Vrbo’s Marketplace Standards are best practices for providing guests with a simple, secure, and consistent booking experience. By following these standards, not only will you provide a great booking experience for your guests, but you will also benefit from improved listing visibility. 

Breaching our Marketplace Standards is a violation of our Terms and Conditions. These standards are intended to minimize risk and provide the best experience possible for you and your guests. Should any of these be violated, your listing is subject to the following:

  • Reduced visibility to guests
  • Penalties that include, but are not limited to, removing or disabling your ability to receive inquiries, demotion or removal from search results, or removal from the listing site altogether without any refund.  

Marketplace Standards

  • All bookings must be processed through Vrbo marketplace. Listing content that attempts to direct guests to book outside our checkout flow isn’t permitted. This includes, but is not limited to, language containing URLs, phone numbers, email addresses, and physical addresses.
  • You must accept a material number of booking requests. While we understand that not all booking requests are desirable for your property, you should accept a material number of requests.
  • You must accommodate guests with service animals. All property owners and managers with properties located in the United States and US Territories are required to accommodate guests who require the use of a service animal.
  • You can’t cancel a material number of confirmed reservations. Cancelling a confirmed reservation can result in lost time and money and result in an overall disappointing experience for guests.
  • Your calendar should always be kept accurate. This saves:
    • potential guests submitting booking requests for unavailable dates
    • having to respond to availability requests
  • You can’t use one listing to drive bookings for multiple unlisted properties.

Fee guidelines

Here’s our guide to rates and fees best practices:

  • Rates and fees must be honest and transparent.
  • Rates on our marketplace should be competitive with other marketplaces.
  • The total amount of mandatory fees should not exceed the nightly rate amount.
Note: This will be evaluated on a per booking basis.
  • Any mandatory fees, including the damage deposit, must be included in the price breakdown.
  • All stay-collected fees, such as electricity usage, linens and towels, can only be collected directly by a host if a guest is made aware prior to booking.
    • For partners who manage their properties through the Vrbo dashboard, stay-collected fees must be clearly detailed in the listing description.
    • For partners who manage their properties via software, fees must be included in the price breakdown before a booking is made.

Partner Cancellation Fee Policy

To maintain traveler trust in our marketplace, it is essential partners uphold all confirmed bookings. If a partner cancels an accepted booking, or is responsible for the cancellation, we will charge a tiered partner fee.