Tips for Leveraging Opportunities in Your Short-Term Rental Business

Welcome back to the Hosting Hotline! This is an Ask Me Anything where each week we’ll answer your questions on Airbnb, STRs, real estate, and everything in between.

Katelyn asks:

My husband and I own Stay Old Town Road in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s four small, super charming historic houses on one property in the best tourist location in town. We got into hosting because we love travel and hospitality. We’ve always envisioned our guest avatar as a vacationer.

Then, we had a very different guest type fall into our laps, so we pivoted to host midterm stays for the film industry. 

At first, it just felt like a smart strategy to fill our slow season. We thought we could use the time we were saving while not hosting traditional guests to build up our social media and our website. We were finally going to start telling the brand story that we’ve been dreaming up. Now that we know how great these film industry guests can be, we’re wondering… Do we even need a brand?

Should we lean into developing relationships with production companies instead? Is it a waste of our time and money to market these houses as the vacation rentals that we always thought they were? We have 100% occupancy for months at a time and leases signed and paid by big companies like Netflix. It seems like a no-brainer, but we feel our hospitality dreams slipping away. 

Should we keep building our brand as a backup to fill time between productions knowing that we’ll be marketing nights that are few and far between? Or will that just make potential guests feel frustrated that we have such limited availability? What should we do?

(00:01:24) Do We Need a Brand as a Mid-Term Rental Business?

(00:04:06) As a Short-Term Rental: You Are Your Brand

(00:06:11) Creative Ideas for Leveraging Your Circumstance

Thanks to everyone who submitted questions. To hear your voice on the show and send a question to Sarah and Annette, submit your burning hosting questions at: hostinghotline.com.

Download a transcript of this episode.

Resources:

• Video: Airbnb Market Shift | Thrive as a Host
• Visit thanksforvisiting.com/workshop to watch our Hosting Business Mastery Method workshop!
• Airbnb Essentials Checklist: hostchecklist.com