Google Vacation Rentals Leaves Search in the EU

On 8 September, Google removed the vacation rentals box from its search results for anyone searching from the European Union. I mean Google Vacation Rentals. The trade press has reported it as bad news for direct bookings: fewer visits to your own website and more dependence on the platforms.

What Google has removed

If you searched Google for “tourist apartments in Málaga”, a box with photos, prices and a map appeared above the results. Each listing had a button to book, and that button could lead to the manager’s own website.

To appear there you needed a PMS or a channel manager connected to Google, and Google did not charge for it. The box also showed listings from Booking. Not from Airbnb.

Google says it is removing it to adapt to European rules.

What is still in place

Quite a lot.

The box has gone for anyone searching from a country in the European Union, or from Iceland, Liechtenstein or Norway. What counts is where the traveller is when they search, not where the apartment is. Someone in the United Kingdom or the United States who searches from home for an apartment in Seville still sees it, and the manager’s website can still appear in it.

For someone searching from Spain, vacation rentals are still on Google’s travel site (google.com/travel), under a tab called “Vacation rentals”. On 12 October it showed more than 12,000 results in Málaga, with prices and a map. What has gone is the shortcut: the same thing appearing on the first page of Google without anyone going to look for it.

Listings also still appear on Google Maps.

And managers’ websites are still in Google’s ordinary results, where they have always been. That same day, there were several on the first page of the Málaga search.

Why little changes

Because Airbnb and Booking between them take more than 90% of a holiday apartment’s bookings. Everything else put together, your own website included, does not reach 10%.

In other words, the dependence on the platforms that people now fear was already there. Google did not create it, and the disappearance of a box is not going to change it. It is true that it makes direct bookings a little harder, but their impact was low.

Besides, people reach your own website by other routes: the guest who comes back, the one who searches for the apartment by name, Google’s ordinary results. What has closed is one of the ways into a website that already carried little weight.

How many bookings came in that way? I do not know. I have not seen any published figure, from Google or from the PMS companies.

What I would do

Not much.

If your PMS or your channel manager already sends your listings to Google, leave it as it is: Google still shows the box to anyone searching from outside the European Union.

And I would not rebuild the website or put money into it because of this news.

Will the box come back?

Google says it hopes to bring it back “in the future”. It gives no date.

If it comes back, good.

Where you do have to stay on top of things

On Airbnb and on Booking, which is where the bookings come from. There the work is daily: the nightly price, your position in the results, the cancellation policy. And whoever is still only on Airbnb should open Booking.

That is the part we run at ListingOK for our customers, who are managers like you: prices, channels, the PMS and the channel manager. If you manage six or more apartments, ask us for a demo and we will look at it on your own apartments.

Google Vacation Rentals was marginal, and now it will be more so.

Sources

• ShortTermRentalz, Google removes vacation rental search results in the EEA (9 September 2026): Google’s statement, what still works, and what Hospitable says hosts lose.
• Smoobu, what it means for hosts (10 September 2026): the date, the countries, what the box showed and who still sees it.
• Lodgify, Google Vacation Rentals guide (6 July 2026): how a property got in, that Google did not charge, and that Airbnb was not there.
• Lodgify, September round-up (30 September 2026): the link to the host’s own website.