In our last article about companies shaping the vacation rental industry, we looked at businesses that help hosts with property management, smart connectivity, and welcoming guests. Today we’re going to examine companies leading the way in providing data, managing channels, and adding experiences to the mix.
Data Providers
As the vacation rental industry has grown, so has the importance and use cases of big data. There are lots of companies taking on different niches in this space.
Airdna has gotten a lot of attention for its Marketminder feature which allows its users to zero in on local markets, leveraging data from 10M properties across 80,00 cities worldwide. Key metrics include:
- Occupancy rate
- Annual revenue
- Average daily rate
Transparent ups the ante by using data from 35M properties, but specifically only from Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com properties.
A company called Mashvisor addresses the larger investment game: buying properties specifically for vacation rentals. They do this using a dataset currently focused in the US that allows users to identity cities and neighborhoods that meet their criteria for investment in this space.
Channel Managers
Channel management allows your vacation rental to be listed across multiple platforms. The big ones that come to mind are Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com. But if you want to add channel management, you might also want access to many of the other platforms that are coming up in this still-fragmenting space, like Flipkey and Housetrip.
The biggest value-adds in channel managers are the ability to sync calendars so that you can’t be double-booked and the ability to monitor pricing across various platforms to allow you to adjust prices as needed for maximum profitability. Some channel managers, like Lodgify, also make it easy for you to set up your own website for your vacation rental so that you can benefit from direct bookings.
Hospitable, lauded for its ease of use, is also a leading channel manager, as well as Guesty, which we already noted is a leader in the Property Management Software space.
Experiences
Back in 2016, Airbnb saw a natural add-on in vacation rentals and chose to add “Experiences” to their offerings. As a host, you can create experiences that can be booked by guests at your properties but can also appeal to a wider audience (who can then also learn about your listings). It’s a natural way to add revenue and a different facet to the vacation experience for guests.
But if you’re not interested in hosting an experience yourself, there are no shortage of companies that you can use to find fun activities to direct your guests to consider. Three of them include:
- GuideAdvisor – focused on local guides
- Viator – powered by TripAdvisor and with a staggering number of offerings
- Xplorie – focused on fun, local, and free activities, Xplorie ties together the vacation rental experience with activity planning
There are so many exciting things happening in almost every part of the vacation rental industry that even a pandemic can’t suppress. Take a look at all the categories we mentioned, do some research, and see if adding their services to what you’re doing might be just what you need to take your listings to the next level.
This content originally appeared in our twice-monthly Guest Book newsletter
