Wondering what’s going on in your market? Are travelers looking for places to stay? Are people actually booking? Right now, more than ever, as we look ahead to a rebound in the travel industry, property managers need to stay up-to-date on market trends so they can take appropriate action. These five vacation rental data analysis tools give you access to a variety of free reports that paint a picture of what exactly is happening in your market. With this information at your fingertips, you can make educated pricing decisions, adapt your availability to match market trends, and plan for the future.
Airdna
This site is already well known as an industry leader in short-term rental data, but previously most of that data was only available to subscribers. Airdna recently launched their COVID-19 Data Center page, which shows country-level data (pulled from Airbnb and Vrbo) for free. These reports show the number of active properties and new bookings in the last few months, plus projections for ADR and Occupancy over the next few months, compared to last year’s data.
PriceLabs
While PriceLabs is best known as a dynamic pricing tool, it has recently entered the market analytics space. The site now offers some nice reporting on its COVID-19 Resources page, where you can see global data as well as data broken down by state for the US market – a big plus for American property managers.
PriceLabs’ charts show new bookings, new cancellations, booking lead time, length of stay, and more for bookings in the last and next weeks and months. We can see that in Canada, for example, the share of bookings of over 14 nights has grown significantly since March.
In addition to these vacation rental data analysis features, PriceLabs offers a 30-day free trial of its dynamic pricing tools.
Beyond Pricing
Like PriceLabs, Beyond Pricing is another dynamic pricing tool that has entered the vacation rental data analysis space. On the Coronavirus Support page, Beyond Pricing offers a nice dashboard that shows average daily rate, length of stay, and lead time for a market of your choice – which allows you to drill down to city level, unlike some other tools mentioned here.
You can also explore trends for new bookings and cancellations for not only your market, but you can also add competitor markets to get a sense of how your market is performing versus other markets.
In addition to the reservation and cancellation data, Beyond Pricing provides several free webinars, strategies for navigating the uncertain market conditions, blog posts, and answers to FAQs on the same page. If you’re interested in trying their dynamic pricing tool, Beyond Pricing offers a 30-day free trial.
Transparent
Like Beyond Pricing, short-term rental data firm Transparent offers free market-level reporting on their Coronavirus Impact page. After selecting one or multiple markets, you can see actualized stays and future booking pace for 2019 and 2020, plus the change in year-over-year occupancy on a weekly basis to pinpoint when exactly the market started to see the effects of COVID-19 cancellations. While this report doesn’t show length of stay or lead time, it does show more granular data by date.
The report also shows average rates over time for a 2-bedroom in your selected market(s) for the month of June 2020. This data can be helpful even if you don’t have a 2-bedroom unit, since you can see the evolution of rates over time to determine if rates in your market have increased or decreased.
Besides the market-specific reporting, Transparent offers a few more free resources that illustrate the impact of coronavirus on global bookings, cancellations, and supply.
Smith Travel Research (STR)
STR is best known as a hotel industry analytics firm, but their reports and webinars can still prove useful to short-term rental managers. On their Data Insights Blog, you can read articles and watch videos about the impact of coronavirus on the hotel industry globally or in specific markets. Even if the data in question doesn’t include short-term rental statistics, the overall story is likely still relevant and can illustrate trends affecting your market as a whole.
STR’s professional analysts do the number crunching for you, so you can learn a lot in just a short video recap. The company also collects their own survey data, like in this study showing personal plans for future travel:
As we adapt to the “new normal,” property managers must gain an understanding of what exactly is happening in their market in order to succeed. These five free tools help you uncover trends and discover opportunities where you can drive your business forward.
