• News
    • VRM Intel News
    • Latest News
    • Sponsor News
  • COVID-19
  • Marketing
  • Tech
  • OTAs
  • Customer Service
  • Regs
  • Housekeeping
  • More
    • Education
      • Calendar of Events
      • Videos & Whitepapers
    • VRM Intel Live!
    • Reports Login
    • VRM Intel Magazine
    • Subscribe
    • Advertise
    • Authors
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
VRM Intel
  • News
    • Timing is Everything: The Impact of Seasonality on COVID Recovery for Southeast Destinations
    • Meredith Oskenholt-Meredith Lodging-Bend Oregon
      The Principles That Have Guided Meredith Lodging through the Global Pandemic, Raging Forest Fires and Personal Family Challenges
    • VRM Intel_Christmas-in-New-Orleans
      That’s the Ticket! Register Now to Enjoy Big Savings and Convenient Payment Plans for the 2021 Vacation Rental Women’s Summit in New Orleans
    • Inhabit IQ Gets “Significant Investment” from Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division
    • Airbnb Goes Public. CEO Brian Chesky: “Travel is never going to look like it did in January”
    • VRM Intel News
    • Latest News
    • Sponsor News
  • COVID-19
    • Paycheck-Protection-Program-for-VR-industry
      Latest Round of Paycheck Protection Program Includes Up to $2 Million Loans for Some Vacation Rental Business Owners
    • Timing is Everything: The Impact of Seasonality on COVID Recovery for Southeast Destinations
    • Meredith Oskenholt-Meredith Lodging-Bend Oregon
      The Principles That Have Guided Meredith Lodging through the Global Pandemic, Raging Forest Fires and Personal Family Challenges
    • Airbnb Goes Public. CEO Brian Chesky: “Travel is never going to look like it did in January”
    • Short-Term Rental Industry Giants Grapple with Building Brand Loyalty, Democratization, Regulations, and More at Skift’s 2020 STR Summit
  • Marketing
    • Timing is Everything: The Impact of Seasonality on COVID Recovery for Southeast Destinations
    • Learn How You Can Unleash Your ‘Limitless Female Energy’ During VRM’s Thought Leadership Series Featuring Author/Speaker Amber Hurdle
    • How to Use Website Traffic to Gauge Demand for Your Market
    • Elements of a Property Detail Page: How They Can Make or Break Your Bookings
    • VRMIntel_Fall2020_Fast Paced Revenue Management
      Fast-Paced Revenue Management: The 10-Minute, $10,000 Mistake
  • Tech
    • Inhabit IQ Gets “Significant Investment” from Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division
    • 2021 Social Media Game Changer
      Are You Ready to Ride the Wave to Becoming a 2021 Social Media Game Changer?
    • NDAs & Confidentiality Agreements: What to Include and When to Enforce
    • Selling Your Business? Know Your Tech Stuff!
    • Dynamic Pricing: To Adjust Rates or Not to Adjust Rates
  • OTAs
    • Airbnb Goes Public. CEO Brian Chesky: “Travel is never going to look like it did in January”
    • 6 Takeaways from Vrbo’s 2021 Consumer Travel Trend Report
    • Barron’s: Airbnb Set to Price December 9 and Trade December 10
    • Booking.com Affirms Commitment to Quality with Minimum Cleanliness Score Requirement
    • Airbnb is Finally Going Public: Takeaways for Property Managers from IPO Filing
  • Customer Service
    • Meredith Oskenholt-Meredith Lodging-Bend Oregon
      The Principles That Have Guided Meredith Lodging through the Global Pandemic, Raging Forest Fires and Personal Family Challenges
    • Dynamic Pricing: To Adjust Rates or Not to Adjust Rates
    • Repurposing Space: Broadening Your Vacation Rental’s Appeal
    • Booking.com Affirms Commitment to Quality with Minimum Cleanliness Score Requirement
    • New Customers Bring New Demands: Evolving to Meet the Needs of New Customer Avatars
  • Regs
    • Barron’s: Airbnb Set to Price December 9 and Trade December 10
    • Strategic Forecasting Beyond 2021: Are Vacation Rental Managers Changing Fast Enough?
    • Alabama’s tourism economy benefits from Florida Governor DeSantis’ shutdown of vacation rentals
    • Airbnb reaches out to city officials to influence “transitional travel reopening plans”
    • Jeff Paglialonga on FL Vacation Rental COVID-related ban: “We need your support to rectify what I believe is to be the illegal taking of property from Florida vacation rental owners.”
  • Housekeeping
    • Booking.com Affirms Commitment to Quality with Minimum Cleanliness Score Requirement
    • Q&A with Breezeway founder Jeremy Gall about company’s $8 million funding round and more
    • Gatlinburg-based Cabins For YOU acquires Chalet Village and is looking for more. Q&A with owner and founder Greg Plimpton
    • What is the cost of Airbnb’s recommended 24- to 72-hour “buffer” time between stays?
    • The Professional Vacation Rental Manager’s Crisis Playbook
  • More
    • Education
      • Calendar of Events
      • Videos & Whitepapers
    • VRM Intel Live!
    • Reports Login
    • VRM Intel Magazine
    • Subscribe
    • Advertise
    • Authors
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
  • RSS

