Vacation Rental Industry Advice: Q&A With Assaf Karmon, CEO of TurnoverBnB

The TurnoverBnB Marketing Team sat down with company CEO and Co-Founder, Assaf Karmon, to get his insight into the future of the vacation rental industry.?

As someone who launched a startup within this niche, Assaf tirelessly stays tuned into industry trends, new technologies, and new potential challenges for vacation rental hosts. Now, he’s giving hosts a glimpse into what to expect when starting and managing a short-term rental property.

Below, read our Q&A and learn more about the humble beginnings of TurnoverBnB.

Q: How did you get started in the vacation rental industry?

A: I was initially a small-time host having problems managing my property and decided to solve them with my programming skills. I made my solution available to the community and kept evolving it with user feedback until I finally felt it was good enough to become a business.

Q: What concrete advice would you give to someone starting out in the vacation rental industry?

A: Always price your time and try to delegate as much as possible. We often see hosts who clean their own units and get burned out and overwhelmed with even one unit. Remember that you got into this business to generate income from your property, not your cleaning services.

Q: What is the biggest problem the vacation rental world needs to solve?

A: I think that the vacation rental world has come a long way since the early days of Airbnb in terms of gaining consumer confidence and providing a consistent level of guest experience.

The big challenge we are facing is backlash from communities across the world. There are valid concerns we need to address in that aspect. On the flip side, some localities are overreaching and limiting the property rights of owners unfairly.

Q: How do you see the industry changing in two years, and how do you see yourself creating that change?

A: Many industry experts are predicting that there will be consolidation in the vacation rental software business. So far we are only seeing more and more providers entering the market.

I believe that the trend of interoperability will continue as companies understand they cannot be the best at everything. This is why we are integrating with all the property management system (PMS) providers who acknowledge that we are the best tool for finding and managing cleaning.

I see Airbnb continuing their dominance — but as the industry grows, there will be room for more online travel agencies (OTA) like Hopper, for example, to gain market share.

Q: How has your background in tech affected the way you work?

A: As a software engineer, I have learned that great systems and solutions have evolved over time after encountering real-world problems.

This experience embedded in me the need to release things early and then improve them over time rather than try to predict and plan for every possible use case. The hardest thing is to get started. Once the process or product meets the first use case, many observations will emerge and allow for optimization.

Q: How is the advancement of tech shaping the vacation rental industry?

A: Technology, in general, is making it easier and easier to manage properties. TurnoverBnB specifically is making it easier for hosts to grow their property count by removing the single biggest hurdle: finding, managing, and paying cleaners.?

All this advancement means there will be more and more properties coming to the market and many more property managers who have figured out how to scale and can now take on additional properties.

About Assaf

Born in Israel, Assaf went on to study computer science at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Following college, he moved to the United States and worked for a few startups in New York City before relocating to Boston to work as an engineer at Nokia.?

Ultimately, his academic pursuits led him to the University of Hawaii where he earned his MBA through the Shidler College of Business. While in business school, he met his soon-to-be business partner, Tim Roy.?

Building a software business had always enticed Assaf. In their final semester of business school, he and Tim developed a business plan that would eventually launch TurnoverBnB, a premier tool for short-term rental hosts and cleaners to connect and automatically manage their vacation rental cleaning schedules.?

Since its inception in June 2017, the software company has now expanded to include two additional products within the cleaning technology niche.?

Taskbird offers a solution for cleaning companies to manage their teams and customers all in one place. Their third product, Moveout.com (launching in early 2022), will provide a marketplace of cleaners to perform move-out cleaning for residential properties.?

Assaf is married and has two daughters. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time outdoors and watching Manchester City play.?