The vacation rental market is a booming industry, growing every year. According to Statista, the global vacation rental market is expected to reach $229 billion by 2025.
As an entrepreneur, you may wonder how to get a piece of this lucrative pie. You may be thinking of how you can stay ahead of the competition. One of the best ways to do that is by gathering rental data.
But why should you gather data?
- Rentals can help you understand your customers’ needs
- Rentals provide insights into market trends and opportunities
- Rental data helps you identify trends in competitive markets
With this data in hand, you can ensure that your competitor price monitoring are not one step ahead of you. You can also use this information to make an informed decision about your own business and grow your sales tenfold.
So, now the question is how to gather rental data. We have shared some of the best ways to gather data. But, before that, let’s know what vacation rental market data is and its benefits.
What Is Vacation Rental, Market Data?
Vacation rental market data is the information owners, managers, and software providers use to understand the vacation rental industry better. They can use the data to understand how many people are renting in your area, how much they are paying, and what their properties look like so that you can make an informed decision about your business.
Moreover, when you have access to rental data, it becomes much easier for you to predict what will happen in your area in the future. This is extremely helpful if you decide whether it’s time for an upgrade on your rental property.
Why Is It Necessary To Gather Data?
Marketing your vacation rental property is more complex than getting the word out. You also need to know how your competitors are doing so that you can set yourself apart from them and attract more customers.
If you need access to the correct information, how will you know where your property stands concerning others? What if you are charging too much or need more? How will you know if your rates need adjusting until too late?
By collecting and analyzing vacation rental data, you can identify what prices are being charged at similar properties in the same market area — or even across different markets entirely — so that you can adjust before bookings begin dropping off because of price increases.
The second reason is that it will tell you what kind of tenants are interested in living in your building. This can help you determine who needs to be approved for an apartment or whether or not those who have applied for apartments should be denied.
Finally, rental market data can be used as an effective marketing tool to attract new tenants. If you are looking for a place to rent or have been renting for a while, you may have read or heard that the rental market is hot in your city. But what does this mean?
4 Benefits of Collecting Rental Data
Data collection is an essential part of the rental process. Here are a few ways to benefit your business by collecting rental data.
1. Make Informed Price Decisions
Rental prices reflect the demand for a property and the supply of similar properties on the market. Rental data can help you determine whether your rental price is competitive with other properties in your area.
If your rental price is too high, you could take advantage of potential tenants who may have yet to consider your property because it’s too expensive for their budget. If your rental price is too low, you may be losing money by accepting less than the market value for your property.
2. Identify Trends In The Market
When you collect data on all of your rentals, you can identify trends in the market and how they affect your business. For example, if you notice that people are looking for larger apartments than before.
It might be time to expand your inventory or offer options like duplexes or townhouses. By keeping track of these trends, you can ensure that your business is always up-to-date with what people want and need.
3. Analyze Customer Behavior
Rental data helps you understand customer behavior by providing information about their preferences, interests, and purchasing history. This information can be used to improve customer service and optimize operations.
For example, most customers prefer a specific product category over another. In that case, it may be worth stocking more of that product category instead of wasting space on less popular items with customers.
Similarly, if customers rent DVDs more often than Blu-ray discs, it might make sense for your store to stock more DVDs than Blu-rays so that customers have more options when renting movies.
4. Benchmark Against Other Properties
If you have multiple properties, they must all perform well and meet or exceed expectations for rent payments and occupancy rates. Rental data allows you to compare each one against one another to know which are performing well and which aren’t living up to expectations. This allows you to quickly identify problems before they become too big of an issue, saving time and money down the road.
Key Sources To Gather Vacation Rental Data
1. Airdna
Airdna is one of our favorite vacation rental data providers. Airdna offers access to over 5 million properties, with information on over 100 million visits. They also have an API so that you can integrate their data into your website or app.
Airdna has access to thousands of US and Europe listings aggregated from third-party platforms like Airbnb, HomeAway, and Craigslist. It also provides an API for developers who want to integrate its data into their apps or websites.
2. PriceLabs
PriceLabs is a vacation rental management software that helps owners keep track of their reservations, bookings, and payments. It also has a built-in search tool that allows owners to compare rates across booking websites like HomeAway and AirBnB.
Using these dynamic tools, you can get accurate information about what people are paying for short-term rentals in your area.
Moreover, it can also help you determine how much you should charge for your vacation rental (or if it’s worth opening one at all). They can give you a detailed report on the average prices of similar properties in your area and help you understand what factors affect pricing for different rentals (e.g., amenities or location).
3. Transparent
Transparent is a free search tool for vacation rentals. It lists over 1 million properties around the world. And offers a robust search engine, metasearch functionality, and various filters such as price range, location, and amenities.
You can use this tool to search for properties in any location intelligence service, filter by price range and amenities, and find out about the local amenities in each area. This will give you an idea of what area you are looking at and whether it will fit your needs.
4. Smith Travel Research
Smith Travel Research (STR) is the industry leader in global research and consulting services for the lodging industry. The company provides various services, including market data, corporate travel research and analysis, consulting, sales support, and technology solutions.
Companies in various industries use STR’s vacation rental data, including hospitality, real estate, and travel. It can be helpful in various ways, like analyzing the supply of vacation rentals in different geographic regions to tracking trends in pricing and occupancy across different seasons.
Final Thought
The vacation rental market is a big business. Many people want to rent their properties to travelers, and many travelers want to vacation in someone else’s home.
This is a win-win situation for both parties. The owner gets money for the time his property sits idle, and the traveler gets an affordable place to stay when he travels, for it is not easy as it seems as there are various other people in the same business.
And to stay ahead of them, you need to gather all the information related to your business, which is only possible with data. You can easily do that through various rental platforms and vacation rental intelligence to give your competitor a tough fight. Moreover, make a very informed decision for your business.