Revenue Management

You Are Your Best Revenue Manager

You Are Your Best Revenue Manager
mm
Ryan Saylor
November 30, 2020

If there is one thing to take away from VRM Intel’s 2020 Vacation Rental Data and Revenue Management conference, it is that there is a desire to understand and employ revenue management strategies and tactics across the vacation rental industry. Although it can seem difficult to assign responsibilities, find the right tools, and organize an entire strategy around the practice, becoming your own revenue manager does not have to be overwhelming.

Most property managers are already fully prepared to own their revenue management strategy—in-house—even if they don’t have the resources to hire a full-time revenue manager. Follow these steps and considerations to become your own best revenue manager.

The first step in developing a revenue management strategy is to make it someone’s responsibility—even if it is not your employee’s full-time job. Consider the employee who already works directly with owners and has experience in your markets as the right person to execute your vacation rental revenue management strategy. Most property managers already have the tools to build and maintain an advanced strategy in an efficient manner. Knowing how revenue management can fit into your property management business does not have to be overwhelming, and you likely already have the tools and know-how to get started.

 

You Know Your Owners

Although managing the guest experience from start to finish may seem like the only major task of vacation rental property managers, managing owners can sometimes be even more work. Owners can have a wide range of expectations regarding the management of their property, and each property owner has plenty of quirks and things that they look for when determining the success of their investment or home. Managing these expectations and keeping owners happy is a huge undertaking that is often passed to those who are responsible for revenue management and pricing strategies due to the fact that owners are frequently concerned about the financial performance of their unit. The ability to communicate current strategies, market insights, and unit performance is best done by someone within the property management organization because owner communication is so critical to the core of a property management business.

Starting with the owner acquisition process, it is important for the revenue manager or revenue management team to be involved from the beginning. Most owner onboarding processes typically cover property forecasting and performance expectations, something that is important for revenue managers to be aware of when implementing certain strategies. Some aspects of new owner onboarding, such as minimum rate and revenue requirements, directly affect revenue management and need to be communicated properly. The easiest way to ensure that revenue management stays involved throughout the owner onboarding process is to have someone on your team responsible for revenue management tasks. Although having a third-party revenue manager may seem more efficient and cost-effective, those inefficiencies can become invalidated with miscommunication and lag time between both parties.

