Businesses Providing Holiday Accommodation: Four Best Lessons Learned from COVID-19

Seemingly stable short-term rental markets appear to be affected by the unpredictability of business environments as much as any other businesses. Running rentals successfully for many years is no longer proof of future success. Times when rentals could be successfully managed by our grandmothers seems to be left far behind. The hope that with time it will all go back to normal is in vain. Growing competition between the professional and non-professional hosts is a fierce reality of the post-corona virus era. What worked well in the past for local hosts competing on price might no longer be a solution…

Ruslans Kovalovs “Your Rental’s Life Cycle: The Moment of Truth.”

Lesson 1: Change is Never Too Far: You have probably been running your rental business for many years with the same bookings’ providers with some predictable outcomes, but do not get too comfortable. A new change might be waiting around the corner.

Lesson 2: Your rental listing is not a single entity on its own, but an extension of a digital booking platform you are advertising on. The life cycle of the platform, its ups and downs, might affect the “bookability” of your listing.

Lesson 3: Your short-term rental must be sufficiently independent from any form of dependency in its supply chain whatever the actual supply of rental units, providing direct service to the customer, or supply of the end customers to your business.

Lesson 4: If you are to run a long successful business, you need a booking platform that you can trust. Your confidence in your booking platform should be your greatest asset.

There is more: You have to have a sufficient financial safety pillow to make your rental business unsinkable in major unforeseen events like coronavirus or economic crises.

You don’t need a new world pandemic to learn:

• do not put all your eggs in one basket
• it is time to put the interests of hosts first
• you need more independence in your guest’s supply chain
• you need to participate in decision making
• booking platforms let you down in the past and will continue to do so in the future
• a high degree of dependency characterising the existing rental markets limits your choice of actions
• you need a booking platform that you can trust – the platform that you have created.

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