The Five Stages of Hosting
Summary
This article discusses the five stages of hosting, from traditional to legend, and how to identify your current stage and scale your business. It also covers revenue management strategies, including the importance of daily and weekly routines, and offers insights on the CEO's role in scaling an STR business, as well as the challenges of the "hectic host" stage.
Key Insights
- •The article outlines five stages of hosting: traditional, side hustle, hectic host, rising star, and legends. Each stage presents unique challenges.
- •STR CEOs can waste 30-50% of their time on low-value activities, which can become dangerous as the business grows. Decision fatigue pushes leaders toward reactive work.
- •STR pricing is dramatically harder than hotel pricing due to factors like product uniqueness, booking windows, and operational constraints.
- •The hectic host stage is where operators are in "firefighting mode," which limits growth, and growth doesn't create the relief operators expect.
Action Items
- ✓Hosts should identify their current stage of hosting to make strategic decisions for scaling their business.Effort: lowImpact: medium
- ✓STR operators should focus on structuring their revenue management time, including daily and weekly pricing reviews, reading bookings as data, and establishing consistent routines. This ensures a proactive approach to pricing.Effort: mediumImpact: high
- ✓STR CEOs should re-evaluate their priorities to recognize patterns inside their business and identify the true bottlenecks that require CEO-level attention.Effort: mediumImpact: high
- ✓Hectic hosts should understand why they are stuck in the hectic host stage, and identify if they are fixing symptoms instead of the root issues, and consider using external experts to speed up problem solving.Effort: mediumImpact: high
Tools & Resources
- →Get Paid for Your Pad: Get Paid for Your Pad provides insight on how to scale your business.
- →Freewyld Foundry: Freewyld Foundry is mentioned, offering revenue management solutions.
- →Legends X: Legends X is mentioned as a tool to become profitable and scalable.
Watch Out For
- ⚠Most STR operators underperform not because they lack tools, but because they don't know what to look at, when to look at it, or how to interpret booking behavior.
- ⚠Trying to fix everything at once slows down STR business growth.
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