Vacation rental owner builds occupancy with MarketMaker

For more than a decade, Donna Green’s primary goal has been to drive enough revenue from her six vacation homes to cover her costs when she isn’t staying there. With an 81% occupancy rate, Donna is laser-focused on strategically and proactively managing her rates to ensure she is attracting travelers, capturing demand, and keeping her five-star-rated vacation homes booked throughout the year.
 

Donna invests in her vacation homes, adding popular amenities like Peloton fitness equipment, Wi-Fi, and new children’s toys each year. She also invests in property upgrades to make each home more comfortable and attractive for her guests.

Donna is aware that price is a key factor in a traveler’s booking decision and works hard to stay competitive while ensuring she isn’t underpricing her listings. But staying competitive has not always been easy. It can be challenging and cumbersome to dig through often incomplete data to compare similar properties manually, and a manual review typically does not include key factors like traveler demand, market seasonality, and amenities.

In fact, her properties are sometimes equated with rental homes that have fewer features, making it difficult to fairly compare rates. To truly determine which properties are competitive benchmarks, her many investments need to be considered.

Luckily, Donna discovered and started leveraging Vrbo’s MarketMaker tool to give her deeper insight into the markets and competitors where her properties were located. This knowledge could help her win bookings and drive occupancy rates higher.

MarketMaker gives U.S. property managers and owners an easy way to see supply and demand, and review upcoming reservations and rates over the next year. The tool shows how many travelers are searching in the area, alongside current and forecasted occupancy rates. It also shows the average rates for a targeted set of similar properties.

Donna found that with MarketMaker, she was able to tailor the competitive set to focus on properties with features and amenities that were truly comparable.
 

Today, Donna says MarketMaker saves her time and delivers insights that help her choose the right strategy to reach her goals – optimizing either for revenue or occupancy. The tool uses data on holidays, seasonality, and more to provide rate opportunities. Combined with her knowledge of local conditions, Donna has all the information she needs to manage rates for optimal results.

Donna is optimistic about the future, and as the travel industry continues to recover, she plans to closely monitor traveler behavior and remain flexible as traveler needs change.
 

She is even considering expanding her Vrbo business by adding new properties to the platform. MarketMaker will remain a key tool in her toolkit for growing her already successful vacation rental business.
 

Property managers and owners can use MarketMaker to enhance their own competitiveness.