VRMA 2015: The 3 Lessons We Learned

This year, over 1,300 property managers and vacation rental industry experts flocked to New Orleans for the biggest industry even of the year: VRMA 2015. Piled into a rented “rented.” van with the guys at SafelyStay, the rented.team drove down to New Orleans to catch up with our peers and check out the latest trends in the industry.

Here’s what we learned:

1. There is nothing new under the sun

No, seriously. This year is the 30th anniversary of the founding of Vacation Rental Managers Association. Despite media reports to the contrary, the business of short-term rental management is not something that just cropped up in the last few years thanks to Airbnb.

Speaking to early members of the association, even at the time of VRMA’s founding, no one pretended this was some crazy innovation. They created the VRMA to share stories and best practices because many of them had been working in the space for years already, and wanted to better learn how others were getting on. Vacation rental managers still have the same questions: How do we recruit new homeowners and homes? How do we optimize for conversion?

The questions are the same, and with vacation rental management as old as vacation rentals, vacation rentals are as old as vacation homes. I’m pretty sure even Cicero had a beach house he rented out a few peak weeks each year.

The point being, don’t buy the hype. This is an established industry, with a storied past, so my advice to you: Don’t act new.

2. Everything has changed

The former point notwithstanding, this is a tremendous inflection point for the industry. Besides the perennial stalwart sessions on things like housekeeping and HR, this year’s conference offered numerous sessions.

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Originally published at www.linkedin.com.