The Not-So-Obvious ROI of Community Leadership

Alexa Nota
3/12/2024

When evaluating which investments will yield the best returns for your vacation rental business, the not-so-obvious return on investment (ROI) of community leadership might be easy to miss. Property managers have an outsized stake in your destinations, so taking a leading role in your market can yield surprising and great results.

“Community,” in this case, refers to our primary vacation rental network of homeowners, other managers, local businesses that support managers or serve guests, the neighbors of vacation rentals, and other residents. But our communities also include adjacent entities, like local business associations and REALTORS^® associations, destination marketing organizations and tourism boards, national vendors, and the online travel agencies (OTAs).

“Leadership,” too, can take many forms. Here, we’ll focus on the leadership of your local vacation rental alliance or association. We define leadership in this sense as contributing significantly in some way, ideally through a board position.

On a practical level, that means contributing a few of the Five Ts: Time, treasure (money), talent (specialized skills), ties (network connections), and testimony (public statements). More broadly, it includes collaborating with others to steer the future of local vacation rentals and be a vanguard when there are threats, regulatory or otherwise.

Leadership in your local vacation rental alliance and advocacy efforts is not a passive activity, but it’s worth the investment and allocation of time. Here’s how it can pay dividends.

You and your company can become the go-to source of information.

Homeowners, local businesses, and policymakers will look to you as an authority on vacation rentals. They’ll know they can come to you when they have questions or needs.

You can garner trust and respect from your homeowners and staff.

Retention of both is critical to your business’s success, and community leadership makes you sticky.

You can leverage alliance leadership as professional development opportunities for your staff.

The representative from your company doesn’t have to be the owner or the general manager. Tap an ambitious team member to volunteer for a board role or another alliance need to grow their professional skills as a win-win-win for the alliance, your company, and your staff.

You’re afforded a powerful voice in your community (and your homeowners expect you to use it).

Your influence will carry weight in promoting positive market developments and protecting against regulations that can harm your homeowners and the broader destination.

You can generate positive PR.

Your public representation of the best of vacation rentals in your community will help build and maintain a positive public narrative about the industry, differentiate you from non-local property managers, and accelerate the flywheel of brand recognition and website traffic for your company.

You can unlock new partnerships and marketing opportunities.

Only through a vacation rental association will larger-scale opportunities become available, such as making some grass-tops allies before you need them or new distribution channels for your inventory.

For example, the Vacation Rental Owners & Neighbors of Palm Springs and of La Quinta partnered with Visit Greater Palm Springs (VGPS) to hold a series of educational events over the summer. Many of the attendees were previously unaware that they could advertise their property on the well-trafficked VGPS website for free.

Before the education events, only about 200 of the 6,500 vacation rentals in the Greater Palm Springs area had listed their properties on the website. After the events, owners and managers added 200 more listings to the website, said Davis Meyer, VGPS senior director of community engagement.

“We let our short-term rental operators post special offers on the website as well,” Davis said. “And that’s something that’s really popular with visitors, especially for last-minute bookings or some of those shoulder season bookings.”

You can ensure your destination remains a wonderful place to live, work, and play.

And finally, while this may be less quantifiable, there’s a lot to be said for loving the place you operate in and exemplifying how to steward your community with care. As a leader of it, you’ll contribute to the quality of life for yourself and your family, friends, staff, neighbors, homeowners, and guests.

To find out if your destination has a local vacation rental alliance or for help starting one, visit RentResponsibly.org/Alliances.

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