We believe in the power of partnerships. We’ve been working with Breezeway, the property care and operations platform, to help property managers get the best out of smart tech, by driving efficiencies and improving guest experience. We’ve gathered feedback from three of our joint customers to find out more about their businesses, the challenges they face, and how technology solutions in the market are affecting the way they operate.
We spoke to Watershed Cabins President and Founder, Tim Goodwin, who built his very first cabin in 2000 and now manages 80+ properties in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, Kerbi Ancona from Florida’s Emerald Coast vacation rental company, Newman-Dailey Resort Properties, and Greg Petrillo, Owner and President of Pocono Mountain Rentals, a vacation rental company in the Lake Harmony area of the Poconos.
How the hospitality market has changed
The past eighteen months have seen unprecedented change in short-term rental property management. Rental companies have had to deal with low bookings followed by bursts of demand, while also adjusting their properties to adhere to regulations and meet new guest expectations. Goodwin said they ‘had to deal with staff shortages’ on top of adding ‘the necessary cleaning enhancements due to Covid’. The pandemic made more work for those in the short-term rental industry, shifting how they run and manage their properties. Ancona agreed that at Newman-Dailey they had to adapt to the changes in guest demand and operational challenges brought on by the pandemic.
What guests are expecting in short-term rentals
- Efficiency: With the market fluctuations for demand, property managers have faced new challenges, Petrillo found his team ‘incredibly inefficient in maintaining and organizing the work to be carried out in properties. We had such a hard time dealing with the volume of requests and the expectations of the guests went up dramatically.’ PM Rentals were able to utilize their digital platform with Breezeway, which ‘helped immensely.’ Ancona agreed that maintaining and meeting guest expectations was one of their number one challenges.
- The quality of cleanliness in rentals has to be higher than ever. The pandemic brought about a need for higher standards of cleaning. At Watershed Cabins they struggled to keep up with ‘quality control when staff are stretched to their fullest capacity and we don’t have time or staff to inspect as many cleans as we would like.’
- Seamless service: ‘To be able to solve a problem without disrupting a guest’s stay, I think, is one of the more challenging things these days,’ Petrillo highlighted. Guests don’t want to be disturbed or sharing spaces with maintenance workers, making it more difficult to fix issues. This challenge can be overcome by property automation, using fast communication to ensure these tasks can be completed efficiently with little guest interference.
Contact us to find out more about how our property automation technology can help you run your business.
