Turn Your Short Term Rental Into a Long Term Business

September 18th, 2020

Are you still thinking of your STR business as an “airbnb business”?

Well, stop that. Right now.

You, my friend, are a business owner — and it’s time to start acting like one.

First of all, know this: what you’re creating with your STR business is your own unique brand of vacation and short-term rental property.

And that means creating a very personalized experience in your STRs, so your guests walk away with the WOW experience.

Now, there are many ways to do that, and you will find your own unique path — but I’ve been exactly where you are and I want to help...

Here are the steps I personally took to build wealth and grow my STR business into a profitable brand.

The What

Part of creating a brand is knowing exactly what makes you (or in this case - your units) different, and what kind of guests you want to attract.

Do you want to attract corporate renters? Medical travelers? Those who rent due to emergency family displacement? Guests in the area for entertainment purposes and events? Guests visiting for academic reasons?

Once you know what kind of guests you serve, you can design your units around what those people are looking for.

How many rooms do they want? What about technology — is fast WiFi a priority? What about a dry cleaning machine? USB charging ports?

The When

The “when” is obvious… Now! After all, the faster you can get your units on the market, the more profits you can make.

But before you can start bringing in guests, there’s one big challenge you still need to overcome — pricing.

There’s actually an art and science to determining rates, and the most important thing to note is that your pricing should NOT be static.

That means that what you charge for Mondays should be different from what you charge on weekends (starting on Fridays).

The Who

We’ve already covered who your guests are, so now it’s time to discuss who your team is.

The truth is, you cannot do this thing alone, especially if you plan to have two or more STRs running at the same time. 

And if your goal is to have 10+ units, you most definitely need a team — and you’ll keep adding members to that team if you intend to move forward quickly.

Just as in most other areas of real estate entrepreneurship, you will quite likely start out on your own. You will wear many hats, and you will get tired.

That being said, here are the minimal tasks that you may need help with as you build your STR Empire:

  • Calendar management

  • Cleaning

  • Maintenance

  • Inspector

  • Linen and laundry service

  • Booking and guest support

The How

Finally, we can’t discuss growing and scaling your business without covering how you run it. 

There are many strategies and automated tools you can use to keep your STR-life running smoothly and seamlessly — so let’s go over the ones I’ve personally tried and tested.

Here are the pricing and calendar management tools I recommend for starting out:

Regarding cleaning services, there are too many to count! You will have to see which ones work best for your situation. Here are two recommendations that may serve as a starting-point for you:

For booking and guest support, you can absolutely do this on your own in the beginning. However, once you surpass a few units, you will want to have help. Here are a handful of companies to consider:

I could go on and on about this topic for days, but I don’t want to overwhelm you — so if you want more recommendations and resources, make sure you’re on my email list!

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