Year(s) In Review - Lodging Newsletter December 31, 2022

By Wm, May
Published: 12/31/22 Topics: Advertising, Education, Lodging Newsletter Comments: 0

I haven't done a "year in review" for many years, so maybe it's time for 2022. Or better yet, a three years in review because the last three years have been strange, startling, spooky and suspicious, too.

In February 2020, Covid arrived to teach us all the definition of the word "Unpredictable."

Although college was long ago, I remember my esteemed English literature professor's delight in explaining Shakespeare's "theory of nothingness." It seems "nothing" fascinated the bard as the presence of absence.

Professor Virginian Younger explained, when there ought to be abundance - of will, or judgment, or understanding - there was nothing. It looms large in the lives of so many of old Bill Shakespeare's characters, so powerful in part because it is universal. Not even kings are exempt.

King Lear: A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.

Cordelia: Nothing, my lord.

Lear: Nothing?

Cordelia: Nothing.

Lear: Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.

The scene is one of the tensest, most suspenseful moments in theater, a concentration of tremendous force in a single word - Nothing. It is the ultimate negation, tossed between the old king and his beloved youngest daughter, compounded and multiplied through repetition. Nothing. Zero.

So rather than pretend to predict, let's look back a few years in our little world of lodging. If the past was unpredictable, as Shakespeare wrote in 1505, surely the future will also be.

Don't think of this letter as doom and gloom. The future of our industry is ever upward. While the details are indeed unpredictable and the growth graph will have ups and downs, there is one certainty:

Guests will want to visit wonderful locations, will bring their families and friends, and will often prefer to stay in private vacation rental homes provided by professional vacation rental managers.

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Twenty years ago only 10% of the traveling public had stayed in a private vacation rental home, with the majority being in resorts or ski areas. By 2019 it had grown steadily to over 40%. That was predictable.

No one listened as Bill Gates warned the world of what a pandemic could do, until Covid overtook our lives in February of 2020. All business plummeted, especially travel, of course. We hoped for the best, but presumed the worst.

Just a few months later, humans (let's call them consumers) who could not fly around the world, and would not stay in common facilities like hotels, figured out they could break out by renting a private home at the ocean, the lake or in the mountains. They could bring their families, their pets and wander the area, while never seeing a soul.

Vacation rental lodging skyrocketed as did rental rates. Market awareness went to 60% very quickly, a growth of 50% seldom seen in business. Full-stack managers made more money for owners. And then real estate sales soared.

New second-home owners greatly increased the number of vacation rentals. Corporate vacation rental managers suspiciously promised owners ever increasing profit to list the homes. Software companies promoted the ease of being a landlord. It all sounded like a "Get Rich Quick" scheme.

Coincidentally, owner monitoring technology (Home automation) arrived promising noise, occupancy and other controls, all good things, without disclosing that managing vacation rental home requires boots on the ground, a trove of knowledge, and a genuine need to be hospitable.

All this happened while cities and counties continued their onslaught of new egregious and unnecessary regulations and even prohibitions, ignorantly that they were butchering the new tourism golden goose. Their false promise that stifling visitors would cause second-home owners to rent them as "Affordable Housing" was ignorant.

At long last, the "normalcy" of prior years has returned in predictable ways. Occupancy and rates are again subject to weather in the area, the quality of attractions, the inevitable inflation, and home purchase interest rates. Competitor rates, features and flexibility will intrude.

For that reason, full-stack vacation rental managers must again offer specials and discounts, must communicate more often with email and direct mail, can push for direct-bookings, but also must kowtow to monolithic vacation rental advertising websites. All to attract the flow of visitors, which is thinning.

And they must do all of that while retaining the latest technological tools they have adopted in recent years, while paying staff members more, while increasing instant guest services, while providing more guest and owner services and, in short making their "product" better at every opportunity.

Naturally, not all managers will commit to being great at their craft. Some will dawdle, be overly frugal and resist what is inevitable, believing they can live in the past. Some will not keep up. But now more than ever, while the future is as unpredictable as in King Lear's day, it is obvious that only those who embrace every possible opportunity will succeed.

That is what we've learned in the past three years.

Author: Wm, May, Vortex VIP
Blog #: 0935 – 12/31/22

Sponsor: Vortex VIP – – VortexVIP.com