Booking.com is to evolve its strategy to assist private accommodation owners looking to distribute properties on the site.
The online travel agency plans to create a service called "Partner Up" - a mechanism to allow private owners to connect with property management companies so that they can receive help with their properties.
Separately, Eric Bergaglia, Booking.com's global head of homes and apartments, says the unit will not follow other divisions in the organization that have bought distribution and software companies in recent years as a way to provide distribution services for suppliers.
Booking.com has previously acquired a number of supplier-related software platforms.
For hotels, three acquisitions were completed: Buuteeq (for marketing and design services) and Hotel Ninjas (reservations and distribution), both of which were bought for undisclosed fees during 2014.
They were later joined by revenue management provider PriceMatch, in May 2015.
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Booking.com also bought reservation system FareHarbor in 2018 for its then-fledgling tours and activities unit.
The new partner program for non-hotels is one of a number of new initiatives to improve its relationship with the private accommodation community of professional managers.
One of the new services to be introduced is a quality rating system ("first-of-its-kind") that Booking.com hopes will become as widely recognized as those used to benchmark hotel properties.
Piloted since earlier this year, properties have been designated into five stars based on a number of factors, such as location, size and facilities.
Bergaglia says the rating system was created as a result of feedback from partners in late-2018 and is aimed at giving potential guests a better understanding of the overall quality of a property, as well as incentivizing owners or managers to make improvements or add other guest services and then push further up the scale.
Booking.com is currently boasting some six million homes and apartments in 148,000 destinations.
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