimize images by assessing the number of photos for each area, photo resolution, and other best practices needed to create a visually striking listing.
Adding points of interest to each listing is also a smart move and it’s one the company has tested itself: Travelers respond to facts and photos that go beyond basic requirements to capture their imagination.
“When (travelers) find pictures of slides or pools or places to go and things to see — this is where the delight happens because this is actually why people travel,” said Scott Jones, Expedia Group’s VP of Global Design and User Experience. With accurate details, engaging photos and reviews from other travelers, you create a stronger connection between the potential guest and what they’ll do on their trip.
Another tip? Take a critical eye to your listing and make sure that, where possible, it’s in line with what hotels have to offer.
“You should make sure that your listings reflect the essential amenities of a hotel, and you can meet the basic expectations of someone who is looking for a hotel (i.e. WiFi),” suggested MyVR product manager Brent McCullough. “You likely already provide (these basic amenities), but when you’re structuring the listing, taking time to call out the items that might make people less worried can go a long way.”
Improve your visibility with promotions
To list your property on Expedia Group sites, you need to enable the Instant Book feature. This is an effective way to position your property for last-minute bookings as well as travelers booking well in advance who want a quick and easy way to confirm their reservation.
What other options do you have so your listing shows up more prominently in search? Like other channels, Expedia has paid options that offer a quick solution:
Accelerator increases the commission you pay to Expedia Group in exchange for better visibility over a set period of time.
Promotions help bring in more bookings:
- Offer discounts to stir interest (last-minute, early bird, length-of-stay)
- Value Add Promotions let you offer enhanced packages without discounting your rates
- Members Only Deals may be highlighted among Expedia Group’s more than 160 million members
Create and manage promotions directly in Guesty. Set discount types (last-minute, early bird, mobile rate, length-of-stay, multi-night, day-of-week), select discount percentages, define minimum stay requirements, limit booking and stay date ranges, choose your audience (all guests or newsletter subscribers only), and assign listings. Guesty syncs promotions to Expedia automatically.
Your best long-term strategy is to ensure your listings are consistently at the top of their game. But for a temporary boost, these promotions are an effective way to respond to market conditions and get in front of your ideal customers before they book somewhere else.
Managing multiple properties on Expedia with Guesty
Expedia offers great tools via their web-based dashboard, but it can be time-consuming to review all your listings on a 1:1 basis. When you use a property management system such as Guesty, one of Expedia Group’s Preferred Connectivity Partners, you can tap into direct API integration that keeps your inventory, rates and calendars in sync and up-to-date.
Guesty’s Expedia integration provides:
- Real-time rate synchronization – pricing changes push to Expedia within minutes
- Real-time availability updates – bookings on any channel block dates on Expedia automatically
- Promotion management – create and sync promotions across multiple properties
- Rate plan synchronization – manage different pricing tiers and restrictions
- Guest language import – automatically detect guest preferred language from Expedia
- Reservation modification sync – changes made on Expedia reflect in Guesty bidirectionally
- Multi-property bulk editing – adjust pricing, promotions, and settings across your portfolio
Link existing Expedia listings with Guesty or create new listings and publish them to Expedia directly from the platform. Manage all guest communications through Guesty’s unified inbox, viewing Expedia messages alongside Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com in one interface.
Use Guesty PriceOptimizer to automate competitive pricing on Expedia. The tool analyzes market data, detects local events, adjusts for seasonality, and optimizes gap pricing to fill calendar openings—all syncing to Expedia in real-time.
Frequently asked questions
They remain separate brands with different audiences. Expedia attracts hotel comparison shoppers discovering vacation rentals, while Vrbo targets dedicated vacation rental seekers. List on both for maximum exposure—Guesty manages both from one platform.
Critical. Instant book is required to list on Expedia and significantly impacts conversion rates. Travelers searching for immediate accommodation skip request-to-book properties. Enable instant book with guest screening requirements to maintain control.
Technically yes, but not recommended. Guests compare prices across platforms. Significant discrepancies damage trust and may violate rate parity agreements. Use channel-specific promotions instead of base rate differences
Expedia typically charges 15-25% commission depending on your agreement. This is comparable to Booking.com (15-20%) and higher than Airbnb (3% host fee + guest service fee). Factor commission into your pricing strategy.
