Imagine getting access to millions of vacation rental homes across 190 countries around the world. This is what HomeAway, Inc. offers, a repository of all the available vacation houses to make travelling more memorable and more comfortable. Their sites provide over 1 million listings of properties that are readily available for tourists to rent. It offers convenience for both tourists and property owners to post, book and advertise their properties. They have several websites that are operating in various countries.
The product portfolio of the business includes VRBO.com. VacantionRentals.com and HomeAway.com in the United States. Their Spanish operations include HomeAway.com.es and Toprural.es. They have operations in France: Abritel.fr and Homelidays.com. In Australia, they have Stayz.com.au and HomeAway.com.au; Bookabach.co.nz in New Zealand, AlugueTemporada.com.br in Brazil; HomeAway.co.uk and OwnersDirect.co.uk in the United Kingdom and HomeAway.de in Germany. Their postings for the Asia Pacific region is marketed under the brand name travelmob.com.
The usage of vacation rental properties has become a preferred option for travelers because of the extra comfort, more room to relax and its least expensive cost compared to hotel accommodations. The owners of these properties are also more considerate in terms of adjusting to the needs of their visitors. More and more tourists prefer to book their accommodations from these sites for their flexible terms and reasonable costs.
Headquartered in Austin, Texas, HomeAway, Inc was initially funded by Redpoint Ventures, Technology Crossover Ventures, Austin Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners and Trident Capital. It was founded by partners Carl Shepherd and Brian Sharples. It publicly trades on the NASDAQ , under the symbol AWAY.