Vacation rental site HomeAway is working together with Gogobot to launch “Insider Guides”, a new feature that lets home owners share recommendations with their guests.
The new guides offer competition to AirBnB’s new Neighborhoods feature, which launched in February.
Listings on HomeAway and VRBO.com, the company’s Vacation Rentals By Owner site, now have a “View Guide” link that directs to rental owners’ guidebooks. Gogobot will combine the owners’ recommendations with content from its own site and members. The guides are printable and also compatible with Gogobot’s iOS and Android apps.
The partnership looks to be an effective one, as it combines HomeAway’s strengths of finding a place to stay with Gogobot’s wealth of information on what to do. Meanwhile, Gogobot gains more content from property owners that opt to build their own guides.
“At its core, Gogobot is about connecting people with trusted information to help them plan their next trip,” Gogobot CEO and co-founder Travis Katz said. “Insider Guides is a natural extension of this vision – enabling HomeAway.com and VRBO.com travelers to not only browse hundreds of thousands of vacation rental listings, but also discover authentic travel experiences curated by the individuals who best know the area around each property.”
Gogobot hit 2.5 million users earlier this year, with a large percentage signing on from their mobile devices. The company has raised a total of $19 million in funding from investors including Battery Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Innovation Endeavors.
HomeAway went public in 2011 and has a market capitalization of roughly $2.7 billion.
Image credit: iStockphoto
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