Freewyld Updates—Wins and Challenges
Summary
This article discusses updates from a short-term rental business, Freewyld, focusing on marketing, development challenges, and revenue management. Hosts can learn about booking strategies, dealing with permitting delays, and the importance of scenario analysis before acquiring a property. The article also touches on revenue management best practices and how to avoid CEO overwhelm.
Key Insights
- •CEOs waste 30-50% of their time on low-value activities, leading to a focus on the wrong problems and hindering growth.
- •Strawberry Creek Village increased revenue by 20% in under 2 months without renovations.
- •The article highlights the importance of doing a scenario analysis before taking over a short-term rental business, especially considering worst-case scenarios.
- •STR pricing is dramatically harder than hotel pricing due to product uniqueness, booking windows, and operational constraints.
Action Items
- ✓Reduce the number of photos in your listings and ensure they all add value.Effort: lowImpact: medium
- ✓Review bookings daily to identify pricing and demand signals.Effort: lowImpact: medium
- ✓Recognize patterns inside your business to identify bottlenecks that require CEO-level attention.Effort: lowImpact: high
Tools & Resources
- →Hostfully: Hostfully is mentioned with a discount code PAD.
- →Freewyld Foundry: Freewyld Foundry provides free revenue reviews.
Watch Out For
- ⚠Many STR operators make mistakes 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 once it shows up.
- ⚠STR CEOs often confuse action with momentum, leading to wasted time on low-value tasks.
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