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Recent years have given rise to a short term rental ‘boom’, as more and more guests choose alternative accommodation for leisure vacations, business trips, a mixture of the two (known as bleisure or blended travel), digital nomadism, and more.
This thriving sector has drawn in new investors, homeowners and property managers, who all want to cash-in on its lucrative potential.
While increasing supply has driven occupancy below where it was in 2022 (January saw a 4% drop), the good news is that demand for short term rentals remains high by historic standards. During the first quarter of this year, occupancy has been 3 percentage points higher than the same period in 2019. However, it is still important that property managers find a way to stand out among their competitors in order to maximize revenue. To help you get started, we’ve compiled some top tips on how you can use data tools to boost the appeal of your short term rental properties, and truly benefit from rising demand.
Know What Guests Are Looking For
The number one rule for attracting guests to your properties is to fulfill what they’re looking for in a short term rental. Whether that’s meeting their amenity needs, being in the right location, competitive pricing, having availability for their chosen length of stay or offering the preferred property type — all of these factors play a crucial part in converting listing browsers from lookers into bookers. But the main question is, how do you stay one step ahead of guest trends to maximize bookings and make the most of guest demand?
Data Tools for Boosting Short Term Rental Occupancy
1. DemandIQ™
DemandIQ™ is the lodging industry’s first tech product that captures true, real-time and forward-looking data on traveler demand. Whereas the industry has previously relied on booking analysis for this information, this tech allows property managers to realize the full unconstrained potential of their rentals.
For example, the tool is able to identify the demand data that bookings fail to capture, such as how much extra demand and interest a particular property experienced before it was booked, as well as overall market demand for the amenities people are searching for. It’s also able to highlight any caveats to your listings that are reducing conversion rates, such as minimum length of stay. The tool can pinpoint when guests are searching, where they’re coming from and how they’re booking through your website.
This knowledge of traveler shopping data offers invaluable insights to property managers, who’ll be able to uncover the ideal property type and length of stay guests are looking for. It enables them to adjust listings for maximum appeal and target marketing for increased conversions. It may also empower property managers to expand their inventory by making further investments in properties enjoying the highest demand.
DemandIQ™ is an easy-to-use tool accessible from the same dashboard property managers use to analyze their portfolio's data.
2. Data Dashboard
Collate all your short term rental data insights and in-depth analytics into one easy-to-use platform using a business intelligence dashboard. This data tool enables property managers to have full visibility over their company’s core metrics, including occupancy, average daily rates (ADR), revenue per available room (RevPAR) and more, giving them a comprehensive understanding of how their business is performing vs competitors.
With the Key Data Dashboard, you’ll have seamless and secure access to over 30 KPIs, which use historical and forward-looking data in real-time, to help you form a strong business strategy.
3. Custom Comp Sets
Custom Comp Sets allow property managers to monitor real-time daily pricing and availability on major online travel agency (OTA) booking sites, such as VRBO and Airbnb. As short term rental pricing can fluctuate based on the day of the week, a local event, demand, and availability, it’s near impossible for property managers to stay on top of these changes and truly benefit from demand peaks without pricing data.
Being able to build comprehensive, customized data analysis on the level of competition faced by each of your rental properties ensures you can increase market appeal while maintaining maximum revenue potential from nightly rates.
4. Competitor Benchmarking
To remain competitive in the heavily saturated short term rental market, it’s important property managers keep a finger on the pulse of the industry, especially in terms of their local or regional market. With multi-market support for competitor benchmarking, you’ll be able to see how your properties are performing compared with local competitors.
This integrated data tool provides a seamless resource, saving property managers hours of research. You’ll be able to discover how your rentals are performing against nearby properties. Maybe it’s time to raise your rates? Maybe competitors’ occupancy is higher — what amenities or features do they offer that you don’t? This insight can influence how you describe your properties in Iistings by highlighting what the market is looking for in your destination.
Short term rental demand remains strong as seasonality starts to return post-pandemic, but the sector's popularity in recent years drove supply levels to an all-time-high last year. This has made it harder for property managers to maintain optimum occupancy when guests have ample booking options to choose from.
To avoid missing out, property managers must lean on data technologies that can support them in maximizing appeal by meeting expectations and offering competitive prices.
Why wait? Trial our demo with one of our team members today for an in-depth walkthrough of our dashboard and other data tools, so you can get a head start on optimizing property occupancy.
