The Role of a Vacation Rental Manager

Apr 30

With the rise of OTAs (online travel agencies) like Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, and Expedia, The role of a vacation rental manager has changed. Before these marketing channels, vacation rental management companies acted more like real estate agents; they took bookings from past guests and used old methods of booking, pricing, and finding guests to stay at a property. Now, dynamic pricing, SEO (search engine optimization), response time, and other factors have become extremely important to the traction and performance of an online property listing. Working with a vacation rental manager who is an expert in these areas is the difference between getting underpriced bookings and making sure your property is dialed in and performing the best it can. With Wilkuma, you will be competing with the top properties and driving revenue 20-35% over the completion. If you are self-managing or working with a manager who is not using a dynamic pricing algorithm or is only marketing on a single website, working with Wilkuma will increase your booking revenue significantly.

Property Listings and Marketing: We are experts in creating a profile that will score 10/10 on Airbnb, VRBO, booking.com, and Expedia in terms of searchability and page rankings. If your manager is not an expert in this, your property will not perform as well. We also have all our properties professionally photographed, which is an essential part of the marketing that is commonly overlooked. Check out our Gloucester rentals to get an idea of how our profiles look and the quality of our photos.
Guest Communications: Our team responds to guests around the clock to increase our guest response time; this is a major factor in SEO rankings.
Maintenance and Housekeeping Coordination: Our team ensures your property is clean, maintained, and rentable during the rental season. We use Breezeway to track all jobs and ensure a good workflow and job tracking.

Nightly rate research and pricing: Vacation rental pricing strategy is an extremely important aspect of running a good rental property. If your vacation rental manager is not using pricing tools like PriceLabs, you are likely leaving 20-35% of your property's revenue potential on the table. A good manager understands dynamic pricing, knows how to use these tools, and prices the property based on demand and occupancy among competitor properties.
Budget Management: Lower vendor pricing, supplies, and other expenses is another way to increase your bottom line and make your property more profitable. Make sure you work with a manager who understands market pricing for these services and products so your net is higher.
As the Intermediary, your manager is responsible for making sure all the MA DOR taxes are paid (monthly), and we take care of that. We also do vendor payments (cleaners and any maintenance or repairs that happen during a rental period). At the end of the year, you will receive a 1099 from us, which will show all your income and expenses; you can hand this to your CPA and easily write off all the expenses associated with your rental property. This is a great tax benefit!

Many important details contribute to running a successful vacation rental property. If you are not dialed in, your property will not operate at its full potential. Schedule a call with Lucas from Wilkuma to discuss your current pain points and see if we can add value to your rental opportunity. We manage properties all over MA, but the primary focus of the Wilkuma brand is Boston's North Shore (Gloucester, Manchester by the Sea, Rockport, and other towns).

Seasonality of a Gloucester Vacation Rental