Vrbo review

Vrbo trades as HomeAway.com, Inc., the legal entity named in its own help pages, and it is headquartered in the United States. It works as an online travel agency, ota, so a booking is placed on a rental property supplied by its owner rather than on a room sold by the platform itself.

The marketplace dates back to 1995, which gives it a long record in holiday rentals. That age counts for something when a booking goes wrong, since a business this established has had time to settle its refund position and its published answers, which remain available through help centre.

Yes, Vrbo has a mobile app, so searching, booking and messaging the property owner can all be done from a phone. Any help for a booking that goes wrong then goes through help centre, so it is worth keeping the booking record to hand before anyone sets off.

Vrbo states Refunds for large-scale travel disruptions, so disruption on a large scale is the situation the platform has committed to. The scope of the catalogue is ota, so the terms attached to each individual rental are what matter for a single booking, and those are worth reading before money is committed.

No, the scope here is ota, so a flight, a rail ticket or a car hire has to be arranged elsewhere. Travellers who want the whole trip in the same place tend to look at 12Go, which lists flights, rail and bus across ground transport and stays.

Support runs through help centre, so the help pages carry the weight for a booking problem, and no live chat or phone line is listed beside it. Reading the published answers before departure settles most questions about a reservation, a host or the state of a property.

A family booking here takes a rental property through ota rather than a hotel room, so the group shares a home with a kitchen. The mobile app holds the reservation and the messages to the property owner in the same app, which is handy when adults and children arrive at different times.