Vacation rental property managers see revenue gains through data investment

Short-term rental property managers who invest in data report booking revenue growth 4x higher than those who don’t, a new study finds.

According to the Global Vacation Rental Report 2022 from Transparent and Rentals United, which surveyed property managers from around the globe, booking revenue growth was 21% higher for property managers spending on data in 2021, while property managers spending more than $10,000 annually saw a massive 66% booking revenue growth.

However, overall, just 40% of property managers use a data provider, with the percentage rising to 86% for managers with more than 50 properties.

Despite this, almost 60% of property managers plan to increase their data utilization or spending for 2022, while 6% plan to decrease utilization or spending.

The report finds that managers with from two to nine properties spend up to $1,000 annually, while 50% of managers of more than 100 properties spend more than $5,000 on data each year.

Meanwhile, the report finds a correlation between frequency of rate updates and booking revenue, with managers who update their rates daily seeing a 51% revenue increase compared to -10% for those who update yearly.

While only 40% of property managers invest in a data provider, a higher percentage adopts technologies such as channel managers (74%), property management systems (73%), dynamic pricing (49%) and keyless entry (29%).

Moving ahead, the top three technologies property managers say they intend to adopt are dynamic pricing (26%), keyless entry (18%) and data provider (18%).

For bookings in 2021, 73% came through an online travel agency, while 27% came through the direct channel. In 2022, property managers expect the direct channel to increase to 31%, with 69% of bookings coming through OTAs.

Overall, property managers surveyed expect positive revenue growth in 2022 and anticipate 35% more bookings than in 2019.

Twenty-nine percent of managers say demand is already exceeding pre-pandemic levels, while 15% believe that recovery will extend beyond 2022.