Chapter 2

Expedia Host Fees: What Cut Does Expedia Take?

Every major OTA takes a commission percentage from hosts. That’s to be expected. After all, they wouldn’t be able to stay in business without some cut of the profit. Expedia is no different. It is free to list your property on the website, but the Expedia commission rates differ depending on a few factors. We’ll break down the rest of the Expedia fees for hosts and commission rates in this next section.


Expedia host fees: What factors are taken into account?

As we mentioned in the previous chapter, the Expedia commission rates range from 10% to 30%. Hosts pay this commission to the OTA on a pay-per-book basis. This means that hosts don’t get charged any fees until they actually have guests staying in their rental. This protects hosts from extra charges that come with cancellations.

What percentage Expedia takes from the host depends on the location of the property, so if you have rental properties in different cities or locations, some might cost you less than others.

Each month, hosts can expect an invoice from Expedia with the amount owed in fees from bookings. There are no signup or subscription fees. The commission taken can increase if you use the Expedia Partner Central Accelerator tool as well. This tool will boost your listing at your chosen price for a higher commission. You can read more about this tool in Chapter 4.

Vacation host fees

Expedia has commission programs and models set in place for hotels and agencies, but they haven’t extended that into their vacation rentals yet. However, the vacation rental sector continues to grow year after year, so in the future, we can expect to see more host fee information and deals like their TAAP program for vacation rental owners.

Expedia is still highly valuable for hosts with rental properties because of its wide reach into other vacation rental platforms. Each Expedia Group vacation rental property site may have slight variations in host fees and commissions, so let’s talk about fees for some Expedia-owned companies that you will want to be on.

Vrbo host fees: Different options

Vrbo is the major player in the Expedia group that specifically caters to vacation rental properties. In order to qualify for listing on other sites from Vrbo, you must enable the instant booking feature and have consistent pricing across platforms. If you do this, your rental will automatically be listed on Expedia from Vrbo.

Vrbo offers different plans to choose from to pay host fees. You can pay a one-time annual fee or a pay-per-booking fee. The once-off annual fee is an annual payment of $499 to list your home. On the contrary, the pay-per-booking option charges you every time you have a guest in your rental property. The fee is decided by Vrbo depending on different factors, but the rate stays between 5% and 9%.

Travelocity host fees: Same as Expedia

Travelocity is another major player in the Expedia Group empire. It is the third most popular website in the group, only behind Expedia and Hotels.com. Your listing gets automatically uploaded on the site when you sign up on Expedia, which is why the same rentals show up on both pages. Travelocity focuses mainly on hotel bookings and deals, but as the vacation rental sector continues to grow, it will likely shift its focus to better accommodate vacation rental properties. At the moment, you can expect the same fees on Travelocity as Expedia.