Jeff Hurst, HomeAway's chief commercial officer, walks the walk. Search listing No. 3917990 on HomeAway, and you'll find a Texas home that sleeps 16 on a lake with a sandy beach. It's Hurst's second home.
"I certainly eat our own dog food and have learned a whole lot about the process through owning that home," he said. "Really, it's great that it's able to, in our case, basically pay for all of the variable costs of the home."
Hurst joined HomeAway in May 2010, five years after its founding. Even before then, he frequently booked alternative accommodations.
"I just thought it was a killer category with a value proposition that was really great for group and family travel," he said, adding that he "was very much looking for an opportunity to join an industry that had a rising tide like that, in terms of a product that really resonated with me. [It was] also an opportunity. … Because I had traveled that way so much, I also knew how real the pain points were."
When Hurst started working at HomeAway, he knew it was on track to go public, and he assisted with that initiative. Its IPO was in 2011.
Then came the Expedia Inc. acquisition. In late 2015, the online giant officially acquired HomeAway for $3.9 billion. Since then, it has been driven by a twofold emphasis on technology and global expansion.
"We really pivoted how we thought about our investment profile, how we thought about recruitment, and how we thought about learning from and leveraging the global Expedia experience and infrastructure to accelerate not only our economic growth, but also our people capabilities and technology platform," Hurst said.
He recalls being most impressed by Expedia's proficiency in technology.
"Before the Expedia acquisition, I thought we were a technology company," he said. "After the Expedia acquisition, I realized what being a technology company really meant."
HomeAway, too, has become a technology-first company. Culturally, it has become more agile, as well. As an example, Hurst said that in its pre-Expedia years, executives would set the year's goals and priorities on an annual basis. Today, that process is led at the manager, director and vice president level, with planning processes taking place every 120 days.
"It allows us to be much more nimble and in touch with what's happening with our supply partners and really with traveler preference, and I think has set us up to be more dynamic and relevant," he said.
HomeAway had a relationship with Expedia before the acquisition took place. In the fall of 2014 it was announced that the OTA would distribute some of HomeAway's inventory through Expedia.com, starting on a small scale.
It was a relationship that made sense. When HomeAway was growing from a small company, it had used Expedia as inspiration for what it wanted to build: "One-click booking, easy search, great on mobile, great on desktop," Hurst said. That made it a natural target for acquisition.
In the past two years, HomeAway has put an emphasis on not only making properties bookable online, with confirmation within 24 hours, but instantly bookable online.
HomeAway now has more than 1.5 million online bookable listings. About a third of them are instantly bookable. Hurst said the company believes that all properties will be made online bookable (about 90% currently are), but not all will be instantly bookable. Some, such as luxury properties for large groups, require a higher level of communication before a booking is made.
In addition to placing an emphasis on making more properties instantly bookable, Hurst said, HomeAway is focusing on investing in tools for its supply partners to improve travelers' experiences.
That means things like making WiFi codes, access instructions and directions available in HomeAway's app. It also means investing more in analytic capabilities for supply partners, so they can gain additional insights into things like pricing structure.
HomeAway properties are also increasingly being integrated with other Expedia brands. Currently, there are 150,000 instantly bookable properties on Expedia brands. While Hurst feels there will always be demand for a vacation rental-specific site like HomeAway, integrating vacation rental content into searches alongside more traditional accommodations has value, too.
"Some of the things we've certainly learned early on is that there are large parts of the world where there just aren't a lot of hotels," he said. "And in that case, we've really taken Expedia from very limited choice for travelers to almost infinite choice."
In recent years, Hurst is most impressed by how much HomeAway's tools for travelers and property owners have improved as well as the scope of its global expansion into Europe, Latin America and Asia.
"As we've invested in the business and expanded our reach around the world, we've really developed a very compelling global footprint," he said. "And we're constantly uncovering new opportunities for untapped and underpenetrated markets."