Airbnb is a United States-based online platform that organises lodging, primary home stays or tourism experiences. The company does not own any of the real estate on their site, nor do they organise events; rather, they act like a middleman between people who want to rent out their homes and people who are in need of accommodation in that location, receiving commissions from each reservation they provide.
We found it appropriate to compile a list of sites similar to Airbnb that offer an excellent as well as alternative way to find accommodation anywhere in the world online.
They provide lodgings with various categories i.e. different price ranges that will suit their clients in any location. In this piece you will find a review of sites that can substitute Airbnb.
Airbnb is short for its initial name, Air Bed and Breakfast; it drew up from the early stage of the company after its founders put an air mattress in their sitting room, more or less turning their apartment into a small lodge that provides just a bed and breakfast for its clients. This they did in order to generate revenues to offset the high cost of rent in San Francisco.
Airbnb do not list properties on their site free of charge, they charge hosts a three per cent fee, which includes the cost of processing payments. Property owners planning to list their sites on Airbnb can pay an annual fee then they won’t be charged commission for each booking.
Airbnb is known to be one of the best sites to visit when in need of lodging services, but there are other sites like Airbnb that provide the same services as well as goods. Below are Airbnb alternatives:
Similar Sites Like Airbnb:
1. Agoda
Agoda.com is among the best sites similar to Airbnb. It is an online travel agency catering to customers worldwide, registered and headquartered in Singapore, with operations in Bangkok, Thailand. Agoda facilitates reservations for accommodation, flights, ground transportation, and activities.
2. Homestay Technologies Limited
Find and book homestay accommodation worldwide. The hosts offer short and long term stays for students and independent travellers.
3. Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy
Homes and Villas by Marriot Bonvoy is another great Airbnb alternative, and the renowned Marriott International’s expanded offering.
4. Tripadvisor Rentals
TripAdvisor Rentals leverages the power of TripAdvisor’s review system to attract travellers. This Airbnb alternative offers a wide range of property types and provides valuable bookings.
5. Hipcamp
Hipcamp, Inc. is an American platform similar to Airbnb, operating an online marketplace for booking campsites, RV parks, glamping stays, and private land camping experiences via a mobile app and website.
6. Kid and Coe
Kid & Coe is an Airbnb alternative that makes it easier to relax, keeping parents and kids satisfied with carefully curated vacation rentals in family-friendly destinations.
7. Tripadvisor
Tripadvisor is an American company and site similar to Airbnb that operates online travel agencies, comparison shopping websites, and mobile apps with user-generated content.
8. FlipKey
FlipKey is an online vacation rental site similar to Airbnb. It is a subsidiary of TripAdvisor. In 2016, the company listed over 300,000 properties in 179 countries. Its headquarters are in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
9. Onefinestay
Onefinestay is a British hospitality company founded in 2009. This Airbnb alternative provides a service to homeowners of distinctive and upmarket properties, by enabling them to let out their home to guests while their home is unoccupied.
10. Vacasa
Vacasa, Inc. is an international vacation rental management company based in Portland, Oregon. This Airbnb alternative provides property management services for over 35,000 vacation rentals in North America, Belize, and Costa Rica.
11. Outdoorsy, Inc.
Enjoy convenient camping trips with Outdoorsy, the RV rental company. Browse a variety of RVs, including camper vans, motorhomes, travel trailers, and fifth wheels. Choose delivery and setup at your desired location or pick up your RV. Explore popular rental destinations like national parks and waterside spots.
12. Glamping Hub
Glamping Hub is one of the best sites similar to Airbnb where you book the best vacation rentals in nature – cabins, safari tents, domes, yurts, etc.
13. Plum Guide
Plum Guide is a global vacation rental company similar to Airbnb that is headquartered in London, UK, with offices in New York and Hong Kong. The company was launched in 2016.
14. Expedia Group
Expedia Group, Inc. is an American travel technology company similar to Airbnb, owning and operating travel fare aggregators and travel metasearch engines, including Expedia, Hotels.com, Vrbo, Travelocity, Hotwire.com, Orbitz, Ebookers, CheapTickets, CarRentals.com, Expedia Cruises, Wotif, and Trivago.
