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Vrbo Over the Years - 25 Years of Homepage Changes

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As Vrbo celebrates their 25th anniversary, we wanted to take a look back at their long history.  Vrbo started the first online vacation rental service back in 1995 and were really the first ones to define what the “vacation rental industry” was.  Until Airbnb came along, Vrbo completely dominated the vacation rental industry and set the tone for everyone.  Even as competitors started to spring up, Vrbo continued to grow and now provides access to 2 million whole-home vacation rentals in 190 countries across the world.

OwnerRez is proud to be one of Vrbo’s few Preferred Partners. We fought hard for channels to work with us directly, and we fought hard for our smaller homeowners users to get access as well.  We meet with Vrbo monthly to ensure OwnerRez is up to date with their latest features and to look for improvements on both sides. Our partnership with Vrbo is strong and we look forward to working with them for many years to come!

We thought it would be fun to take a look back at Vrbo’s humble beginnings and remind our older users about the Good Ole Days.  If you’re new to the vacation rental industry, these old images should make you smile as well.

The following images are courtesy of Archive.org. Click on the below thumbnails to see a larger version.

We haven’t always agreed with every decision Vrbo has made over the years.  In fact, we’ve held our breath and grimaced along with the rest of you at times.  But it’s undeniable that Vrbo did a huge amount of work decades before many of us got started, and we respect the long path they forged.  We respect and admire that, and we wish them luck as they celebrate this 25th anniversary.

2 Comments (add yours)

Valerie R
Oct 13, 2020 10:45 AM
Joined Sep, 2019 121 posts

As one of the legacy VRBO employees hired back in the "good ole days" when the site was still owned and operated by the original founders, I found this blog post fun to read. All of those home page versions (from 2002 on) are familiar to me and my years at VRBO working for the original founders were the best years of my career at VRBO and Homeaway. Thanks for the walk down memory lane!

Paul W
Oct 14, 2020 1:19 PM
OR Team Member Joined Jun, 2009 845 posts

Welcome! It was fun to put together. We will be adding to this over time as we see other changes to add.