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Top 10 Vacation Rental Owners Forums Every Host Should Join
A vacation rental forum is a great resource for learning from other hosts and short-term rental owners, sharing your knowledge, and asking for advice. As a host, you have plenty of choice when it comes to picking a platform for participating in discussions on the web.
However, discussions on hosting challenges and concerns are not the only advantage an active forum can offer. There you will be able to meet like-minded professionals and get mutual support in the moments when you are ready to throw in the towel.
Find out what the top forums for hosts and industry professionals are as well as other popular alternatives where all hosts are welcome.
What Is a Vacation Rental Owners Forum?
A forum is an online discussion site where people can have conversations regarding a particular subject matter. Thus, vacation rental forums are sites where people involved in the vacation rental industry can network, discuss matters relating to the day-to-day hosting activities and look for advice.
As most forums have been there for many years, you can discover that lots of topics were already discussed by other hosts earlier. So, if you wonder how to get more bookings during the low season or find out about the best practices regarding dealing with difficult guests firsthand, a forum can be a great place to find answers to your questions.
The Best Forums for Hosts and Property Managers
1. Community with Airbnb
Community with Airbnb is probably the biggest forum for Airbnb hosts, boasting more than 1 million members. To participate in conversations, you need to have an account with Airbnb.
The members are very active, and in total over 1.3 million posts have been shared to date. From Airbnb updates to great hosting tips, there are a number of discussion rooms that you can join to connect with fellow hosts and learn from others.
2. Timeshares / Vacation Rentals Forum
Timeshares / Vacation Rentals Forum is a part of the TripAdvisor forum. It has lots of travel-related topics, and Timeshares / Vacation Rental Forum is the one that is specifically dedicated to a short-term business. While it is not as big as some of the other forums, new topics get added virtually every day.
3. BiggerPockets
BiggerPockets has a number of topics related to real estate. The forum that you will find the most useful is the Short-term and Vacation Rental Discussion. Unlike some of the other platforms, BiggerPockets clearly lists the top contributors and trending discussions. It’s helpful to discover which topics are on top of mind of other Airbnb hosts.
4. Airbnb Subreddit
Created almost 10 years ago, the Airbnb community on Reddit boasts more than 160,000 members. One of the attractive features is that you can use the Hot tab that allows you to see the most trending posts first and find answers to the most burning questions in the industry at the moment.
Alternatively, you can simply sort discussions according to date. You can also check out other subreddits related to a vacation rental business and real estate or create your own topic to engage others in the discussion.
5. Quora
On Quora, there are many different spaces that you can follow that relate to hosting. For example, the Vacation Rentals space has close to 200,000 followers. Other big spaces that you can follow include Vacation Home Rentals (25,000 followers), Vacation Homes (41,000 followers) and Airbnb Product (160,000 followers).
You can also use the Search bar to look for specific questions or post your own question if you haven’t found the answer in its huge database.
6. Lay My Hat
Lay My Hat is a forum aimed at holiday rental hosts. To date, there are almost 10,000 registered users and, on average, about 15-30 new members join the Lay My Hat community each month.
If you look past the less appealing appearance, you will see that they have clearly sorted the different discussions by creating many subforums relating to marketing and management. Moreover, you can also search for topics by location.
7. VRMB Community
The Inner Circle is the flagship forum of the VRMB Community. As the name suggests, it is more exclusive than some of the other forums and boasts fewer than 1,000 members. The conversations mainly focus on marketing and operations. To be able to post, you need to register and pay a monthly subscription fee of $45 per month.
Popular Social Media Alternatives to Help Your Vacation Rental Business Grow
8. Facebook Groups
If you thought that Facebook is just a social media website where people can share photos of their kids and kittens, get ready to discover a whole new side to Facebook.
There are many Facebook groups that you can become a part of. To become a member, most of these groups require that you answer a few questions about your reason for joining. Here are 5 of the most popular groups:
Airbnb’s Finest Hosts is an unofficial Airbnb group that has just over 17,000 members. The members are quite active, and the admin of the group, Paul Hart, regularly participates in the discussions too.
