Google's Retreat From European Rental Search Is a Warning to Accommodation Brands

On September 8, Google emailed the companies that feed vacation rental listings into its search engine with a short notice: the vacation rentals unit "will no longer appear to users in the European Economic Area," the 27 European Union countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, according to the industry publication Rental Scale-Up. The change followed a fine of 890 million euros imposed on Google by the European Commission in July under the Digital Markets Act, 460 million euros of which related to self-preferencing, the practice of favoring its own services in search results. The replacement formats Google built for Europe cover hotels, flights, ground transport and products. Vacation rentals were left out.

For accommodation businesses, the episode is a reminder of something easy to forget when a channel is working well. A large share of the guests who find a property never deal with the property first. They arrive through a search engine, an online travel agency or a marketplace, each of which can change its rules, its layout or its prices with little notice. Distribution remains essential. Dependence on any single channel is a risk that operators can manage, but rarely eliminate.

A pattern, not a one-off

The September change was not the first time Europe's search rules moved traffic around. In late 2024 Google ran a test that removed some hotel features from search results in Europe. In a blog post published in December 2024, the company said traffic to hotels fell by more than 10 percent during the test, while traffic to intermediaries stayed largely flat. Google has since claimed that its changes in Europe cut free direct booking traffic to European businesses by 30 percent, a figure Rental Scale-Up noted the company had not documented. Cayuga Hospitality Consultants, writing in Hospitality Net in September, cited third-party data showing up to 30 percent fewer free direct booking clicks for European hotels.

The beneficiaries are not always the ones regulators had in mind. HomeToGo, the Berlin vacation rental search company that filed an antitrust complaint against Google in 2020, welcomed the removal of the rentals unit. Independent property managers who relied on Google's free listings to win direct bookings lost a channel overnight. Google says its feeds still power Maps, its dedicated hotels pages and search outside the European Economic Area, so the effect falls hardest on operators whose guests search from inside Europe.

Other platforms are changing at the same time. Booking Holdings introduced a new advertising product in May, Vrbo extended sponsored listings globally on September 1, and Airbnb has piloted direct booking links for which hosts pay a fee, according to Rental Scale-Up. Each move changes the cost of reaching a guest, and none of them is in the operator's control.

Reach is rented, relationships are owned

The practical lesson for accommodation brands is to separate two things that are easily confused: access to an audience and a relationship with that audience. A platform can introduce a guest to a property. It does not, by itself, make that guest remember the operator, return to it or recommend it. When the platform changes, the reach disappears with it, while any relationship built during the stay remains.

That distinction matters more in furnished and mid-term accommodation than in short stays. A guest who spends two nights in a city has limited contact with the operator. A tenant who stays two or three months works from the apartment, uses the kitchen every day, deals with maintenance requests and contacts support several times. Each of those interactions shapes how the tenant sees the brand, and each is a chance to earn a repeat booking in another city or a referral to a colleague. Companies that relocate staff regularly are especially likely to return to an operator that handled a previous move well.

What resilience looks like in practice

For most operators, building resilience does not mean abandoning platforms. It means treating them as one part of a wider mix. Operators that keep accurate, structured property data can move it quickly to new channels when an old one closes. Operators with a recognizable brand and a working website can be found by name when a search layout changes. Operators that collect consent-based contact details from past guests, and use them sparingly, have a way to reach returning customers that no algorithm controls.

Content plays a role as well. Guides to neighborhoods, practical information about leases and utilities, and clear explanations of what a monthly stay includes help people find a brand before they are ready to book. That kind of material tends to keep its value when a search interface changes, because it answers questions guests continue to ask.

Service quality is the least technical and most durable part of the strategy. A stay that runs smoothly, with a ready apartment, working internet and quick answers when something breaks, is what turns a booking into a relationship. Operators that measure and protect that experience are less exposed to any single channel than operators that rely on a ranking position.

The broader shift

Europe's Digital Markets Act is designed to limit the power of large platforms, and its effects on travel search will take time to settle. Further changes to how hotels, rentals and comparison sites appear are likely as Google and the Commission continue to negotiate compliance. Accommodation businesses cannot shape that process much. They can decide how much of their demand depends on it.

For RentRemote, which connects professional operators with tenants for stays of a month or longer, the aim is to support that kind of direct, lasting relationship between operators and the people they house. Tenants can browse furnished apartments for monthly stays from operators in cities including Barcelona and Lisbon.