Vacation Rental Revenue Management has become a hot topic for property managers. Or this is at least what revenue management solution vendors would have you told you if you attended any vacation rental conference this year. Why now? Why is the issue of pricing properties right, finding the right balance between profits, occupancy, length of stay, booking restriction more pressing? … Read More
Three 2019 vacation rental industry trends: OTAs as property managers, property design as a booking factor, and the rise of business travelers.
Here are three vacation rental industry trends that you may already be encountering in your market. Fellow rentalpreneurs, feel free to add a comment if you agree or disagree. Online platforms such as Airbnb, Tujia, OYO, and Rakuten have become property managers Online travel agencies (OTAs) have launched several initiatives to control the quality of the supply that they are … Read More
Why attend Vacation Rental World Summit 2019 + EUR50 off your ticket
For the 4th year in a row, I will be attending a conference aimed at ambitious property owners and fast-growing property managers. Will I see you there, near Lake Como, Italy, on October 5 and 6, at the 2019 Vacation Rental World Summit? The Vacation Rental World Summit is the brainchild of the Italian property owner and educator Antonio Bortolotti. … Read More
VRMA Europe 2019 – VRMA Prague
For the first time, VRMA Europe is heading to Central Europe: It will be held on 17-19 March 2019 at the Grandior Hotel in Prague, Czech Republic. I will be going there and I hope to see you too. VRMA Europe 2019: A great way to get actionable tips for your business The annual European version of the Vacation Rental … Read More
Meet StayFi, a wifi and marketing solution for vacation rental management companies
How about a solution that could help you easily deploy and manage wifi across your properties, while enabling you to collect your guests’ email addresses to retarget them and make them come back? This is way StayFi, a startup company led by Arthur Colker, is proposing to vacation rental management companies. As we, at RentalPreneurs, are interested in meeting and … Read More
Airbnb Management Software for Multi-Property Owners: The Pros and Cons
You’ve got a few properties under your belt and are well on your way to running a successful property rental business, you might even consider starting your own Airbnb consulting business at some point. Renting out properties is a great way to make an income (or boost your existing income), but it can also be hard work. Keeping on top … Read More
Improve your own Facebook ads by using this trick to discover which ads companies like Airbnb, Stay Alfred and Guesty are running
If you are running a growing short-term rental business, you may have tried several times to run ads on Facebook. With the breadth of Facebook’s network, its international reach, and the possibilities to target people by demographic traits or by behavior, it can look very enticing. Yet, it is often very hard to make an actual return on the money … Read More
What ambitious Airbnb property management companies can learn from Phocuswright Europe conference videos featuring Airbnb, Booking.com, and Expedia
If your job is to run an up-and-coming Airbnb property management company, then you will be very interested in some free videos from the expensive, but super interesting PhocusWright Europe conference. The entrance fee to the online travel conference Phocuswright Europe is close to €1,800. And you have to fly or take the train to Amsterdam to attend (+ shell … Read More
Branding & Quality Consistency: What startup vacation rental property management companies can learn from Airbnb Plus, Stay Alfred, Tujia and others.
Brands, created by property management companies like Lyric, Sonder or Domio, as well as by OTAs (e.g. Airbnb Plus, Tujia in China), promote consistency of experience. The idea is that guests will then book one of these branded places with more confidence. As an owner of multiple properties or as the manager of a smaller, but fast-growing, vacation rental company, why … Read More
How I can read 28 vacation rental blogs every day (sharing this tool with you)
How do you keep up with vacation rental news? It can be crazy: There are plenty of valuable blogs around, from those of vacation rental gurus (e.g. Heather Bayer of The Vacation Rental Formula, Matt Landau from the Vacation Rental Marketing Blog), those from the big platforms (e.g. Airbnb alone has 3 distinct great blogs), those from channel managers (e.g. Guesty … Read More
GDPR for Vacation Rental Business Entrepreneurs: Quick and Not-So Dirty
If you have, like me, a vacation rental business for which you have launched online websites where people can book your rentals (SaintBarth.com and RealBali.com in my case) or even if you just have a humble blog with a newsletter (Case in point: RentalPreneurs), then you know that that EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) is affecting you. This new … Read More
Vacation Rental Marketing: How to conduct fast, fun and efficient user research
You have heard it 1,000 times, but have you really done it? I am talking about putting yourself into your customer’s shoes. Sometimes, asking just a simple question to a crowd of seasoned vacation rental industry members can be quite revealing. At the Vacation Rental World Summit in Florence, Italy, I asked: How many of you, property managers and property … Read More
Could Property Management Companies Disappear? Speakers at vacation rental conference show concern.
On June 8, I attended a VrTech (vacation rental technology) event in Rome. I was there to bring back industry education for my Booking.com Homes & Apartments team, as well as to push forward several deals with some companies present. Yet, I was quite amazed by how each and every speaker presentation seemed to imply that property managers were under … Read More
5 Tips to Land a Job at Booking.com’s Homes and Apartments Division
I had the pleasure to speak at several vacation rental industry events, such as the VRMA National Conference in Phoenix and the Vacation Rental World Summit in Barcelona. I met friends and business connections who were very interested in knowing Booking.com now had a clear focus Homes and Apartments. But I also got into contact with a few people who wanted to know more about … Read More
Why you should be attending Vacation Rental World Summit 2016
How about attending a vacation rental conference organized by your peers? How about listening from people like you, learning from their success, taking away real actionable advice? This is what the 2016 edition fo the Vacation Rental World Summit is about. I’ve already mentioned Antonio Bortolotti several times in this blog. He was of my mentors when I joined the vacation … Read More
Let’s meet up at the 2016 VRMA National Conference #VRMA2016
The 2016 VRMA National Conference is taking place in Phoenix (Chandler), Arizona, from October 16 to 19. This event, put together by the Vacation Rental Managers Association (to which my company Fashion Fox and thus this blog RentalPreneurs belong) is the world’s biggest conference for vacation rental owners and and property managers. If you are attending this, let’s meet up! … Read More
Home-Sharing Platforms You Need to Incorporate into Your Business
You will find here a guest blog post by Glenn Carter of the Casual Capitalist. I found it interesting to have him share on his views on diversifying the marketing channels for your vacation rental business. This is a nice complement to my series on niche vacation rental sites. – Thibault “Glenn, I just had a couple cancellations in a … Read More
Booking.Yeah: Why my joining Booking.com Homes & Apartments division could be good for you
If you have been a subscriber to the RentalPreneurs newsletter or a member of the RentalPreneurs Club, you may not have heard from me in the last 2 months. Please accept my apologies, as I understand that you had been expecting from me new vacation rental marketing tips, interviews with short-term rental industry experts and more deep-dives on the tools … Read More
Discover Matt Landau’s Vacation Rental Marketing Blog and See Why You Should Join His Inner Circle
Have you ever visited one of the most respected website in the vacation rental industry, aptly called the Vacation Rental Marketing Blog? His founder, Matt Landau, has created a wealth of advice that vacation rental owners and managers can put to good use. How do I know? Because when I started out, I avidly read EVERYTHING that Matt was publishing. He … Read More
Firebnb – Making your last-minute deals on Airbnb more visible
In order to fill up your Airbnb listing, you sometimes have to discount your price to attract last-minute bookings. But how do you let Airbnb users know that they are getting a great deal? How do they know that the price is much lower than usual, that they are getting much better value than usual? Firebnb‘s goal is to help Airbnb … Read More