Short Term Rental University is a group for Airbnb, Vrbo hosts as well as STR entrepreneurs. It is one of the biggest groups with more than 30,000 members to date. The founder and admin of the group, Richard Fertig, is a well-known name in the industry with a wealth of experience.
The About section of Airbnb Professional Hosts describes this group as the biggest and most active global community. With over 38,000 members, it is probably correct. On average, about 25 new posts get added per day.
Eric D. Moeller and Jasper Ribbers, the co-founders of Overnight Success and STR Profit Academy, are the men behind the Airbnb Profit Club Facebook group. With more than 11,000 members, you will be able to connect with industry professionals from across the world. Plus, Eric D. Moeller regularly goes live and engages with the audience.
Airbnb Host Club is one of the biggest Facebook groups with close to 18,000 members. In addition to participating in discussions and providing advice to other hosts, group members regularly share their listings for feedback.
9. LinkedIn Groups
While LinkedIn is a platform where you can showcase your experience and skills, it is also a place where you can connect with other professionals in the vacation rental industry. The following are 5 of the groups that you should join first:
With more than 13,000 members, this LinkedIn group’s goal is to be a source of information and a place where members can find peer-to-peer support so that the industry as a whole can grow. From cottages to vacation homes, there are many different types of rental properties that get discussed.
This group is the official LinkedIn community for the VRMA, which stands for Vacation Rental Management Association. It has about 7,000 members and is specifically aimed at professional vacation and holiday rental suppliers and managers throughout the world.
While this group is small compared to the others, it is still a helpful resource. Here you can find more information about how to market your vacation homes and rentals.
This group has almost 3,000 members and helps hosts and property managers to stay up to speed with the most important news regarding the industry.
This LinkedIn group’s focus is to share news and recommend best practices. Here, you can also find out more about potential industry-related dangers that exist on the internet.
10. Clubhouse clubs
Clubhouse is a new invitation-only social media app where people can chat via voice chat rooms. Although there are groups where different people can talk about pretty much anything, there are also groups specifically for vacation rental owners. Moreover, the app has attracted popular STR experts and speakers, and you can listen to them for free and ask questions in real-time.
The top 4 clubs include:
- Vacation & Short Term Rental Hosts club is hosted by Bryndee from Loma Homes who specializes in extreme vacation rentals. Here you can learn how to charge double the market rent and get more bookings than your competition by attending weekly networking meetings or special sessions related to specific vacation rental-related topics throughout the month.
- Airbnb Hospitality Club is a perfect space for short-term rental hosts to learn from skilled professionals in the industry and find all the tools, tips, and tricks at their fingertips.
- For the Host: Airbnb Edition club is a great place for current or future hosts to gain some high-level, game-changing BnB tips, tricks, hacks, and knowledge.
- Airbnb Automated is a club for Airbnb enthusiasts, experts, entrepreneurs, travelers, and visionaries to come together here and discuss all aspects of using/working with Airbnb.
Conclusion
While blogs and courses can be great resources, sometimes you need more interactive content to help you grow your vacation rental business. By joining some of these platforms, you can learn which sites and services others rely on to streamline processes.
A popular topic that users regularly discuss is the use of vacation rental software. Vacation rental software, such as iGMS, can help you to save time on routine tasks like guest messages and cleaning management, ultimately leaving you more time to implement the hacks that you have learned online and grow your business. iGMS can also help you with many of your other tasks, including:
- Managing multiple accounts and listings on the top vacation rental platforms from a single interface
- Enhancing your inquiry-to-booking conversion rate with PROtrack, a unique add-on functionality for the guest support team productivity tracking
- Synchronizing reservations across multiple platforms to eliminate the risk of getting a double-booking
- Receiving payouts and generating invoices by integrating your Stripe account to iGMS
- Using the unified inbox to organize your messages into a single feed and ensure prompt replies
- Automating the process of guest reviews send-outs
- Managing direct bookings using a direct booking management toolset
- Creating essential reports on your business performance within minutes
- Adjusting your pricing regularly through integrations with PriceLabs and DPGO
About the Author
Olga Vasylieva is the Content and Social Media Team Lead at iGMS. Olga is on a mission to help hosts and property managers grow their businesses and deliver an excellent guest experience. She is a travel enthusiast and is inspired by life in all its aspects.
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