Could VRBO’s 30-day attribution policy be anticompetitive?
VRBO is changing its TOS so it can claim commission when a guest interacts with a property on VRBO and then books directly with the host within 30 days.
My concern is how VRBO identifies and attributes those direct bookings.
PMSs process reservations from OTAs and direct booking sites through the same underlying infrastructure, and reservation webhooks are not always scoped by source. If an OTA receives data about reservations made outside its platform, it could potentially identify and charge commission on transactions occurring through competing sales channels.
More importantly, a later direct booking does not necessarily mean VRBO generated it. The guest could have found the property again through Google, the host’s marketing, an aggregator, or another source.
I operate an aggregated direct booking platform covering over 214,000 listings. Guests are sent directly to the host’s existing booking site and I take no attribution. To the PMS, it simply looks like a direct booking from the hosts website. If that guest previously interacted with VRBO, VRBO may have no way of knowing which channel actually generated the reservation.
There is a striking parallel with Epic v. Apple. Apple allowed users to leave the App Store and purchase directly from developers, but attempted to collect a commission on those external transactions. Courts found its 27% external-purchase commission, as implemented, had a prohibitive effect.
VRBO similarly allows users to leave its marketplace and book directly while potentially claiming commission on the resulting transaction. The difference is that a later direct booking may not have even been generated by VRBO.
If other major OTAs follow the same model, the antitrust implications become much harder to ignore. Direct bookings could effectively become subject to OTA commissions even when the OTA did not generate the transaction, raising the cost of competing distribution across the entire market.
At some point, attribution stops protecting business an OTA generated and starts taxing business generated through competing channels.
TL;DR: VRBO can claim commission when a guest later books directly, even though that booking could have been generated by the host, Google, or another aggregator. If VRBO uses PMS data to identify and charge commission on those transactions regardless of who generated them, and other OTAs follow the same model, independent distribution becomes increasingly difficult to compete on. Epic v. Apple provides a remarkably similar case to look at.