Barefoot Technologies Blog- Vacation Rental Industry News

Recently I sat down with Barefoot client, Greg Hart, President of Folly's Beach Rentals. Greg shared a great idea with me and other Barefoot customers when we were having a social. He would like to establish a new group of innovative vacation rental management company owners to get together and share ideas. To learn more about this concept, read our interview below.

We are starting to hear that states are using vacation rental companies as a hub to get information both directly and indirectly that affect taxes, insurance and workmen’s comp issues. 

Consider this. A state revenue agent knocks on your door. They require you to provide data of reservations and that you trust accounts are correct.  In doing so, they capture owners who work with you.  They then have the ability to monitor the owner’s income to see if they are including that for tax purposes. The Revenue Agent also ask you about how you do cleaning and property management, if they are in house staff, they look to see if you fall in or out of insurance guidelines. If cleaners and property managers are independent contracts, they know who they are (thanks to you) and they track them down to see if they are filing taxes and more importantly, if that independent provider is hiring assistants that may fall into insurance and workman’s comp issues.   

Well, it has taken me over a week to recover from the annual work and fun visit with everyone attending the Vacation Rental Management Association’s conference. As usual, I have some takeaways to share.

Barefoot Partner LeisureLink authored this blog post. Thank you Michael Charalambous!

Every vacation I go on, there is one thing that I do that makes the vacation just a bit more special. Before I leave, I will find a book that is placed in or is about the location that I am visiting. Hopefully this will be based on some historical facts about the area. I started this many years ago with James Michener’s Hawaii.  That was an easy selection, but many of the locations I am visit now take a bit of work to find something suitable. Sometimes I miss my mark and get something that just didn’t not work. Without the book, I find that my vacation was not as special. 

This article is co-written with Frank Langston of President and Founder of PaybyGroup.

Recently, I’ve been getting lots of call from brave souls who are looking to start a vacation rental business. It may be a familiar scenario. They bought a vacation rental home in a beautiful location as an investment or second home. They decided to move into their vacation rental home and buy a second property that they manage and put onto VRBO. They meet other people who own second homes who ask them to manage their home, and another and another. Presto! Before they know it they are now the owner of a vacation rental property management business.

At Barefoot we are excited to announce that our customers can list their inventory on Airbnb through either of our two partners, Leisurelink or BookingPal.

Yield Management/Dynamic Pricing/Revenue Management...you can call this many different things, but as our business changes, we need to look at how to maximize our revenues to both your Vacation Rental Management company, and to your owners.  There is an excellent article that I found on VRMA weekly newsletter titled How to Make Yield Management Work for Your Vacation Rental Business CLICK HERE.  Managing rates is an ever changing business, and you need to be aware of what is happening in our industry.

We've decided to start a new kind of blog post where we put the spotlight on the amazing Barefoot customers who provide outstanding vacation rental management around the country.