Market fluctuations in the vacation rental industry causes huge shifts in the industry’s investability, leaving would-be investors with questions like: where are the best locations for short-term rentals, what can I afford, and is my property performing well?

In the past, vacation rental managers and real estate investors would rely on temperamental internal data to come up with strategy on how to best run their vacation rental, or worse, rely on guesstimations and ‘hunches’ about up-and-coming rental markets. With such a fast-changing industry such as the short-term rental market, selecting new properties in this way can be time consuming and ultimately fruitless.

As for normal folks, investing in real estate hasn’t always been accessible with high initial outlays and low returns in many towns and cities. But as the popularity of Airbnb continues to rise, opportunities to invest in vacation rental properties are thriving.

However, although Airbnb made it easier to get into the real estate game, they didn’t write the playbook for succeeding in it.

It’s difficult to source market data on short-term rental properties. Data points on historical revenue trends for a particular property, occupancy rates, ADR, booking lead time, seasonality, and the total number of listings are for certain markets, are extremely important.

Data points like these help a vacation rental manager make intelligent, data-driven decisions about how to optimise their listing for success, and assist property managers and novice rentrepreneurs in scouting out new markets.

AirDNA’s Market Minder tracks the daily performance of 3.4 million short-term rentals in over 25,000 markets around the world, displaying property-level data on interactive maps. With a fully filterable dashboard of vivid graphs and sliders, the tool is designed to be both accessible to hosts starting out on Airbnb and powerful enough for professional vacation rental managers.

Data tools are imperative to vacation rental success, as is understanding individual property insights. Tools that analyse the occupancy, average daily rate and seasonality of millions of short-term rentals worldwide, and uses broad market characteristics and closest comparable properties to estimate the value of a well-run vacation rental property, will change the landscape of the vacation rental industry.

AirDNAs team will be exhibiting and speaking at Travel Technology Europe. Be sure to attend AirDNAs “Tech Huddle” on 21st February at 2.40pm, an enlightening discussion of the astonishing growth of home-sharing platform Airbnb and its effects on the hotel industry. Register for your free pass here.