Trip Advisor Takes a Majority Stake in FlipKey

In a big day for the vacation rental industry on the web, Trip Advisor has announced they are taking a majority stake in startup FlipKey.  This follows the earlier story about Orbitz launching a vacation rental directory.

In a blog post on their site, FlipKey CEO TJ Mahoney explains the value for both sides:

Over the last year, FlipKey has made great strides in enabling the vacation rental community with the power of guest reviews. To add to our value proposition we will now begin working with TripAdvisor to introduce vacation rentals and the reviews you collect through FlipKey to tens of millions of consumers from across the world.

For those not familiar with FlipKey, it's a startup that launched their site earlier this year.  In competing with the VRBO 800 pound gorilla, FlipKey is placing a premium on trusted reviews.  VRBO listings allow vacation owners to delete bad comments; FlipKey is hoping to provide a more valuable VR browsing experience by showing all reviews and providing a better user interface.

We're big fans of their approach, however in a chicken and egg problem, it's been tough going getting a critial mass of user reviews -- this is obviously where Trip Advisor comes in. 

Currently listings in the directory are limited to property managers, though they say that an individual listing option is in the cards.

VRBO is still the dominant player in the North America vacation rental industry, but today it got two big new competitors.

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