Share VRS273 – 5 Mistakes That VRBO’s Often Make (2019) A few years ago I wrote a blog post that went on to be one of the most popular on Cottage Blogger. It was called 10 Mistakes VRBO Owners Often Make. It listed a number of things owners frequently did that could be detrimental to their rental business – and downright catastrophic if they did […]
Share VRS214 – How to Break Free and Become Independent of Your Own Business Most property managers start out as one or two-man bands; managing everything in the rental process. They will source and onboard new owners; create listings and manage rates, communicate with guests and answer every question that’s asked. They cover all the bases and often find, even when they start to take on staff, that they […]
Share VRS202 – Survival of the Fittest With Steve Milo Of Vacation Rental Pros In 2006, Steve Milo of Vacation Rental Pros had 15 properties under management and a lot of ambition to grow his company. By 2015 when I interviewed him last on VRS094, VRPs inventory had increased to just over 900. In this episode, Steve describes how that number has doubled in the past two years with […]
Share VRS190 – The Vacation Rental Adventures of Travelling Matt Landau – Part Two Part 2 of the Adventures of Travelling Matt (Landau) takes us to Italy, and Matt’s journey to Rome, the Umbrian town of Guardea and Le Marche in the eastern Italian region of Ancona. Matt’s telling of the trip takes us to out of the way places and shares his experiences of visiting a renowned silversmith’s […]
Share VRS188 – The Vacation Rental Adventures of Travelling Matt Landau – Part One Have you ever been a guest in a vacation rental in a location you are unfamiliar with? I’ve asked this question of many home owners to find that most have never experienced what it’s like to be a guest. And you should do this, at least once. Owners will often say they’ve stayed in their […]
Share VRS187 – The 2017 Vacation Rental Hospitality Survey with David Jacoby of Hostfully The death knell of property managers may be sounding if some vacation rental experts are to be believed. Martin Picard of VReasy talked of this at a VR Tech conference in Rome earlier this month. OTA’s are taking over much of what a property manager does, from marketing properties to an array of consumers; offering […]
Share VRS132 – Vacation Rental Property Management with a Difference with Darik Eaton I had the pleasure of co-presenting a workshop session at the Vacation Rental Success Summit with Darik Eaton of Seattle Oasis Vacation Rentals. In my discussions with Darik beforehand we explored the differences between our two companies and they could not have been wider. In this episode he explains why his model works and how […]
Share VRS106 – How Dynamic Pricing Works with Evan Hammer of Smart Host The story of how startup Smart Host came into being is a metaphor for the innovation we are experiencing in the vacation rental industry. When the Startup Bus left New York in early 2014 heading for San Francisco, today’s guest Evan Hammer was at the start of a 72 hour trip that would culminate in […]
Share VRS092 – Buying and Selling a Vacation Rental Business with Ben Edwards President of the VRMA Ben Edwards was one of the first people I met at the Vacation Rental Managers’ Association conference in San Diego last year, at the meet and greet. As President of the Association he has a lot of insight into the vacation rental industry; as a manager at Newman-Dailey Resort Properties he’s got hands-on experience of […]
Share VRS083 – A Week in the Life of a Vacation Rental Manager Happy Canada Day! (and US Independence Day in a few days) I love this time of year and the pride I feel as a ‘New Canadian’ but I do have a price to pay as the CEO of a Vacation Rental Management agency as the green flag is lowered on our high season. The festivities […]