 

You Know Your Listings/Market

Similar to being familiar with property owners, it is important for vacation rental revenue managers to know the ins and outs of each listing and specific market. Due to the nature of selling unique property listings, there are characteristics and details about properties that someone controlling the revenue management strategy needs to be aware of. Most of that type of knowledge, especially for larger portfolios, isn’t easy to communicate quickly to new or outsourced employees. This is an added benefit to managing revenue in-house because most of a property management team is already in the know regarding unique listings, historical context, owners, and more. There are also added benefits to having a revenue manager who is familiar with, and may even live in, the same market where properties are being managed. Local market knowledge is priceless when it comes to revenue management, and knowing a portfolio backward and forward can add a lot of value to overall revenue management strategies.

 

You Already Have the Tools

Although the idea of revenue management may seem overwhelming at first, most property managers are already implementing revenue management strategies without even knowing it. There are many vacation rental software tools that are used as a part of property management operations that also have fantastic revenue management applications. Everyone in vacation rental management is familiar with property management systems, and there are common tools and capabilities in many of those systems that can be used as a part of a revenue management strategy. Inventory and pricing controls within a property management system (PMS) can help define a revenue management strategy alongside other distribution features that may be unique to specific systems. Any use of a channel manager is also directly related to revenue management because the distribution of inventory can sometimes be more important than something like pricing.

Dynamic pricing software has also become popular in the vacation rental industry over the past few years as managers look to gain competitive pricing advantages in their market. Dynamic pricing tools are the closest thing that the vacation rental industry currently has to a revenue management system, something that hotels and airlines use alongside a PMS to manage all the strategic levers available to revenue managers. These systems take a lot of the manual work out of pricing and reacting to market shifts in supply and demand, allowing property managers more time to focus elsewhere. Most property managers using a dynamic pricing tool are also able to use custom pricing settings and features to maintain a more advanced strategy in a more efficient manner.

 

It’s Not That Hard

Revenue management can be difficult, but the benefits of having the owner, market, and tooling knowledge discussed above centralized in-house is what will make this challenge much more attainable. Data insights into market trends can prove or disprove owner expectations. Owner pricing demands can be effortlessly and quickly implemented in PMS and pricing tools. Data and comparison tools can reveal market and listing performance. The synergy of having this knowledge together makes a successful revenue manager for tens to hundreds of listings.

Focus on what matters most and where your time is most valuable. Our industry tends to think that unless a revenue manager has a wildly complex minimum stay schema or uses every customization available on all listings, then they are not doing their job, when in reality they should be focused on the bottom 20 percent of their listings that are going unbooked. Limiting yourself to a few basic metrics can simplify this whole process, so focus on the ones that are actionable! Consider forward-looking occupancy because it is wonderfully simple. The past is history. Comparing YTD revenue performance may be important to owners, but it doesn’t help you make more revenue; it just quantifies what has already happened. Quickly scan the 30- and 90-day occupancy of each listing on your program to make sure none are at the extremes, and if so, act. Comparing future rates to historical rates does not matter if the property goes unbooked.

Besides simplifying the metrics, look at simplifying your workload by offloading it to the software you have in front of you. Not having time for revenue management because of repetitive tasks should not be an excuse for not driving your revenue management strategy. If you sit down to do rates for next year, then stop, and start using rolling calendars.

If you manually reduce minimum stays as time gets closer, utilize automatic gap filling. Searching and replacing rates on orphan days is not a good use of your time — automate it. And if you are constantly changing your last-minute discounts by hand, you are not prioritizing your time. Software and pricing tools can do the repetitive stuff for you and can also be set up in bulk so there is even no upfront time cost.

Although tools will save you time, as a busy PM you will never have enough, and that is okay.

First, be proactive, reviewing September performance in October will tell you what mistakes you made (or hopefully didn’t make), but it won’t stop them from happening. Second, small, smart, and targeted pricing changes are effective when done regularly. Once a week, log into your data provider, see what listings are underperforming, and use the tools to take quick action to lower their rates 5 percent and then review next week. Later in the week, log back in again, review forward portfolio occupancy, and tweak up or down the dates that are passing too fast or too slow. If done regularly, that’s all you have to do to have a stellar year.

