Short-Term Rentals: How Professionalized Should They Become?
Photo Credit: Luxury holiday home in Costa Blanca, Spain. Unsplash.com / iAlicante
Skift Take
The short-term rental ecosystem, from property managers and platforms to business-to-business vendors, is rapidly expanding. As this continues, there is a fine balance to be struck where the sector professionalizes — without commercializing beyond recognition.
What will Airbnb do next? It's a question heard a lot in company boardrooms and at travel conferences these days. The company has transformed the hospitality industry. This impact goes beyond its business of consolidating and lowering barriers to a whole new stock of “rooms”.
The new Skift Research report The Short-Term Rental Ecosystem and Vendor Deep Dive 2019 highlights how the major short-term rental platforms have consolidated the sector, but then goes much deeper. It discusses the different types of property managers we see today, and new business models that will grow over the coming years. The wider ecosystem also exists of a myriad of tech, operations and support vendors, all discussed in this report.
As the vendor landscape expands, and the sector continues to converge with other sectors like hotels and the residential market, there are real implications for its place in the travel industry and wider society. Some tough questions around the professionalizati
