Tim Hubbard (Short Term Rental Riches podcast) discusses a strong post-COVID rebound in travel—especially in parts of the US and certain international locations—as vaccinations roll out and consumer confidence returns. He cites rising bookings, higher nightly rates (one chart: May rents up 21% vs 2019), long lead-time bookings for summer and next year, and industry anecdotes (resorts buying nearby Airbnbs) as evidence. He advises short-term rental operators to review pricing (use PriceLabs/Wheelhouse, raise prices for high-demand dates and long-lead reservations), notes structural tailwinds (more remote work increasing travel flexibility), and cautions that macro risks (large monetary stimulus, possible recession) could change the outlook. The episode includes promotions (live events) and an Airbnb-CEO quote about an unprecedented travel rebound.
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21% (May vs 2019, as cited by the speaker).
Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb.
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Well, it's happening not across the whole world, but in some places a lot more than others. Travel is back and you know it is. You're seeing it all across the board. So we're going to talk about that this week and whether it's back to stay and how we know as short term rental operators that it is back. So stay tuned. Let's jump right in. Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches where we'll discuss investing in real estate, but with a specific focus on short term rentals to help you build wealth faster with as little headache as possible.
Well, I've got to say I am super excited that travel is rebounding. It's rebounding like it never has before, not in my lifetime. And you know it is. You're seeing the YouTube videos on travel, you're seeing the Instagram posts from your friends, the Facebook feeds, the vacations that got postponed from two years ago that are happening now, the weddings that are happening. It's all coming back. Of course, this is happening in some places a lot quicker than others. So I just want to talk about this week and why I'm really excited to be in the short term rental space and I think that you should be as well. So let's go ahead and just jump in.
If we're in the US Anyways, travel is really coming back. Flights are booking up, rates are going up and we're seeing it everywhere. Friends are going on vacations and weddings. Weddings are getting booked up. I talked to a friend recently that, that operates in the wedding resort space. He's booked up for two years and he owns and operates some really big resorts on the East Coast. They're booked up so much that they're buying and acquiring Airbnbs now around the resorts just to handle the demand. So we're seeing this everywhere. My personal experience, you know, I know my family members in the US have the vaccination and as the vaccinations are rolling out, people are becoming more, more comfortable. I'm in Colombia right now and they're rolling out vaccinations as well. A lot sooner than planned actually. But you didn't even need an appointment as long as you were in a certain age range, you could go in there. And so of course this is different all over the world. But as these vaccinations roll out, well, people are becoming more confident. The masks are starting to come off and people are just starting to resume their normal lives, which includes travel. And that is perfect for us in the short term rental space. So me personally, I've been around a lot during this whole Covid, you know, and I'm not trying to downplay Covid at all. It's been really tough and really challenging for lots and lots of people and lots of cities and lots of countries. But I can see, you know, the different cities I go to that it's coming back and the confidence and how people feel is starting to open up. How do we know this is short term rental operators? Well, my properties have been up and live this whole time, some of them, depending on the area, did a little worse than others. You guys probably know if you've listened to this channel for a while. I have. I have short term rentals in three cities and so it was really scattered across the US too. So it was interesting to see how this played out. But we know now that our nightly rates are, are going up. That's because of demand. I was just reading a chart that this last May rents were up 21% over 2019. So they're going up, they're going up. And we also know that travel is coming back or at least the confidence is coming back because people are booking really far in advance and they're booking for summer next year. So make sure if you haven't already checked your pricing on your short term rentals that it's set up properly for demand next year. Now I always recommend using a pricing tool like Price Labs or you can use Wheelhouse. We'll put the links in the show notes. I use Price Labs co and it's very easy to set higher pricing further out in the year or even next year. I can set, for example, there's a reservation three months or greater from now that my price has increased by 20%. So you can set it however you want. If you're using a pricing tool, it's going to be much, much easier. But make sure that your big event days or your really high demand days in whatever city or area you're in aren't underpriced. If they're all booking up right now, that means they're probably underpriced. So that's another way that us that as short term rental operators we know, we know travel's coming back. Things are just, they're booking up and which properties are being booked? Well, a lot of family vacations got delayed. Right. If you were still working during COVID and traveling, you were probably able to manage to go, you know, to certain places. I was traveling around but family vacations really got hit the hardest. Those got postponed and so those are coming back big Time. So if you have a vacation rental, we know the vacation rentals did really good during COVID as well because they were a lot of times outside of city centers and things like that where people were a little more worried. But those are still doing very, very strong. Now just a quick note on that. We don't know if this demand is here to stay for the long run. Right. We also don't know how the economy is going to play out. We printed trillions of dollars and that is going to have consequences, no doubt about it. We've never done that before, that much printing. And so there are going to be things that happen as a result of that. And if there is a recession, while vacation rentals might get hit a little harder than other areas, I'm going to do another podcast on what I think are the safest areas to be investing in and we'll release that soon. But just keep that in mind. If you're looking at potential property and you can see, oh my gosh, these average nightly rents as a short term rental can pay for the whole property in three months. Well, just keep in mind it might not always be like that. Right. We've got a lot of pent up demand, but doesn't mean that demands here to stay. On the flip side of that, talking about demand, a lot of things change during COVID right. A lot of people are working virtually more people than ever actually. And that I do think is here to stay. And that's going to positively affect our rates, our short term rentals. They're going to have more demand. And so I'm excited about that. It's also awesome because it gives people the ability to just travel around, right. And explore other places. If we do the same thing every day in the same spot, we talk to the same people, well then it's a little more difficult to learn new ideas and new perspectives. And that's why I love traveling so much. So I'm excited to do some traveling. I'm actually kind of gearing up to leave Colombia here, gonna visit the fam and in the States and then I think I'm gonna head over to Eastern Europe. Yeah, like Bulgaria and Romania and Georgia. So if any of you out there live there or you have any friends that are there, please connect us, send me an email@contact est methods.com it's always more fun to meet up with people when we're traveling, so I'm excited for that. I hope you guys are excited for the demand that's that's coming in. If you have short term rentals already. I think you're really well positioned. So I think we're ready. Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, in their latest quarterly earnings report said, we expect a travel rebound unlike anything we have ever seen before. Travel's coming back and Airbnb is ready. So the cool thing about Airbnb is that if you don't have properties on there already, you're looking to get invested. It's really easy to set them up. Of course, there's a lot of things that go into it. We talk about that on this channel, but it's easy to get started. So if you're not already invested in short term rentals, I think now is a fantastic time to be in there. One, because travel demand is surging, it's really, really high. And because we have more people working from home than ever before and that's going to consistently add demand to our short term rentals. So I'm really excited for this rebound. I'm also excited to be teaching my next live event. Yeah, I haven't done one since before COVID just because things were too uncertain. But I know travel. This is another reason why I know travel's back, because we've had several dozen people register and they're from all over the US People flying into Memphis. We're going to be together for one awesome weekend. We're going to learn a ton. We're going to go through some of my properties. So you can check that out@restmethods.com if you want to find out more about the live events. And until next time, I hope you guys are ready with your short term rentals and have a wonderful week.