 

Conclusion

Although everything that encompasses revenue management may seem daunting to tackle, there is a high likelihood that you or a capable member of your team is already doing part of revenue management even if they don’t have the title. Assign clear roles and be deliberate about leveraging that person’s knowledge of owners and markets.

No one outside your company will know your owners and how to manage and serve them better than you. Next, take the time to review your software toolkit to see how much time and effort you can save, as well as prioritizing revenue-generating revenue management tasks, not just reporting for reporting sakes. Revenue management in the vacation rental industry has come a long way to make you your best revenue manager.

Related Itemsdatadynamic pricingguest experienceproperty managementRevenue Managementryan saylor
Click to add a comment

Leave a Reply

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Revenue Management
November 30, 2020
mm
Ryan Saylor

Ryan Saylor is a Revenue Manager at Beyond Pricing, the world’s first dynamic pricing platform for the vacation rental industry. Prior to joining Beyond Pricing, Ryan spent time in hotel revenue management after obtaining a degree from Purdue University in Hospitality & Tourism Management. His previous experience includes independent and branded hotel revenue management, as well as hotel digital marketing, web development, and strategic planning.

Related Itemsdatadynamic pricingguest experienceproperty managementRevenue Managementryan saylor

More in Revenue Management

VRMIntel_Fall2020_Fast Paced Revenue Management

Fast-Paced Revenue Management: The 10-Minute, $10,000 Mistake

Heather RicherDecember 9, 2020
Read More
All Star and SoCal Vacation Homes

The Bright Spot in 2020 Travel: U.S. Vacation Rentals See Higher ADRs, Revenue, and Adj. Pd. Occupancy

Amy HinoteDecember 8, 2020
Read More

Managing Profit, Not Just Revenue

Andrew McConnellDecember 4, 2020
Read More

Strategic Forecasting Beyond 2021: Are Vacation Rental Managers Changing Fast Enough?

Clark TwiddyDecember 2, 2020
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Sponsor News

  • Inhabit IQ Gets “Significant Investment” from Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division
    Latest NewsDecember 18, 2020
  • You Are Your Best Revenue Manager
    Revenue ManagementNovember 30, 2020
  • How Email Helped Save Vacation Rental Companies During the COVID-19 Pandemic
    AdvertisementNovember 21, 2020
  • Booking.com Affirms Commitment to Quality with Minimum Cleanliness Score Requirement
    Customer Service for Vacation Rental ProfessionalsNovember 18, 2020
VRM Intel
Calendar of Events
Videos & Whitepapers
VRMintel Magazine
Subscribe
Advertise
About Us
Authors
Contact Us

Recent News

  • Paycheck-Protection-Program-for-VR-industry
    Latest Round of Paycheck Protection Program Includes Up to $2 Million Loans for Some Vacation Rental Business Owners
    BlogJanuary 20, 2021
  • Timing is Everything: The Impact of Seasonality on COVID Recovery for Southeast Destinations
    BlogJanuary 18, 2021
  • Meredith Oskenholt-Meredith Lodging-Bend Oregon
    The Principles That Have Guided Meredith Lodging through the Global Pandemic, Raging Forest Fires and Personal Family Challenges
    BlogJanuary 12, 2021
  • VRM Intel_Christmas-in-New-Orleans
    That’s the Ticket! Register Now to Enjoy Big Savings and Convenient Payment Plans for the 2021 Vacation Rental Women’s Summit in New Orleans
    Industry News for Vacation Rental ManagersJanuary 8, 2021

View Current Issue

VRMintel Copyright © 2016-17 | Click HERE to Subscribe | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer | Copyright | Jobs | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn

Building Your Vacation Rental Industry Brand
The Google Trifecta: Three Ways to Leverage the World’s Most Popular Search Engine
We use cookies and similar technologies to recognize repeat visits, as well as to measure the effectiveness of campaigns and analyze traffic. By clicking "I Accept" you consent to the use of cookies unless you have disabled them.Accept