15. Sonder
Sonder Holdings Inc is Airbnb alternative that manages short-term rentals, such as apartment hotels, in North America, Europe, and Dubai. This Airbnb similar site was founded in Montreal, Canada in 2014 and since 2016 has been based in San Francisco, California. Sonder manages over 9,000 units in over 40 cities in 10 countries and has served over 1 million guests.
16. Blueground
Blueground is a platform that offers fully furnished and equipped apartments for long-term stays.
17. 9flats
9flats is an online platform similar to Airbnb, allowing people to rent or lease short-term lodging. The company does not own any lodging; it is merely a broker that receives commissions from both guests and hosts for every booking.
18. Hopper
Hopper, Inc. is a travel booking site like Airbnb, and an online travel marketplace for flights, hotels, rental cars, and short-term house rentals.
19. Hotels.com
Find cheap hotels and discounts when you book on Hotels.com. Compare hotel deals, offers and read unbiased reviews on hotels.
20. Vrbo
Vrbo is short for vacation rentals by owner. It is one of the sites similar to Airbnb online. The company was established in the year 1995 as a platform where homeowners can offer their properties for a short term rental.
Vrbo have over a million properties on their list and have been running like twelve years before Airbnb. Vrbo’s mode of operation is slightly different because they only rent out vacation properties.
This shows that their services are narrowed and best for families or group of people looking accommodation for a slightly longer period of time.
Initially Vrbo do not collect booking charges for the services rendered to its guest instead they pass it to the owners of the property but sometime in 2016 they had a change of policy and started collecting booking fee from guests.
If you are a landlord or landlady, Vrbo have two different modes of operation with regards to their collection of booking fees. Either you pay a yearly fee or you can list your properties for free and pay the booking fee per booking.
Airbnb offers a little different well organised user experience and much more popular but Vrbo can still serve as a substitute site anytime you can’t find what you are looking for on Airbnb.
21. Flip Key
Flip key is a Trip Advisor owned site like Airbnb, so you can be certain that there is no cause for alarm trying to patronise them. Like every other site doing the same business flip key has fewer properties up for rent, an estimate of 300,000 rentals across 11,000 cities.
Flip key do not provide common rooms, they only provide private rooms or an entire estate. They also offer a wonderful search feature to check for properties that satisfies some conditions for instance pet friendly property featuring coastal properties, Mountain View properties and so many others.
If you are a landlord or landlady, it might interest you to know that its free to list your property on Flip key thereby adding your property to the Trip Advisor search engine which can be accessed across all their sites.
Flip key is based in Boston, Massachusetts, as of August 2019 they have 310.8k fans on Facebook and 12.7k followers on Twitter. You can check them through their official website www.flipkey.com
22. Home stay
As the name implies “Home stay” it is an authentic hosted experience, this means that you always stay in a hosts home. You will be offered a sound local experience with the tenderness of staying with a local. A lot of people have used Home stay in several locations globally including London, Paris and Savannah and have always attested they had an awesome experience through their online feedbacks.
It should be remembered that this Airbnb alternative has some draw backs especially availability. Although they have property in over 150 nations and most times in places where Airbnb does not have the option which is common for almost all alternatives of Airbnb on the list for instance if you try to get an accommodation in Los Angeles you will come across hundreds of locations on Airbnb and less than twenty on Home stay.
So if you truly seek a hosted experience, home stay is definitely the site to visit. Obviously there are still more properties been added to the site on daily bases and one can comfortably say that the company is growing and also remember there are so many other listings on home stay you can’t find somewhere else.
If you are a landlord or landlady do have it in mind that it is free to list on home stay. You can visit their site through www.homestay.com
23. Home Away
Home away is among the sites like Airbnb, and a Vrbo’s parent company and there are lot of overlaps on the listings you might encounter. There are some variations since home away has some stocks in their books especially for little apartments which mean that if you travel alone or as a pair, you can get more choices.
Although there might be some overlap between home away, Vrbo and Airbnb, it isn’t as much as you could expect. In 2014 Airbnb only reported just 6% of Home away assets.
This number must have increased by now but what am trying to point out here is that if you try to restrict yourself from Airbnb, you are actually missing out on a lot of fantastic assets.
If you are a landlord or landlady, you can sign up for Home away as a property owner through their official website www.homeaway.com. Just like Vrbo, Home away has two modes of operation with regards to collection of booking fees namely a yearly subscription where you pay no booking fees and a free listing where you pay per booking.
