Leading Indicators for Vacation Rental Recovery

Michelle Marquis, Chief Revenue Officer of Lexicon Travel Technologies
Jason Sprenkle, CEO of Key Data Dashboard
Brandon Sauls, President & Owner of InterCoastal Net Designs

Chief Revenue Officer of Lexicon Travel Technologies, Michelle Marquis, began the webinar by addressing simple leading indicators such as relaxed stay-at-home mandates and a roll-out plan for people to leave their houses safely. Once these rules are put into place, vacation rentals should begin to see an increase in bookings. Starting out, domestic travel and drive-in markets will benefit first because they are safer forms of travel. Marquis stated, “Going to Disney is going to take a little more encouragement than going to a beach location where you can have control over your self-isolation.” Vacation rentals seem to be the housing of choice currently and travel will be more about the destination rather than attractions or events. 

Drive-in markets will become the new normal for a while, since it is a safer form of traveling compared to fly-in destinations. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt from guests will also begin to affect the day-to-day operations of vacation rentals and should be addressed empathetically. Cleanliness of the units and refunding should be top priority in order to alleviate their fears. Booking windows could become shorter as we progress through the impact of COVID-19, decreasing revenue obtained compared to previous years. Although, rebooking dates for next year can help promote a larger profit for next year’s business. 

President and Owner of ICND, Brandon Sauls, briefly discussed the impact on COVID-19 on the vacation rental industry using available web data. With google trend search terms, Sauls found that the term “vacation” had an increased search after April 4th. This revealed that many people are already thinking about booking their next vacation even though we are still in the midst of a pandemic. Traffic has also increased on ICND’s servers, showing that people are determined to book a vacation soon even if they need to wait until late summer. “Beach destinations all showed an increase since April 15th… it’s looking positive,” said Sauls.

CEO of Key Data Dashboard, Jason Sprenkle, provided a multitude of graphs with booking data to show the increase in bookings for many markets. “We are starting to see the first signs of recovery,” stated Jason as he began discussing the increase in paid occupancy for current dates. Many markets had an increase of paid occupancy around July. Mostly urban markets have seen an increase in bookings, but more of a slight increase rather than dramatic. Sprenkle also pointed out that houses have rebounded a lot quicker than condos. “…something to think about with pricing for the next few months,” said Sprenkle. Most markets have seen a slow gradual climb in bookings, leaving those markets on a positive note for the performance of upcoming summer months. 

A variety of property managers from different markets joined in at the end of the webinar sharing their unique yet similar experiences with the impact of COVID-19 on their businesses. 

Some commonalities included: 

• Giving refunds/credits along with establishing a flexible cancellation policy
• Drive-in markets were seeing a slight increase in bookings
• Bookings for late summer have been increasing

Along with differences that included:

• Certain markets depend on events or attractions around them to attract guests, slowing their increase in bookings for the summer
• Each market was affected differently by the severity of their lockdown
• Some markets are treating this as their off season by cleaning and getting ready for guests at the end of summer, while other markets are seeing an increase in bookings

For more information on Leading Indicators for Vacation Rental Recovery, including detailed graphs, web data, and individual stories of multiple property managers addressing the impact of COVID-19, watch the recorded version of this webinar to learn more.