Meet the Teams Behind Your Home's Performance

After a busy summer season, we want to take a moment to celebrate the teams behind the scenes — the folks who are the backbone of VRC's operations. They're the individuals inspecting homes before our guests' arrivals and doing preventative maintenance walkthroughs — cleaning the hot tub, coordinating with our housekeeping and maintenance vendors, and keeping our homes at the standard our guests have come to expect. They are the folks taking the 1 a.m. call when someone can't get into a home or a bear makes an unwelcome appearance outside the house.

They're the team members booking and assisting guests throughout their journeys, sharing the local intel that makes a stay memorable, and arranging something special when a guest is celebrating an anniversary or birthday. And they're the folks building the listings, pricing the homes, securing premium placement across every platform, and running the campaigns and guest relationships that keep people coming back year after year.

They're the unseen cogs that keep the train on track day in and day out, and they're critical to our mutual success. In the age of automation and AI, these are real humans doing real work — so if you happen to bump into them at your home, see them on the Ring camera, get a response back by email, or hear their voice on the other end of a phone call, you'll know these are the folks making it all happen.

What follows is a look at what that work delivers, and more: how our portfolio performed against the broader market, the trends shaping traveler behavior, national recognition from AirDNA, an Airbnb platform change we want to bring to your attention, and a competitive edge we built early through Vrbo's sponsored listings. Let's get into it.

Performance & Travel Trends — Summer 2026

Nationally

According to the U.S. Travel Association, hotel revenue per available room (RevPAR) in resort locations grew roughly 5.5% year-over-year in July, though the gain varied widely by location. Vacation Rental Collective's portfolio outperformed that benchmark — across all markets, our RevPAR is up nearly 9%. That growth came from strength on both sides of the equation: occupancy up 5% and average daily rate up 4%. Our portfolio isn't just keeping pace with a competitive market — it's pulling ahead of it.

The headwinds we're watching

That said, the picture isn't uniformly bright. International visits to the U.S. fell 11.8% year-over-year in August, according to National Travel and Tourism Office data released September 17, following a 7% decline in July — and visitor numbers for the first eight months of the year are down 5.8%. High energy prices and sustained consumer uncertainty are pushing travelers toward shorter, lower-cost, more regional trips, even as overall domestic travel spending has held up.

We're factoring that shift into how we price and market your home going forward — leaning into drive-to demand and holding rate discipline rather than discounting early.

In the Rocky Mountain region

Zooming into our region tells an even sharper version of the same story. Year-over-year, VRC's occupancy grew while the broader Rocky Mountain region's fell, and the gap shows up clearly in the bottom line: VRC's RevPAR came in at $191, 93% higher than the region's $99.

Your market's own benchmarking numbers are in the email you received from your local team.

Today's Travelers Are Choosing & Paying More for Quality Homes

Vacation rentals have grown up. New research from Vrbo's 2026 Built to Stay Report — based on a survey of more than 1,700 travelers across seven countries — found that guests now expect hotel-level consistency from a rental: clean, quality linens and furnishings, accurately photographed, transparently priced, and quick to respond when something goes wrong.

Source: Vrbo 2026 Built to Stay Report (Harris Poll survey, April 2026).

How VRC meets that bar

• Professional photography that shows your home accurately
• Transparent pricing clearly displayed to guests, with no fee surprises at checkout
• Guest response times measured in minutes, not hours

This is the reason your home converts a browsing traveler into a confirmed booking. As travelers' bar for "good enough" keeps rising, the homes that meet those expectations are the ones pulling ahead — which is why we encourage homeowners to keep investing in their homes as guest expectations evolve. Homes that don't keep pace risk falling behind the ones that do.

Recognized Nationally as a Top Property Manager

AirDNA, one of the industry's most trusted data platforms, named Vacation Rental Collective a Top 5 Property Manager in its Durango, CO & Bend, OR markets. This designation comes from AirDNA's 2026 "Proven by Performance" national rankings — a distinction that carries real weight because of how rigorous AirDNA's process is.

Durango and Bend are where AirDNA's rankings shone a light this year, but the standard behind those wins — the same guest communication, home quality, and review performance — is the standard we hold across every market we operate in. We're honored to be recognized by AirDNA as a third-party signal of the caliber of management your property receives.

Airbnb's Cancellation Policy Just Changed. Here's What You Need to Know.

Airbnb has retired the Super Strict cancellation policy that Vacation Rental Collective has operated under since we joined the platform in 2017, and we want to walk you through what that means for your home. As of September 15, listings moved to Airbnb's Firm policy, now the strictest option available.

How Airbnb's Firm policy works

Timing is measured from check-in. Airbnb also allows free cancellation within 24 hours of booking for reservations made at least 7 days before arrival.

For larger homes especially, where a late cancellation carries more financial weight, this means less protection than we've had for nearly a decade. Needless to say, we're not thrilled about it. We didn't choose this change, and we have no ability to change or override cancellation terms on Airbnb's platform.

It's also worth knowing that Airbnb now captures more than half of all professionally managed vacation rental reservations and continues to grow its share, according to KeyData — which makes shifts like this one worth watching closely.

How We Got Your Home to the Top of Vrbo's Search Results — Before Anyone Else Could

Vacation Rental Collective was one of only a handful of property managers nationwide — alongside AvantStay and Liquid Life Vacation Rentals — chosen for Vrbo's exclusive Sponsored Listings pilot, as reported by travel-industry outlet Skift. The program let participating partners pay for premium placement at the very top of relevant Vrbo search results, ahead of the standard listings.

Since we started using it in February 2026, listings in the program saw roughly a 30% increase in reservations from that premium visibility. Vrbo opened the program to every host on the platform on September 1 — which means the advantage we built is a head start, not a one-time perk. We spent seven months learning how to make that placement work for our homes while the rest of the market is only now getting access, and that experience is already translating into more eyes on your listing and more reservations on your calendar.

Your Practical Takeaway

Summer 2026 was strong for our portfolio, even as inbound travel softened and regional demand cooled. Airbnb's cancellation change means less protection on that platform, so we're leaning harder into Vrbo and direct bookings, where we keep control over guest terms. And with travelers paying more for quality, now is a good time to think about the updates that will keep your home ahead heading into winter.