Get Short-Term Rental Market work for you

Optimising your survival strategy

So, how the ideal world of an average short-term rental might look like? Is it like when you have not to pay a service fee? Or having no excessive competition? Or is it more like having all your calendar booked? Being treated with respect by a booking platform? Polite guests? No safety issues? A little entertaining program for your guests at the end to keep them happier?  It would be reasonable to assume that all the factors do contribute into making your business a pleasant and desirable job to do.

Unfortunately, paying excessive booking fees, being treated as an asset, constant fear of property damage, unfair treatment and the devastating feeling that you cannot change anything is more like our everyday reality. 24/7. Or at list is was so until now. Wave good bye to the era of monopolism in short-term rentals. The Golden Moon has arrived.

In essence, we have created a new marketplace for online short-term accommodation booking with features for tackling every limitation of existing platforms. We went into the finer details elsewhere on what those limitations are and how excessively we differ from them. Here, we get straight to the point of how those differences might benefit to your rental business. Let’s waste no time.

First – tangibles, those benefits you can actually touch.

1. Our vision as source of your competitive advantage

As a business we are not afflicted by inconsistent mission statements or short-sightedness of most online travel agencies that allow advertising of one type of accommodation but not others. This allows us to include all types of travel accommodation and providers to advertise on one platform from the onset. This is a straight-forward, no obstacles approach leaving no room for games behind the scene. Just bring your best offer and let the guests choose what they want to book. To make it even clearer: hotels, local hosts, and seventy-eight other categories of short-term accommodation rentals are welcome to list their properties with TheGM.

What does this mean for you? A lot…!

Being present on one platform with your closest competitors allows your listing to be exposed to their end customers too. Hotels can advertise for the guests of local hosts. Local hosts can reach hostel customers and others present on-side alternatives: holiday rentals, vacation rentals, luxury resorts and backpacker hostels. The beauty of letting without boundaries is that the largest pool of consumers can be reached by everybody making it a win-win solution for all.

2. Costs of use: a place where less is more

The above idea becomes even more beautiful when there is nothing to pay for using the platform.  Well, almost nothing.

Use of the platform for all host categories is 2,5% plus VAT. That is lower than any other secure platform. And TheGM doesn’t stop there: the first 1000 registered hosts in each of the 80 categories on the site will pay 0% service fee for using the platform. This will remain unchanged for a fixed five-year period. Thus, you may need to act with a sense of urgency to gain the most benefit.

What this means for your rental:

Bearing in mind that existing platforms charge hosts a 15% service fee (with a few exceptions) this is where the opportunities start to get very interesting. Apart from the obvious increased profit margins, it lets your listing price be more flexible compared to those of your competitors. Now you can match the booking demand by reducing the price without losing profit. In other words, you can reduce your price in moments when needing to attract bookings.

In fact, absence of fees means the platform performs in the same way as your own website where there is no one to pay for service. Relieved resources allow you to increase business spending in the key areas resulting in growth of your competitive advantage in the everchanging world of short-term rentals.

3. Reduced competition as a source of your profit growth

With competition between booking platforms growing at merciless rates, as well as the internal one between the hosts themselves, securing profit becomes an increasingly difficult task. TheGM is a new market with a predicted 30% platform growth in the first few years in terms of host and guest numbers.

What this means for your rental:

1. By listing your property on a new market, you can expect notable growth of listing viewings due to newness of the platform. Put simply, guests will see your listing thirty times more often in addition to what they already see on existing platforms.

2. Due to the newness and lower competition on the platform, the chances of a booking is significantly increased. In other words, it allows you to advertise away from hyper-competitive routes, benefiting from both higher rates for your accommodation and visibility on the platform. Needless to say, advertising on the most efficient platforms and cutting expenses is an absolute must of every business, not only rental properties.

4. Host’s Safety: No Fear Zone Platform

Next to profit is safety: we too are hosts and take safety of every host present on the platform as seriously as our own. Wherever law permits, before accepting a booking request, you as a host will be provided with the guest’s:

• Photo

• Star rating based on previous host’s reviews

• Reviews itself

• Presence on social media and

• (in nearest feature) verification by a specialised agency

ID, email, phone number of every guest registered on the platform will be checked prior to he/she can start submitting booking requests.

 What does this mean for you:

Before accepting any booking request you will be presented with clear star-rated profile of a person (-s) intending to book your property. Wherever it is permitted by law, you have the right to decline the booking without bearing any penalties for doing so.

This is especially true for hosts letting their spare rooms, sharing their houses with guests, and other categories of non-professional hosts requiring security the most. These are fundamental and inherent rights of The GM hosts. The aim- to create the most secure online environment for your homes, reduce the instances of damage, inappropriate behaviour and other unwanted occurrences, bringing beauty back into short-term rental business.

These are the tangible benefits of planform use allowing you to earn, save, and stay secure and competitive. However, the full extent of benefits is delivered when using the quantity benefits in conjunction with the quality benefits. Brought together, it creates what we call “The Smart Choice System” that tackles all limitations of current platforms and equips you as a host with the benefits previously unattainable elsewhere.

In the next article “Clear benefits 2: Intangibles” we will explain how TheGM protects the interests of hosts in a world where no one does so.