How Can Vacation Rental Data Help Your Business?

December 5, 2024
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How Can Vacation Rental Data Help You Grow Your Business?

The short term vacation rental market currently seems set for a year of both challenges and opportunities. After strong growth in supply over the past two years, vacation rentals in the United States have become more competitive

Gaining deeper insights into the rental market itself and property performance requires access to high-quality, in-depth vacation rental data. As a property owner or a vacation rental management business, you need access to historical data as well as future predictions. Analyzing the performance of your owned or managed properties will deliver some of the answers, but it will rarely deliver the type of understanding you could gain from accessing the knowledge compiled by trusted, industry-leading platforms like Key Data. 

Plus, using a platform to access the data you need puts an end to hours spent poring over spreadsheets or trying to pull together data from various sources. The benefits are clear: your vacation rental business could charge higher daily rates, increase occupancy, and achieve a higher revenue per available room (RevPAR). 

Earn Higher Revenue

Across the United States, revenue earned from short term vacation rentals have seen growth over previous years. However, increases in demand for vacation rentals during the coronavirus pandemic attracted new property owners to the market. Property owners either repurposed their second homes as vacation rentals or decided to invest in the market for the first time. 

This fast growth in supply has not been without consequences, and many are experiencing the second year of declining occupancy in a row. So, how can you increase revenue earned from the properties you manage? The answer is accurate data. Vacation rental market data allows you to understand your customers better and helps you target them more effectively. 

Here are a few examples: 

  • Knowing that your customers tend to come from a specific area or country allows you to advertise locally. 
  • Understanding when the demand for vacation rentals in your area is highest makes it easier to adjust prices and maximize revenue. 
  • Knowing when occupancy is generally lower and prices drop helps you schedule property upgrades or maintenance. 

Short term rental data gives you the insights you need to make those decisions with confidence. 

Comprehensive Competitive Analysis in Your Rental Market

Of course, you can follow your competitors online and monitor their approach to pricing and marketing. But, trying to track this information manually quickly becomes incredibly time-consuming and overwhelming, leaving little time to look after your customers or an incomplete picture of the data. 

Key Data does the hard work for you. The technology behind the dashboard you see pulls in information from your competitors, analyzes it thoroughly, and distills vast amounts of data into easy-to-understand visuals for actionable insights. The platform allows you to track over 40 of your and your competitors’ key performance indicators (KPIs) in real time. 

You receive the information you need to make informed choices for your business, allowing you to exploit potential gaps in the market.  By understanding your competitors better, you are also able to open up markets your competition is not yet targeting, giving you an unparalleled advantage. 

Attract New Inventory

Are you looking to expand your portfolio of vacation rental properties? Are you on the verge of taking your first steps into this market? In either case, it is vital to choose a property with excellent potential. 

Identifying locations where demand is growing but supply has not yet caught up is one strategy to build your portfolio. Access to in-depth vacation rental property data allows you to identify these hard-to-find areas. Forward-looking data helps you to identify locations that are becoming popular with vacation renters to grow your inventory strategically. The information on your dashboard will also let you see what types of properties are performing better than others. 

As a result, you and your team can make investment decisions with confidence. Short term rental data is taking the guesswork out of expanding your portfolio. 

Easily Benchmark Performance

How easily could you pinpoint your best-performing vacation rental property? Perhaps it is easy to choose the rental with the highest occupancy or select the property with the highest rate. However, drilling down and analyzing which property delivers the highest profit is not as easy. And the more properties, the harder this becomes if you try to do it on your own. 

Benchmarking your performance against your competitors becomes even more challenging. The good news is that understanding and optimizing your profitability does not need to be difficult or time-consuming. Key Data gives you access to benchmarking charts that allow you to track your property against others in your area for current performance as well as future indicators. 

With a few clicks, property managers and owners can not only see how their rentals compare but can also compare this year’s numbers to last year’s figures and access predictions. Historical performance allows you to see core metrics dating back years and compare your rental to others in the same location. 

Additionally, you can customize the data the platform delivers to meet your needs. Whether you want to optimize your purchases, need to know more about where your customers are coming from, or want to assess the overall potential of a property you may want to buy – vacation rental platforms give you the insights you need. 

The Next Step

The vacation rental industry is undoubtedly a people business. But, that doesn’t negate the value of a data-driven approach. In fact, the opposite is true. Using data to understand your customers and their needs better will help you deliver the kind of vacation rental experience that turns incidental visitors into repeat customers. 

Ready to see what data can do for you? Book a demo today with one of our knowledgeable team members. Let the data work for you and start watching your revenue and your portfolio grow!

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