Over the last two years, Host Planet Founder James Varley has interviewed prominent people from across the world of vacation rentals on the Host Planet Podcast, from property managers to tech founders and everyone in between. These episodes have highlighted a broad range of subjects: from guest experience tips to revenue management strategies; from building a direct booking funnel to mastering operations; from creating a trusted brand to optimising Airbnb listings.
In this blog, James picks out some lightbulb moments that could benefit vacation rental hosts and property managers across the globe, whether they run a single rental or have scaled to thousands of properties.
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Elevate property operations to deliver 5-star hospitality |
Thibault Masson, Head of Product Marketing at PriceLabs, was one of our very first guests back in September 2023, and towards the end of our interview, I asked him what the single most important aspect was of running a short-term rental. His response was a single word: photos.
Thibault added: “Remember, Airbnb and the other OTAs are judging everything, your title, your description, how fast you respond to guests. And above all, they’re judging your photos. They are judging the quality, the resolution, the colours, the brightness. Their algorithm will quickly decide if these photos are going to appeal to guests.”
Whether you’re starting or running numerous listings, never, ever, scrimp on photography.
As the CEO of Forge Holiday Group, Graham Donoghue is ultimately responsible for more than 20,000 rentals across the UK and Ireland. He’s also a massive AI geek (which I’m sure he won’t mind me saying!). Graham believes visibility in AI platforms like ChatGPT will soon be as important as SEO on Google in the STR industry.
“AI models don’t crawl the web like traditional search engines. They rely on citations, structured data, and contextual content. That means companies need to rethink how they present their listings and images.
“For example, we now use AI tools to scan and tag metadata across hundreds of thousands of images. Instead of generic names like ‘Property 123,’ we embed rich, descriptive tags. What used to take four months now takes four days.”
Graham advises to focus on structure, AI-friendly content, including proper metadata with natural, descriptive language that conversational models understand. It is also imperative that your brand and properties are being cited across multiple sources like news sites, educational sites like Host Planet, review platforms, and blogs. PR, content, and media outreach have never been more important in our AI world.
It’s easy for STR managers to focus on reservations, pricing, and occupancy rates at the expense of streamlined operations.
Jeremy Gall, Founder and CEO of Breezeway, knows this all too well, and he stressed that mastering the operational side of your business is the key to delivering a five-star guest experience at scale.
“The solution,” said Jeremy, “isn’t to build a huge team. Instead, it’s about creating smart, scalable systems.”
Jeremy outlined four pillars for operational excellence:
Sounds counterproductive, right? Not in the case of Beach Retreats in Cornwall, UK, which boasts a direct booking rate of 97%. Andy Easton has scaled the business to more than 240 rentals under strict rules. Every property must feature outstanding interiors, be equipped with strong amenities, and, crucially, be within walking distance of a beach.
These ruthless prerequisites mean Beach Retreats has become an exclusive club. More than half of prospective owners are rejected out of hand because it is more important to protect the brand than it is to scale aimlessly. Andy and his team only onboard properties which they know will achieve strong results.
Dale Smith has spearheaded Host & Stay’s growth from just a handful of units to more than 1,000.
He did this by billboarding Host & Stay extensively in key regions, with the brand featuring on everything from roundabout signs to TV adverts and even the shirts of major football clubs (soccer teams if you’re in the US!). Host & Stay has also overseen an aggressive acquisition strategy, and it was during the due diligence conversations that Dale noticed a trend.
“Every time I asked a business how they had scaled, and it was usually to about 100 properties, they said, ‘word of mouth’. They were rightly proud of growing organically, but I would always think how much more they could have grown had they invested in marketing.”
If you’re a property manager aspiring to scale and still failing to invest in marketing, now might be the time to start.
Alex Husner, fractional CMO for several businesses in the STR world and co-host of Alex & Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals, asked a simple question during her appearance on our podcast: when was the last time you tested your booking flow?
“I also asked this when I was moderating a panel featuring some major property managers. All three of them said they hadn’t tested their websites. I thought ‘don’t you think you should start there?’”
Is it a while since you stayed in one of your rentals and stress tested your site? If you’re struggling with guest reviews and failing to convert guests who land on your website, those are two simple ways to start fixing the problem.
Bart-Jan Leyts, Founder and CEO of Autorank, has one of the sharpest minds in the industry, and every time I speak to him, I learn something new about optimising OTA listings.
One of Bart-Jan’s tips is simple, but very effective. Imagine you have a three-night minimum, and it leads to one or two nights between reservations which are unavailable to book due to this criterion. Airbnb, and other OTAs, will punish you (and drop you down search results) due to your rental’s lack of availability.
In this situation, it is better to make those nights available, even at an extortionate rate like $10,000 a night, because the OTAs will like it. And as well as giving you extra points for availability, the OTAs will notice that your price has reduced on other dates (which is a double positive whammy as far as the algorithm is concerned).
If you take a booking, it will be for a much higher nightly rate, and even if you don’t, your visibility on the OTAs will be improved.
James Varley is the Founder and CEO of Host Planet, the fastest-growing media platform in the STR industry. Head to the website for access to a range of free resources, including the Host Planet Podcast, weekly newsletter, and e-book downloads. Host Planet also organises a range of events for STR hosts, property managers, and industry professionals, including the Host Planet Roadshow, which will visit seven key locations across the UK in 2026.