The Vrbo Partner Connection Explained
Hospitable is a certified partner of Vrbo's. This is the same type of direct, certified integration that Hospitable has with Airbnb and Booking.com. As your property management software (PMS) for Vrbo, Hospitable is the source of truth for your listing data, calendar, and settings.
✏️ Terminology:
The following terms can be used interchangeably to refer to the same thing; Hospitable's new Partner connection with Vrbo:
Partner connection
Partner integration
Official connection
Official integration
Hospitable has decided to use "Partner connection" in the UI and help articles. You may still see references to some of the others in some places.
💡 Note: The Vrbo Partner integration is rolling out in waves. Join the pilot waitlist here: Vrbo Partner Connection: Pilot Invitation
How Do I Connect to Vrbo?
Connecting your Vrbo account to Hospitable is done directly through Hospitable — no Chrome extension or browser plugin required.
For full instructions on how to connect to Vrbo, see: Vrbo Partner Connection: Connect a Vrbo Account
What Does Hospitable Manage on Vrbo?
With the Vrbo Partner connection, Hospitable is the ultimate source of truth for your Vrbo listings, just like it is for Airbnb and Booking.com. This includes:
Listing details — Property name, description, property type, guest capacity, bedrooms, beds, bathrooms
Listing status — Listing and Unlisting your listing on Vrbo
Photos — Managed from Hospitable and synced to Vrbo
Amenities — Managed from Hospitable and synced to Vrbo
Calendar — Availability, pricing, minimum night stays, check-in/check-out restrictions managed from the Hospitable calendar and pushed to Vrbo
Fees — Cleaning fees, pet fees, extra guest fees, and other listing fees
Cancellation policies — Set and managed from Hospitable
Payment terms — Including multi-installment payment schedules
Messaging — Automated messages, manual replies, and unified inbox
Listing creation — Create new Vrbo listings directly from Hospitable, or from existing Airbnb listings
This means you should make all listing and calendar changes in Hospitable. Changes made directly on Vrbo may be overwritten by Hospitable during the next sync.
Coming Later
Hospitable will continue to improve the Vrbo connection and offer more functionality.
Upcoming or planned improvements are:
Reviews — The ability to manage, send, and reply to guest reviews from your Hospitable inbox
Manage promotions/discounts — The ability to set up discounts or promotions from the Hospitable calendar or property settings
How Are Payments Handled?
With the Vrbo Partner connection, Hospitable becomes the Merchant of Record for your Vrbo bookings. This means:
Hospitable processes guest payments and handles payouts to you
Payouts are typically sent 24 hours after guest check-in
Hospitable charges a 3.9% payment processing fee, which includes payment processing, chargeback protection, and tax remittance facilitation
Vrbo charges a separate 5% commission, billed directly to a credit card on your Vrbo account
Alternatively, you can use your own Stripe account as Merchant of Record
See more about payouts and how to set up payout methods for your Vrbo reservations here.
⚠️ Request to Book and payment timing
On the Vrbo Partner connection, Request to Book (RTB) reservations appear as accepted bookings in Hospitable before payment has been collected. Because Vrbo only polls for reservation updates once per day, Hospitable automatically expires any unanswered RTB requests just before the 24-hour mark.
This is important to be aware of: Vrbo considers any cancellation after the 24-hour mark to be a host-initiated cancellation, which can result in your listings being suspended. The automatic expiry is there to protect you from this.
Changes on Vrbo After Connecting a PMS
After you connect a property management software to your Vrbo account, you lose access to your calendar on Vrbo. This is not unique to Hospitable; no matter what PMS you connect to your Vrbo account, you will no longer see the Calendar page on Vrbo directly.
Instead, the calendar is controlled by and must entirely be managed on your PMS.
How do I know what prices have been pushed to Vrbo if I can't see my calendar on Vrbo?
In order to see what prices have been applied to your Vrbo calendar by Hospitable, accounting for the markup rate on your Vrbo listing, you can select the date in the Hospitable calendar.
The way to see what the price is on Vrbo is to:
Go to Hospitable → Calendar
Select a date in your calendar.
In the "Price" field, type in the current price on that date, or the price that you want to change it to.
This will show you the marked up price the guest will see on Vrbo.
Hospitable will eventually provide an easier method for telling your price on Vrbo. Improvements are being made every day.
Listing Status After Connection
After connecting your existing Vrbo listings to Hospitable on the new Partner connection, it can take up to five minutes before you are able to control the listing status of your listing on Hospitable.
Once the listing is fully synced and processed between Hospitable and Vrbo, your listing will automatically be Listed on Vrbo. You can change this on Hospitable if you want (after the few minutes processing time it takes for Hospitable to take full control of your Vrbo listing).
Listing Creation
You can create new Vrbo listings directly from Hospitable. This includes creating listings from scratch or from existing Airbnb listings.
This is automatically enabled once your onboarding is complete.
Connecting Multiple Vrbo Accounts
You can connect multiple Vrbo accounts to a single Hospitable account.
Note: A Vrbo account can only be connected to one Hospitable account at a time.
Vrbo's Limitations When Connected to Another PMS
You will not be able to connect your Vrbo account to Hospitable on the Partner connection if you are using a different PMS.
See more about Vrbo restrictions when using a different PMS here.
The Guest Experience
For your guests, booking your Vrbo Partner listing looks and feels just like any other Vrbo booking — they search, book, pay, and message you through Vrbo as usual.
Behind the scenes, though, Hospitable becomes the Merchant of Record, which means guests will see two charges on their bank statement (one from Hospitable for the reservation total, one from Vrbo for the service fee) and will receive booking confirmation and cancellation emails from Hospitable in addition to Vrbo's own emails.
For a full breakdown of what your guests see, including sample bank descriptors, email details, installments, and tips for setting expectations, see Vrbo Partner Reservations: What Your Guest Sees.
What happens to reservations booked before you moved to the Vrbo Partner Connection?
The following refers to reservations that were booked before you connected your Vrbo listings to Hospitable on the Vrbo Partner integration.
Messaging older reservations
If you've moved your Vrbo account to the Vrbo Partner integration, you can message guests for reservations that were booked before you moved — both sending and receiving messages work through your Hospitable inbox as normal.
Updates to older reservations may be delayed
For these pre-Partner reservations, Vrbo doesn't push real-time updates to us when the guest makes an alteration or cancels. Instead, we refresh the reservation:
Whenever a new message comes in on the conversation, and
Twice a day, on a regular polling schedule.
This means an alteration or cancellation made by your guest on Vrbo may take a few hours to appear in Hospitable for reservations that pre-date your Vrbo Partner connection. Reservations booked after you moved to Vrbo are updated in real time, the same as Airbnb and Booking.com.