Today is March 7th – and we all may NOT know what that means!
On behalf of the world of vacation rentals, our friends at the Vacation Rental Management Association (VRMA) have dubbed this week – March 7th – 11th – the Vacation Rental Week for 2022.
What is Vacation Rental Week?
Great question.
The celebration of Vacation Rental Week is our chance to highlight professionally-managed vacation rentals – for their value and benefits provided to guests and property owners. And of course, we aim to encourage everyone out there to book a stay (as a guest) or entrust your vacation property (as an owner/investor) to a professional manager.
To all of our vacation rental manager (VRM) friends out there: we support you!
VRM Breakdown
A VRM business is a demanding, multi-faceted organization. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the various components:
- Sourcing and acquiring new properties from owners
- Relationship building and maintenance / reporting metrics back to property owners
- Generating leads and new guest bookings in their properties (marketing and sales)
- Customer support during the guests’ stay
- Housekeeping across a wider geography (versus just housekeeping within one building – like a hotel)
- Maintenance and operational upkeep
- Laundry services for towels, bed linens, etc.
- Furnishing and design – for some; providing amenities, soaps/shampoos, towels
- Competing with hotels, and bigger online travel agencies (OTA) that commoditize their unique properties (like Airbnb,
- Vrbo, Booking.com, Homeaway, etc)
- And more!
Getting Involved
If you’re a guest – looking to travel and book a short-term trip somewhere, consider booking directly with a vacation rental management company. They offer great service, experiences, and are by-and-large local small businesses.
How can you do this?
Instead of going directly to check for hotels, or going to Airbnb or Vrbo to input your location – head to Google and search for “vacation rentals in ____” for your desired city or destination. Obviously the big players will dominate the top positions of advertising space and organic search results, but if you scroll down a bit further, you’ll start seeing the smaller local businesses.
What are the benefits of booking directly with a VRM?
Notably, the vacation rental management company will likely list it’s products on an OTA like Airbnb. This is the same concept as when you see your favorite brand of shoes or clothes on Amazon. Amazon and Airbnb aggregate product & service providers – but these aggregators charge hefty fees and don’t let the actual business treat you like its real customer.
“Direct bookings” (booking on the VRM website, not on an OTA like Vrbo or Airbnb) mean a lot to vacation rental managers. It helps them save money and build their customer base… and ultimately build a more long-term viable business!
As a guest, you almost always get to have lower prices and the VRM can provide you better, personalized experiences.
What about property owners?
If you’re a property owner, managing your property yourself can be a fun adventure to embark on. If that’s your goal – it’s important to reach for your dreams.
That said – for many owners who have a second home, or are investors in multiple properties – it makes sense to entrust the properties you have to a professional VRM business. They will not only deal with all of the daily operations (sourcing guests, check-in and check-out, housekeeping, etc) – but also handle additional helpful aspects.
For example, the VRM will provide the financial breakdown for you in terms of your costs and your rental revenues. This means you’re provided with a professional accounting of your earnings (plus if it’s an investment property, you can utilize this for easier tax reporting in April!)
Additionally, the VRM will handle getting maintenance work done and save you time and headaches from dealing with tenant problems and home fixes – big or small.
Summary
In summary, we want to give a shout-out to the VRM’s out there who are providing really high quality customer experiences to people out there who want to travel.
Whether a guest or a property owner, you win and local businesses win when you utilize a vacation rental management company instead of a large OTA.
And if you’re a VRM – we want to help you take the power back from the big OTA players to help drive more direct bookings to your site. You can check out our guide on the 10 tactics to take back control here.
A bit more from the VRMA to share:
If you would like to join and get involved in Vacation Rental Week, visit the Vacation Rental Week homepage to download the toolkit, and help spread the word about professionally managed vacation rentals. Be sure to join the conversation on social media using #VacationRentalWeek on all your social media platforms.
