Barefoot Technologies Blog- Vacation Rental Industry News

Vacation Rentals are truly now a subset of the larger lodging and real estate industries.  To play in it you must study the past like Expedia’s takeover of the hotel industry.  Then, look at the present and understand the big portals like Airbnb and VRBO and the national players who seem to be getting so much publicity like Vacasa, Stay Alfred, Marriott and others.  And finally, look to the future with players like Zillow, Amazon and the National Association of Realtors. They all will play significant roles in the future. Barefoot takes all of this into account and is the only reservation system that is active in understanding the big picture with a commitment to providing an avenue for independents to remain strong.  

I had the opportunity to attend the Skift short term vacation rental conference.  It was a great event, but the real focus was on national players and that is honestly a small part of the entire industry.  It is the loudest because the press likes disruption.  It is not sexy to be mature and consistent.  There were a few observations that may be of interest to each of you.

Lots of interesting things going on in the vacation rental and travel business. Probably the most important is Google.

On December 28, 2018, Massachusetts passed HB 4841, a law that is aimed at regulating and insuring short term rentals.  While taxes are always controversial for the professional vacation rental company, in many ways this can be something positive if you are well organized.

2019 will be an interesting year for vacation rentals.  We seem to be coming of age. I can see a lot of change, some good for the professional. Some of what I have predicted the past two years continue to come true, some of it faster than I expected and for other things it is taking longer.  Here are my expectations for 2019:

For those of you who came to the Barefoot User Conference, this is a follow up on my asset management presentation. For those of you who couldn’t join us, over the next few months I will continue to send out more information on this topic. I also hope that this starts a conversation, because overall, you are innovative.  We are focused on helping you become a property asset manager.

I have been reading a lot of articles on the changes that will occur in 2018 to the vacation rental market. Most of this year’s trends seem to follow what I listed as my expectations for 2017. So, my 2018 trends will include much of what I suggested in 2017 with some additions and more detail.

As a vacation management company trying to get a new owner to come to your program, I am sure you have a page that outlines your value proposition. This of course must be more than a discussion about price. Here are a few items to consider when crafting your owner onboarding value proposition:

Ed Ulmer took some time to speak with DojoLive on Wednesday, November 22, 2017. In this interview, Ed further discusses how to use technology to dominate the vacation rental market and compete against the larger portals.

At the most recent National VRMA, Orlando, October 16-18, 2017, I coordinated a presentation on Owner Growth, Retention and Competing Against RBO with three clients, Mike Connolly (Triumph Mountain Properties in Vail CO), Kelley Cotton (Young’s SunCoast in Orange Beach, AL) and June Buttner (Killington Group in Killington VT).  The topic resonated for the attendees, attested to by the fact that we had attendees stay 20 minutes after the scheduled session end.