Skift Short-Term Rental Summit Video: Designing Quality Rental Experiences at Scale

This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner.

In this video:

• Vacation rental guests’ rising expectations: The short-term rental market has seen a major shift in consumer expectations toward hotel-like services, even at mid-tier price points. Plum Guide employs an ultra-selective approach to listing homes to match the rising demand for quality and service.

• Technological advancements in property vetting: Integrating Curation AI helps Plum Guide analyze extensive data to match physical inspections with a 91 percent accuracy rate, significantly reducing the cost of vetting homes and launching new cities.

• The importance of customer satisfaction metrics: As Plum Guide scales its operations, it’s adopting strict metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) to gauge its listings’ performance and quality.

Evolving expectations are driving a major transformation in the short-term rental market. Today’s guests demand services and amenities that rival traditional hotels, even in privately rented homes. This trend is prompting rental services to refine the guest experience to meet the emerging standards of luxury and convenience.

In a conversation at the 2024 Skift Short-Term Rental Summit, Doron Meyassed, chief executive officer and co-founder of Plum Guide, spoke with Alison McCarthy, content director for SkiftX, about Plum Guide’s selective approach to listing properties.

Plum Guide positions itself as an expert curator in the luxury rental space by focusing on properties that consistently delight guests. Initially relying on extensive and costly physical inspections to vet homes, the company has developed an AI system that predicts home quality with high accuracy based on a comprehensive dataset of home features and public reviews. This has drastically reduced costs — by up to 85 percent for acquiring homes and 81 percent for launching in new cities — while maintaining high standards of guest satisfaction.

As Plum Guide scales, balancing growth with customer satisfaction remains its top priority. The company enforces a minimum NPS score of 55 for any market and incentivizes its sales team based on high guest ratings rather than just sales figures. This focus on guest satisfaction ensures a quality experience and aligns with the company’s broader business strategy of sustainable growth without compromising service standards.

This content was created collaboratively by Plum Guide and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.