Vacation Rental Hosts Are Actually Real Estate Agents

Why Vacation Rental Hosts Are Actually Real Estate Agents

Tuomas Aarni from CubiCasa debunks a common misunderstanding

This is a blog about the core of all vacation rental sites – the listing. My personal checklist for an excellent listing includes three elements: visual content, written content and the hosts’ personal touch. All hosts know they are important, but my perspective is a little different. There is a number of hosts who have misunderstood their business and competition, and I want to clarify why.

It’s easy think that the competition is between hotels and professional tourism services versus vacation rentals. It’s an intuitive thought and not necessarily a wrong one. When booking a professionally managed hotel, cabin etc., people know what they’d get. The idea and concept of a hotel room is similar everywhere, only differences being room size, amenities and related services. Whether booking a hotel in Northern Finland or Southern hemisphere, everyone knows what it means to book a “hotel room”.

CubiCasa floor plan

In vacation rentals, the concept is different. All individual apartments and properties are, yes, individual. The hosts are fully responsible of showing how their property differs among other properties. This is even more important than with hotels, since there is no intuitive concept for a “vacation rental” property and the booking is paid before seeing the destination. Yet there is one group of professionals dealing with the situation every single day: real estate agents. So, let’s take an old world example.

Real estate agents must be able to create a unique experience. The listing must highlight how one property is different than the others. Real estate business is always local and competing with other agents. This matters because when the booking a vacation rental, the competition is greater between other vacation rentals than between two business models. Also, real estate agents have one attractive piece of information, which is undervalued in vacation rentals: the floor plan.

The floor plan matters because it shows the layout and holistic view in one picture only. The photographs are great for showing the state and looks of a vacation rental property – yet missing the information of the property itself. Photos and floor plan make a perfect match, creating trust towards your potential guests.

Summarizing all, your listing can make or break the deal. Make it as informative as possible, especially with high quality visuals!

Tuomas Aarni is Sales Manager of CubiCasa, a Finnish real estate tech startup.

Located just 125 miles below the Arctic Circle, CubiCasa has delivered over 70 000 apartments’ floor plans into 45 countries altogether. Contact Tuomas via tuomas.aarni@cubicasa.com or tel. +358 40 7122 150.