The Three Short-Term Rental Competitive Advantages

The short term rental market is becoming saturated.

I'm sure you've heard other people say those exact words and I bet it gets you a little nervous. If I may provide my unsolicited opinion:

I think it's a good thing.

I've spent almost a year interviewing successful short-term rental Entrepreneurs.

The market saturation topic has come up in almost all conversations.

They're okay with it too.

Why?

The market is growing and more people want to play the game. When an industry grows, opportunities to create new ideas and competitive advantages arise.

If you accept that challenge to do the new, there may be a fortune for you.

If you need more inspiration about brands that have chosen to be creative and won, read Airbnbs origin story.

How to Create a Competitive Advantage in a Saturated Short-Term Rental Market

After some time of pondering and peer conversation, I theorized that there are only three ways to create a competitive advantage in the STR space.

Competitive advantages:

• Look

• Feel

• Placement

Nail one, you'll be in a good spot. Nail all three, I have a theory you'll strike gold.

Advantage One: Look

Attract the window shoppers.

Humans like new and different. If your property visually looks nothing like your competition on Airbnb or VRBO, viewers will stop their scroll to look.

Some may even book.

In order to have a visual competitive advantage you must:

• Have something special about your STR

• Capture it with really good photography

• Make the above your centerpiece in a listing.

For people to stop their mindless scroll, you have to give them something to look at.

Advantage Two: Feel

Make your guests feel so good, they tell their friends about you.

Good brands attract new customers really well. Great brands retain them.

I travel to multiple Airbnbs every month and I can confidently say only one of them in the last year has mastered this competitive advantage.

Between my notes from that specific stay and the conversation I had with the owners…

I came up with one unified golden rule that when followed, will give you that edge.

Some ideas to get you started:

1. Provide actually good coffee.

2. Have a shower robe for every guest.

3. Sunrise alarm (I came up with this).

In my experience, most short-term rentals miss the mark when it comes to getting their current customers back for another weekend.

Which, for you, provides an opportunity to make more money.

Cha-Ching.

Advantage Three: Placement

Be where your customers are.

Most people put their property on Airbnb or VRBO and call it good. Those are just two channels in the vast universe we call the internet.

For starters, Airbnb gets 115 million visitors on their site. 

Google gets 162.5 billion. 

If you're only using listing tools to market your property, you're missing a whole ocean of potential paying customers.

Unfortunately, that's how it is for most hosts. 

How to get found on search engines

In order to rank on other search engines you’ll need a website.

Once that’s done, you’ll want to do some basic search engine optimization (SEO).

In short, SEO is putting language on your website that search engines read, then provide to people looking for you.

I recommend learning SEO and adopting it into your business. Not only do most people not do it, but if Airbnb goes down tomorrow, you'll still have a business.

The 3 Ways to Create a Competitive Advantage for Your Short-Term Rental

The short-term rental market is growing and new players are entering the game. This means new ideas, more demand and an abundance of opportunity for those willing to be bold.

Yes, more players means more competition.

But if you master the art of look, feel or placement, you'll stand out like a sore thumb to thrilled vacationers.

What will your competitive advantage be? 

That's all for today. I’ll see you in the next article.

P.s. STRlift is rolling out content on Instagram this month 💥. Keep your eyes peeled! 👁️ 👄 👁️