{"id":5762,"date":"2022-10-18T13:18:56","date_gmt":"2022-10-18T13:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.spfr.co\/?p=5762"},"modified":"2026-07-20T08:55:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T08:55:20","slug":"vacation-rental-conference-takeaways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rentalsunited.com\/es\/blog\/vacation-rental-conference-takeaways\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Takeaways From This Year\u2019s Vacation Rental Conferences"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The past few months have been an exciting time of travelling and networking for the Rentals United team. After two years of uncertainty in the events world, we are so happy to have been able to return to our favourite vacation rental events<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the Short Stay Summit to Scale Rentals, DARM, Streamline Summit, Guesty Val and more, we hopped around the world to meet our partners, customers and other industry leaders in person. As always, we learned a lot from the discussions we had and the talks we attended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Had to skip some of the events this year? Don\u2019t worry. Here\u2019s our summary of the most common themes talked about at this year\u2019s vacation rental conferences<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Consolidation continues to reshape the industry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For a few years now, consolidation in the vacation rental industry<\/a> has been underway \u2013 and it has only accelerated since the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Property management companies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Well-funded property management companies backed by venture capital or private equity are gobbling up smaller players and inching closer to creating monopoly markets day by day. For example, the UK holiday rental market is almost completely dominated by \u201cThe Big Three\u201d: Travel Chapter, Sykes and Awaze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The implications of this are manifold. From the perspective of the companies carrying out the acquisitions, rapid growth comes with at least two major headaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One is the challenge of integrating the different technologies <\/strong>the acquired companies use. Property managers often have long-standing contracts with software providers that they can\u2019t get out of for several months. As a result, the parent company has to manage multiple different systems across one organisation, which is an operational nightmare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other big challenge is providing customer service at scale and maintaining customer satisfaction<\/strong>. While an SMB may have been able to provide personalised attention to all its customers, a large company may have to resort to more \u201cfaceless\u201d interactions that could impact the customer experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consequently, large property managers may even lose guests to smaller, independent companies that are better equipped to provide one-to-one customer relationship management. For smaller, independent property managers, this could be a huge opportunity to gain new customers. However, they will face challenges as they compete against large operators with big marketing budgets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Rentals United team at the Short Stay Summit in London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Software companies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Property managers are not the only ones who see an opportunity in growing through M&As. As you may have seen in our roundup of the latest vacation rental mergers and acquisitions<\/a>, software companies are also rolling up competitors<\/strong> and companies that provide adjacent technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, Guesty just announced the acquisition<\/a> of two property management software companies, Kigo and HiRUM, two weeks after acquiring<\/a> the hotel revenue management system YieldPlanet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a company like Guesty, such a move means being able to diversify its product offering, expand its reach and serve multiple category segments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the end user, less fragmentation in the software industry should ultimately mean more innovation, faster product development and better customer satisfaction<\/strong>, as well-funded industry-leading companies are able to put more resources and financial investment into achieving these goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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