24. Booking.com
Booking is another great Airbnb alternative you should check out. Recall when you are living in hotels and someone would come and tidy up your room and arrange your bed? Sure, apartments are good, but you just want a hotel every now and then. However, generally speaking, the best place you could come is Booking.com for getting lots of deals in any hotel around the world. You may not have heard but booking.com also does home and apartments. So if you are already a fan of the website and you want to continue to use it for booking your apartment then you may.
Apart from booking hotel services, booking a hotel is also a one-stop shop where one can book a complete trip from a flight and car hire to taxis, restaurants and so on. For property owners, property listing on booking.com is free but they collect their booking fees per reservation.
25. Tripping.com
Tripping.com is a worldwide leading vacation rental search engine site similar to Airbnb, and has over 80 million assets across 150,000 locations that provide travelers with a long term wide variety of unique lodging. It has been labeled the “long term rental Kayak” a one stop platform for vacant homes that has collaborated with many big hot shots in the vacancy rental business to allow users to compare and contrast vacation rentals across providers.
Tripping.com is a San Francisco based company that was found by Jen O’ Neal, former employee of Stub Hub and Jeff Manheim from Travel zoo in 2009. The company has collaboration with AARP and its affiliation with Booking.com in 2015 made it the first vacation rental metasearch website to debut on-site booking
26. Home To Go
With over 15 million rental offers in more than 200 countries around the globe, home to go is the world’s largest vacation renting search engine.
Home To Go offers its users an unrivaled choice with such a vast array of properties. About 300 vendors including Home away, Booking.com, Vrbo, Expedia and Trip Advisor were built into the network.
Home to go was established in the year 2014 and not so long became a favorite for knowledgeable travelers because of its easy to use interface, easy price comparison and sizable range of offers.
Through smart sorting and dynamic date matching, users can quickly compare and contrast a lot of property listings within a small period of time and hence go for the perfect vacation rental.
Home to go makes it easier to find a place to stay by providing the best offers of which are most times difficult and time consuming. With home to go everybody will conveniently arrange their perfect vacation rental.
27. House Trip
House Trip is not as old as other sites like Airbnb but take it from me this is an upcoming platform to watch. The company is based in Lausanne and also known as the Airbnb of Europe.
As Airbnb is common with travelers in North America, European tourists are always searching for this online vacation rental platform.
However since it is still an untapped market with a very small competition for exposure you are going to have the privilege of being among the first property in your region on the website which is a very good start, capitalize on that and reap the benefits down the line.
It is totally free to list your list your property on the site so there is nothing to lose.
28. Vacay Hero
Vacay hero was formerly named Zaranga and has over 13,000 US- wide vacation rentals with a vast stock of properties in Georgia, Texas, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming.
The Airbnb alternative site provides direct payment and booking procedures and all cleaning and service fees are paid on booking. The business is based in San Francisco was established in 2011 and offers a good process of renting properties.
They ensure that their customer service is top notch by providing chains of hotels. The company only provides professionally run holiday facilities to its customers that are thoroughly scrutinised prior to time.
This points out that there is a team of people around to make sure the experience is quite an interesting one and hitch free.
29. Luxury Retreats
If you want a memorable experiences and comfort do not look beyond Luxury retreats. This Montreal based company was established in 1999 with only one property and specializes in villa rentals. It has grown since then to provide a carefully selected collection of more than 4,000 premium assets in over 100 locations worldwide.
Such villas are an adventure on the sea, a break in the town and a luxurious house for big groups and retreats. A 24 hour, 7 minute personal concierge system and unlimited full service guest services can be offered to travelers. For homeowners that want to affiliate with Luxury retreats, membership rates and charges do not adopt a pay for performance model.
Nevertheless Luxury retreats acquire bragging rights of about $150 million in yearly bookings. Guests will enjoy exuberant life almost anywhere in the world by providing luxury rentals in the Bahamas, Central America, South Africa, Europe and the South pacific.
Conclusion
There are a lot of sites like Airbnb, and we know you need alternative forms of accommodation; the above-listed ones are highly recommended. When it comes to travel and choosing where you will live, it is necessary to enlarge your horizons.
Sites like Airbnb listed above are all helpful in their own special ways, depending on what you are searching for. Knowing which of the sites to use and when to use them is one of the most important things to have in mind.
