If you are a property owner or own a property business within a city or tourist area, and you are looking for something new, then you could have the opportunity of a lifetime to break into one of the fastest growing business markets today.
The industry we are talking about is a niche sector of the travel industry; an area of business that was once saturated by large hotel chains and established travel brands. However, within the accommodation sector of this industry, there has been a major shift in market power putting the little man back in the driving seat.
Holiday Home Rentals New-Born Entrepreneurs
A little under a decade ago a company called Airbnb entered the travel industry. Their story is amazing, and the company has changed the industry in ways no one thought possible. The idea was simple. Give people that own properties in an area where hotels are booming the chance to compete with the big guns.
The company came out of the blue, and their story started with the owners selling cereal boxes to raise $40k in order to start what is now a major brand name. Their idea was backed by Y Ventures and Sequoia Capital, who raised $600k. Then two years ago the site raised another $555 million according to Business Insider and the rest is history.
Airbnb Opened the Flood Gates For Vacation Rental Websites
Today Airbnb boasts millions of customers worldwide, and the website is the go-to place for hosts to list their property or properties as available for short term holiday rentals. Property owners are able to scrap their yearly rental contracts and gross four to five times the amount they would have earned via short term vacation leases.
Of course, the Airbnb concept was never going to enter the market and not encourage competition. Expedia and Booking.com have jumped on the bandwagon and new sites such as FlipKey and HomeAway have also emerged.
Those that already had their properties listed on Airbnb also started to list them on the competitions’ websites too. The line of thinking was that – “If Airbnb gets 50,000 people looking at my property and Booking.com gets me another 50,000, then my exposure is doubled”. Add a listing on FlipKey and HomeAway and exposure is up to 150,000. Obviously, these figures are hypothetical, but you can get the general gist of the point we are trying to make here.
The Flood Gates Were Also Open To Software Companies
With the sheer popularity of vacation rentals become inexplicitly hard to ignore, it wasn’t just companies looking to offer hosts another website to list their property that joined this booming travel industry sector.
The vacation rental market also saw the launch of Lodgify.com; a software tech company that has also gained multi-million dollar financing deals and has been a star feature on the Netflix show “Stay Here”. The company was specifically designed to give those that want to get into the vacation rental business a place to start. Lodgify offers not only a software team service but also advice on how to launch a successful vacation rental business.
Managing multiple listings on several vacation rental websites had caused an issue for some hosts. That issue was being able to manage bookings across all sites. The vacation rental business is 24/7, but for smaller hosts, they cannot afford to be online 24 hours a day answering inquiries or monitoring bookings across multiple sites. It meant that sometimes the same dates would be booked for the same property listed on both Airbnb and HomeAway.
Lodgify sought to solve that problem by offering property owners the chance to have their own branded website. As a result, a fully functional vacation rental website builders were created with mobile and desktop functionalities, build in booking system, financial facilities, and most importantly a channel manager. The channel manager uses a master calendar that syncs with multiple calendars on other websites such as booking.com, Airbnb, FlipKey, and so on.
How Are People Using The Software To Grow Their Property Business?
Those that have managed to gain financing to purchase a holiday home in a destination frequented by vacation or holiday travelers have been able to take full control of their business using automation.
Listing properties on multiple sites are one thing, but being able to control the bookings on all those sites is extremely time-consuming. By using a central branded website such as Lodgify, property owners have one central location that tells them when a booking has been made and from which website.
In short, property hosts can easily have multiple listings on all the major vacation rental websites to gain/maximize additional exposure, and they have a centralized website that automates the entire booking process.
This means more bookings, more feedback, and a consistent income. Even during off-peak seasons in tourist destinations that have high and low seasons people are able to utilize the many website listing options available to them and automate their entire operations via a centralized website, which is exactly why Lodgify became a feature on the Netflix “Stay Here” show.
How Can You Get Into The Vacation Rental Business?
Depending on your situation there are many ways to take advantage of what is arguably the fastest growing marketplace today. Property management businesses only need to persuade their clients to reconsider yearly rental in favor of leasing their property on a daily, weekly, or sometimes monthly rental agreement. For those that own a holiday home, then it is simple. All you need to do is list your property and answer inquiries in order to persuade people to book to stay in your home.
For those that do not have a holiday home, but you are interested in getting into this market, then visit websites like Lodgify and Airbnb for advice. There is a really good blog on Lendedu that gives some great advice on how to gain business financing as well as loans for hosts. The blog is actually specific to Airbnb, but in actual fact, it applies to anyone that would like to get financing for a holiday home.
There are people making a lot of money, and most of the work is online. Of course you will need local maintenance and cleaning teams and make sure that you are operating vacation rental according to local laws. The idea of this article is to give people food for thought and make them aware that this industry is booming, and we hope that is exactly what we have done!