With major online travel agencies like Booking.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor stepping up their rental inventories to compete with Airbnb, and Google becoming more active in the short-term rental field, the vacation rental industry has been growing faster and faster in recent years.
Your.Rentals, the complete performance-based software platform for short-term rental property managers, has released its first publication “Vacation Rental Industry Report 2020 – What’s on the mind of rental managers today?”, revealing the pain and gain of the property managers in the ever-changing short term rental industry.
With major online travel agencies like Booking.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor stepping up their rental inventories to compete with Airbnb, and Google becoming more active in the short-term rental field, the vacation rental industry has been growing faster and faster in recent years. According to Statista, the booking revenue from holiday rentals is forecasted to be US$87 billion in 2020 worldwide, and the revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate of 3.7%, resulting in a market volume of US$97 billion by 2023. The 11% increase in revenue from vacation rentals indicates a strong opportunity out there.
As such, Your.Rentals conducted a survey in December with almost 500 property managers who manage over 3000 properties across the globe to understand how property managers perceive the opportunities and challenges they face in this dynamic vacation rental industry. Below are the highlights:
Over 85% of respondents agreed that the growing popularity of the sites such as Airbnb, HomeAway, Booking.com is a good thing for property managers and hosts.
However, almost 93% of rental managers feel that the industry is more competitive than it used to be, and 75% agreed the industry is more complicated than the past.
Several actually viewed these sites as competition, arguing that they had driven down prices or implemented policies that many property managers find hard to follow.
Direct booking is an effective alternative for property managers to keep themselves competitive in the market. However, over half (51%) of all respondents reported that they don’t have their own websites for their properties.
Of the 49% of respondents who do have their own website, 55% of those don’t have any online booking capabilities. 21% of those with a website are able to capture bookings, but not online payments.
Along with these, nearly one-fourth of property managers also face challenges in understanding and catching up with the government regulations.
At the same time, more than one-fifth of the property managers get excited about the rental technology on offer.
In Europe over a third of property managers do not use property management software or a channel manager. According to the report, however, one out of every five property managers believe modern technology presented new opportunities or made specific tasks easier. Obviously, there is a great potential for vacation rental technology in the market.
Founded in 2016, Your.Rentals enables more than 25,000 registered property managers and owners to list their vacation rental properties on every major holiday rental website including Airbnb, Booking.com, HomeAway, TripAdvisor, Expedia, and many other niche and local sites. Your.Rentals has also provided its customers with a direct booking engine to complete bookings directly on website and collect payment online.
Tatiana is the news coordinator for TravelDailyNews Media Network (traveldailynews.gr, traveldailynews.com and traveldailynews.asia). Her role includes monitoring the hundreds of news sources of TravelDailyNews Media Network and skimming the most important according to our strategy.
She holds a Bachelor's degree in Communication & Mass Media from Panteion University of Political & Social Studies of Athens and she has been editor and editor-in-chief in various economic magazines and newspapers.
