In Hospitality, People Matter Most

At the start of each year, I try to clear the decks: throw away junk mail, delete stuff I never use (4 weather apps??), and restack the books I still need to read! As part of all that, I also take time to reflect on the year gone by.

Looking back on 2023, it was extraordinary in many ways. It was a dynamic year in our industry as #travel patterns shifted, demand changed, and everyone managed through the rain, snow, and heat in every corner of the market. It was an exciting year for Vacasa , a year we recommitted ourselves to improving how we serve our customers and how we support all our work with industry-leading innovation.?

But to me, what really stands out from 2023? The people I met on the road this year. Visiting Vacasa teams all around North America, I met people who inspired me, who motivated me, who remind me why we do what we do at Vacasa.

Bringing Vacations Home isn’t a slogan. It’s why our corner of the global travel industry exists, and it’s what binds our work together, for our company and across our industry. Owners want to bring vacations to their homes, letting them play a part in the travel landscape. Guests bring their vacations home to savor the moments that can only happen for family and friends in a home. And at Vacasa, all our work focuses on making this happen.?

In 2023, our local teams helped #bringvacationshome for almost 5 million guests—almost 1 million kids, and even nearly 200,000 dogs—across more than 500 markets.

Those aren’t just statistics. Those are millions of special moments for families and friends at kitchen counters, around pools, at coffee tables and over board games—moments in travel that are unique to vacation rentals. They are deeply important to our homeowners and guests, as well as our team members.

Our mission is to be the trusted #hospitality partner to homeowners and premier host to guests, providing excellent service, care, and responsiveness. To deliver on this commitment, we focus intensely on solutions and technologies that support and empower our local teams. It’s truly the blend of people and technology that make our mission come to life, and big reason behind Vacasa out-booking our competitors in 92% of the markets where we operate*.

In December, I had the privilege of seeing this in action when I visited our incredible team members, homes and partners in our South Carolina markets of Myrtle Beach and Charleston. I toured 14 properties and resorts, and personally met with dozens of team members to gather feedback on how we can support and empower their work more effectively.

The trip was both inspiring and insightful. Here’s just a glimpse of what I got to see first-hand.

Building technology for greater owner satisfaction

Our local team members are on the front lines of delivering Vacasa’s professional service to our homeowners. But as we continue to enhance that service, we don’t ask: “What else can our local teams do for our homeowners?” Instead, we focus on the question: “What more can we do to enable and empower our local team members in service of our owners?”

With this in mind, we launched our Home Visit Optimization (HVO) tool last year, giving our teams a daily streamlined view of the homes they need to visit and what needs to be accomplished there.

The benefits of this tool were particularly evident during my recent visit to South Carolina. The region has seen significant adoption of HVO, and today our Vacasa team members efficiently visit each home more than three times per month on average; and that’s in addition to scheduled home cleans. This has led to incredibly high homeowner satisfaction scores for the market regarding their local manager.

The early success of the HVO tool reinforces our belief that when technology is built to empower our local team members for the benefit of our customers, great results will follow.

In this light, was pleased to share a recap with our homeowners of just a few of the improvements we made in 2023 and will roll out to them in 2024:

• Ticket Visibility and Communication: We’ve equipped our owners and local teams with the ability to submit maintenance and other tickets for each other, as well as comment on their status.
• Guest Protection Program: We’ve made it easier than ever to ensure that any damage to homes (with a few exceptions) is covered by our program.
• Market Rate Comparison Tool: In beta testing now, this proprietary tool will give our owners much desired insight into why we price homes the way we do—for all nights.

Creating solutions to improve in-home experiences

Secure, easy access and a clean and welcoming home are two enormously important elements of the vacation rental experience. These two items remained a major focus during the past year:

• Smart Lock Integration: Throughout 2023, we continued our priority of installing smart locks on our homes, with single-use codes provided to guests through our mobile app, SMS and email communications. These are both convenient and safe, as guests and owners know these codes cannot be used to enter the home when a stay has been completed. In South Carolina, I saw how our local teams helped ensure that 97% of our homes in these markets are currently equipped with our smart locks, and we strive to ensure our newly onboarded homes have them installed as soon as possible.
• Clean Inspection Tool: Earlier this year we refined our housekeeping clean inspection tool to enable sharing of post-clean photos with owners. This allows homeowners to see real-time images of their home after every inspection, giving them peace-of-mind that their home is being taken care of. We believe it also helped drive higher year-over-year clean scores from our guests in the third quarter. South Carolina proved to be another great illustration of the impact this technology has on our teams’ results. In the past 12 months, on Vacasa.com alone, we've received over 17,000 five-star reviews from our South Carolina guests.

But the impact of these initiatives and technologies cannot be viewed in isolation. As we look at our owner and guest experiences holistically, these solutions build on each other with compounding benefits, and our teams make them more effective over time.?

For instance, since launching HVO and refining our clean inspection tool, our South Carolina average property review scores have improved over 2022 across all major booking channels, and this has only accelerated through the end of 2023. I’m excited to see this momentum for our homeowners and local teams headed into the new year.

My market visits are always special, valuable and insightful, getting to see first-hand the results of the work our teams put in across so many unique destinations. They showcase the different ways in which we Bring Vacations Home, facilitating vacation memories and once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

Yes, achieving this takes technology, and we have team members building tremendous solutions, game-changing advancements, and incremental improvements that enhance the lives of our team members, owners and guests.

However, as we pursue technology solutions at Vacasa, we never lose sight of the business we’re in, and our mission to be a trusted hospitality partner for our homeowners and guests.

As my 2023 travels confirmed, everything we do at Vacasa comes down to people: how we treat and support each other, how we provide service to our customers, and how we enable travel experiences for people around the world.

Today, I believe in Vacasa and its potential more than ever, and I can’t wait to share more of our accomplishments throughout 2024.

*Based on Key Data : Q1 and Q2 2023. Key Data is a leading provider of vacation rental market data and analysis.