Expedia shuts down a short-term rental business it created after acquiring Pillow and ApartmentJet in 2018
Dennis Schaal / Skift :
Context & Ripple Effects
This is a quiet reversal of Expedia's home-rental push. After CEO Dara-era Expedia bought Pillow and ApartmentJet in October 2018 to expand accommodation supply, it had already been building rental inventory alongside Priceline in a 2017 coordinated push against Airbnb, following a CEO who had long envisioned direct competition with Airbnb. Shutting down the managed-rental operation it created from those two acquisitions concedes that building an Airbnb rival inside an OTA proved harder than buying one.
The move also fits a pattern: rather than fight Airbnb head-on with owned operations, Expedia has repeatedly adjusted scope — the same year Airbnb paid over $400M for HotelTonight to add hotel supply, Expedia is subtracting rental operations.
First-order effects
- Property managers using Pillow or ApartmentJet software lose their platform, and the units they listed through Expedia's rental channel drop out of its accommodation inventory.
Second-order effects
- Booking.com, which had boosted vacation-rental inventory by 50% YoY in the same anti-Airbnb push, is left as the major OTA still carrying the home-rental flag, while Airbnb's alternative-accommodation lead widens by default.
Third-order effects
- If owned-and-operated rental management keeps failing inside OTAs, the market splits structurally: Airbnb owns the managed-supply layer while Expedia-type platforms stay aggregators, renting inventory rather than running buildings.
The trend: OTA attempts to build home-rental operations organically are giving way to aggregation-only models, leaving Airbnb increasingly unchallenged in managed alternative accommodations.