Within the vacation rental industry, opportunity abounds as operators lean into consolidation and professionalization.
During an interview in the PhocusWire studio at The Phocuswright Conference last week, Sharad Sundaresan, founder and CEO of Homescreen, and Eric Goldreyer, CEO of Savvy, shared their thoughts on these trends.
“You’ll see consolidation bring about that degree of consistency across the board, which helps with dealing with those increased guest expectations,” Sundaresan said.
According to Goldreyer, short-term rental (STR) guests also want standardization, but, more importantly, they want to forego travel anxiety and have a reliable point of contact if something goes wrong.
“They want a professional. They want someone that they can call,” he said. “If you’re in a vacation rental, you’re taking a group, and there’s higher pain points. You want to make sure that you can minimize those to the best of your ability.”
Conversation shifted to artificial intelligence and how it may address significant challenges such as persistent manual processes and fragmentation.
“We want AI to solve the hard problems of doing work, taking action, executing tasks, but we want to do that with the same tools you already use," Sundaresan said. “I think that’s the part where we want to reduce the friction equally as much as solving the problems.”
Interestingly, PriceLab’s Global Host Report 2025 found that STR hosts are indeed adopting AI technology, but only 14% said it was actually helpful, while 47% deemed it “overwhelming.” In total, hosts reported spending an average of 8.3 hours per week managing their listings.
Still, the report noted that while AI may not be delivering on time savings, there is real potential when investing in the right technology.
Both Sundaresan and Goldreyer echoed this optimism.
“When it comes to AI, it’s going to be everywhere,” Goldreyer said. "But the bigger thing that will come out of it is the personalization, when you start using AI and it knows what you want, it knows what you like.”
The interview also covered the future of small operators amid Airbnb's growth, the potential for merging of hotels and STRs and more.
See below for the full conversation with PhocusWire’s Abby Crotty.
Vacation rentals in a spin