Travolution Summit: The home rental market by numbers...
April 21, 2009
Brian Sharples from home rental site HomeAway gives a really interesting presentation. Here's a quick look at the numbers:
That 4m breaks down to...
...and there's no dominant brand in the space. Growth potential, anyone?
But hold on: it's tough for traditional travel companies to get involved.
Because consumers don't see home rental as a segment - Sharples puts up research showing that 66% in the UK have stayed in a rental, but home rentals only get 2% unaided awareness.
Because homeowners have limited inventory - they may only rent for one week a year
Because homeowners often live in the product - which means they don't necessarily see it as a product, and want a way of facilitating person-to-person sales rather than getting impersonal volume through e.g. GDSs.
But there are unmet needs, says Sharples, citing air travel and destination information.
His advice? 'Look at this as a segment to build off of.' And you could take that as 'keep off my patch' if you wanted, but his arguments are rather good...
- 16m second homes in us/europe
- 4m properties available in us/europe
That 4m breaks down to...
- 2.2m rented online
- 1.8m rented offline
...and there's no dominant brand in the space. Growth potential, anyone?
But hold on: it's tough for traditional travel companies to get involved.
Because consumers don't see home rental as a segment - Sharples puts up research showing that 66% in the UK have stayed in a rental, but home rentals only get 2% unaided awareness.
Because homeowners have limited inventory - they may only rent for one week a year
Because homeowners often live in the product - which means they don't necessarily see it as a product, and want a way of facilitating person-to-person sales rather than getting impersonal volume through e.g. GDSs.
But there are unmet needs, says Sharples, citing air travel and destination information.
His advice? 'Look at this as a segment to build off of.' And you could take that as 'keep off my patch' if you wanted, but his arguments are rather good...
Nathan Midgley
Comments (1)
As I see it, the holiday home rental market has seen a fantastic surge in demand ( for the sites that advertise the properties ). This is driven out of necessity - e.g. holiday home owners that can't afford to sell their property and are being stretched in other ways (e.g. with a € mortgage) or less job security.
My question is, how much is the actual demand for the property rentals increasing and will we see a mismatch in supply and demand ? It would be great to some thoughts from front line travel agents on how customer demand is shifting towards appreciating a holiday home rental over a traditional package / holiday park etc.
Posted by Rob Barham | April 21, 2009 7:06 PM
Posted on April 21, 2009 19:06