What does it take to thrive in short-term rentals? Beyond jump in to explain how proactive revenue management is a vital piece of the puzzle.
Just what is it that makes some short-term rental managers more effective than others? Sure, having the right skills and experience is important, but being able to consistently manage a portfolio effectively, acquire and retain more owners, and be a top performer in your market goes beyond that.
Let’s take a look at three things you can do to make sure your vacation rental portfolio is not only surviving these turbulent times, but thriving and making you more money.
Proactive Revenue Management in Short-Term Rentals: Managing Performance
This may sound obvious but it can’t be stated enough—you have to be on top of how the listings in your portfolio are performing. Monitoring how your average daily rates (ADRs) and occupancy levels are faring, for example, should be done as frequently as possible – at least on a weekly basis. That will allow you to see which properties are performing well and which ones might need a tweak.
Historical data can be a good way to understand performance, but given the pandemic, there will be caveats needed when dealing with 2020 data. We now suggest incorporating data from 2019 when doing your analysis, as that provides a more apples-to-apples comparison.
And then there’s forward-looking data. You can look at pacing, or simply demand and pricing for each day over the coming year to establish how your listings or groups compare.
Understand How You’re Performing Against your Short-Term Rentals Market
The second key part to proactive revenue management is knowing how the Jones’s down the street are doing. Being able to compare your listings to similar properties in your market is a great way to ensure that your properties are performing at a healthy clip – and market data can help here too. Some questions to make sure you have answers for on a frequent basis are:
- What type of property do they have?
- What amenities do they offer?
- How are they pricing their property?
- Are they running any discounts or promotion campaigns?
To take it even a step further, and if you have the budget, book a night at one of their places so you can get a first-hand view of their operations. You never know, you might learn something new that you can incorporate into the way you do business.
Leveraging Technology and Automation in Proactive Revenue Management
If you’re going to succeed in today’s market, you need to be able to react quickly and smartly to changes. That requires not only being on top of what’s happening in your own portfolio and in the market you operate in, but leveraging available tools and technology to automate as many of the repetitive and mundane elements of these tasks as possible. Because let’s face it—there’s simply not enough time in the day to do everything manually.
In order to maximize the performance of your vacation rental portfolio without having to do all of it manually, you need to have several distinct and specialized pieces of software working together. There are five crucial components of your “Tech Stack” that need to be operating in tip-top shape:
- Channel Management
- Customer Relationship Management
- Booking Engine
- Pricing and Revenue Management
- Property Management and Services
The vacation rental market has been growing for entrepreneurs and property owners over the past several years. Now that the world is slowly emerging from the pandemic, demand for travel, and necessary services like accommodations, are surging, and tracking the growth and changes is essential.
There’s never been a better time to be in the short-term rental business, and with these tips, you should be able to thrive in this market. Beyond is a robust, end-to-end revenue management platform that makes it easy for short-term rental property owners and managers to get, grow and keep revenue. Our partners have seen as much as a 40% increase in booking revenue by leveraging our tools: to see how Beyond can help with your vacation rental business, request a free demo today.
By Daniel Elliott Content Marketing Manager @ Beyond
Discover the power of vacation rental data insights in revenue management. Track your competition and your inventory performance, and optimize for the future: explore Transparent’s Smart Rental dashboards here: