Get Paid For Your Pad | Airbnb Hosting | Vacation Rentals | STR Revenue Management

We were at VRMA Nashville 2026, talking to operators and vendors on the show floor about what's actually shaping the short-term rental industry right now. Jasper walks the floor of the largest event in the industry, catching conversations on AI, guest screening, private equity consolidation, and what it actually takes to get guests to come back.

What you will hear:
• Operators and vendors reacting live from the floor of VRMA Nashville, the largest event in the short-term rental industry
• PriceLabs announcing Athena, their new AI revenue analyst, just days before the conference
• Beyond Pricing's read on how private equity and consolidation are changing the vendor landscape
• Truvi, formerly known as SuperHog, on guest screening and damage protection
• AutoHost walking through their new listing optimization tool, built around photo analysis
• An operator who scaled from zero to 400 properties in Aruba sharing how he did it
• Why conference networking matters so much for operators who normally work in isolation

What you will learn:
• What PriceLabs' Athena actually does: it runs in the background on a schedule, flags issues like underperforming listings or fast-filling dates, and waits for you to accept, review, or reject each recommendation before anything changes • Why guest screening and damage protection give operators the confidence to open up more direct bookings instead of relying only on OTAs
• How private equity and consolidation are reshaping which vendors survive and how they compete
• What actually brings guests back to a short-term rental instead of defaulting to a hotel: raising the guest experience, not just cleanliness and keyless entry
• How to scale a portfolio from 0 to 400 units: persistence, consistency, and treating every lesson learned as something to put into practice

Mentioned in the Episode:
• PriceLabs' Athena: hello.pricelabs.co/athena
• Truvi (formerly SuperHog)
• Beyond Pricing
• AutoHost
• VRMA Nashville 2026

Get Paid for Your Pad is the number one podcast for short-term rental operators who want to maximize revenue and run a professional business.
New episodes every Monday.
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Jasper covers the September 2026 portfolio performance update for Freewyld Foundry clients. September was the best month in the company's history: comparable units finished up 37% year over year while the average market was up 7.3%, putting Freewyld Foundry's measurable impact at 27%, the highest they have ever recorded. Jasper walks through the market breakdown, shares which markets were up and which were down, and explains why September showed such strong numbers year over year. He also shares observations going into October and Q4.
In addition to the numbers, Jasper shares takeaways from GuestyVal in Madrid, including what the industry is learning about AI in revenue management, what Airbnb presented about visibility and discounts on their platform, and the news that Vrbo is moving to a simplified commission structure similar to Airbnb's. He closes with a personal story: the first time in over 100 Airbnb stays that he left a listing before his checkout date, and what going through the guest-side resolution process taught him.

You will learn:
September performance breakdown - Freewyld Foundry portfolios up 37% YoY, market up 7.3%, impact at 27%, the highest in company history
Why September was strong - Labor Day weekend shifted from August to September this year, and what that means for reading year-over-year data
Which markets stood out - Gainesville and San Antonio were the biggest movers; beach markets in the Carolinas and a few Canada markets were down; Kansas City dealing with post-World Cup inventory hangover
What Jasper learned at GuestyVal - AI needs human oversight for judgment calls; the consensus is human plus AI, not AI alone; the human relationship will become more valuable as AI becomes more common
Airbnb on visibility - flexibility, availability, and discounts are the levers; Airbnb wants operators using their new promotions, and stacking discounts requires a channel markup to protect rates
Vrbo commission change - Vrbo is moving to a single percentage model, dropping their fixed-fee plan tier, following Airbnb's commission structure
The direct booking share decline - OTAs are gaining market share versus direct bookings this year, counter to the trend of prior years
The Airbnb resolution process from the guest side - what it looks like to submit a claim, how the host responded, and what Jasper wishes he had done differently

We also talk about:
Portfolio count now at approximately 80 clients and growing, with several new clients signing up in September
AirDNA data showing US RevPAR up only 3% for the year, coming primarily from ADR
Why AI performs well on deterministic logic and data processing but struggles with judgment calls that cannot be expressed as numbers
How Freewyld Foundry uses AI to flag price points that have the highest likelihood of needing human review, rather than letting AI set prices autonomously
The mold situation: why a quick clean was not an acceptable fix, and what Jasper offered the host before escalating to Airbnb support

Mentioned in the Episode:
Free Revenue Report: freewyldfoundry.com/report
VRMA Nashville October 4-6: Booth 1143, Tuesday workshop at 11:30 AM
GuestyVal Madrid, September 2026
Email Jasper: jasper@freewyldfoundry.com

Get Paid for Your Pad is the number one podcast for short-term rental operators who want to maximize revenue and run a professional business.
New episodes every Monday.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major platforms.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Javier Vasquez, one of Freewyld Foundry's revenue managers, joins Jasper to walk through a pricing strategy he built from scratch for a portfolio of glamping dome units near Toronto. These units run at 97-98% occupancy year-round with booking windows of up to 212 days and a waiting list. Because they attract destination travelers who book specifically to stay in those units, standard PriceLabs market factors did not apply. So Javier turned them off entirely and built a custom Portfolio Occupancy-Based Adjustment matrix instead. The result: ADR jumped from $493 in July to $565 in August. Jasper and Javier walk through the full setup live, including the screen share.

You will learn:
What Portfolio Occupancy-Based Adjustment is in PriceLabs, and why it is the right tool when your inventory does not follow regular STR market patterns
Why Javier turned off both seasonality and demand factors entirely for this portfolio, and what that changes about how the base price works
How the matrix calculates occupancy on a per-day basis rather than a date-range basis, and why that distinction is critical for high-demand destination inventory
How to build separate matrices for different unit types and day-of-week patterns, including why Sundays need their own factor separate from weekdays and weekends
What the Javier Effect looks like in the data: ADR from $493 in July to $565 in August within two months of implementing the strategy
How to use the PriceLabs pacing dashboard to monitor whether a new strategy is working and where to adjust

We also talk about:
How to tell when your inventory warrants a custom strategy versus following standard market factors: the main tell is that your occupancy and booking patterns do not look like the market around you
Why last-minute discounts are built directly into the matrix for this portfolio, eliminating the need for separate last-minute discount settings in PriceLabs
The difference between regular occupancy-based adjustments (date-range basis) and portfolio occupancy-based adjustments (per-day basis), and why the distinction matters
How booking windows shaped the date range columns in the matrix: 212 days for Forest Domes, 140 days for the middle units, and why a 366+ day column was added after October 2027 bookings started arriving
What the pacing report shows heading into October: ADR $30 higher than the same period last year with occupancy also ahead
Why most of the measurable impact so far is coming from weekday dates, and why the weekend impact will be clearer next year when weekend inventory was not already sold out before the strategy launched

Mentioned in the Episode:
Free Revenue Report from Freewyld Foundry: freewyldfoundry.com/report
PriceLabs Portfolio Occupancy-Based Adjustment: enable through the PriceLabs control panel; requires a group to be set up before the feature appears
VRMA Nashville October 4-6: Booth 1143, Tuesday workshop at 11:30 AM, Sunday mastermind for Freewyld Foundry clients
Email Jasper: jasper@freewyldfoundry.com

Subscribe for new episodes every Monday on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
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Short-term rental conferences are a big investment of time, money, and energy. Are they worth it? And if you go, how do you actually get the most out of them?
Jasper shares 12 years of conference experience, from Airbnb Open in 2014 to GuestyVal Madrid and VRMA Nashville, with practical advice on how to maximize the value of any STR conference you attend.
Want to outperform the market? Freewyld Foundry's Revenue and Pricing Management service is driving an average 19% performance lift for $1M+ STR operators, even in down markets. If you are managing 15+ listings and want a free pricing audit, apply here: freewyldfoundry.com/get-started

You will learn:
Why the operators who get the least value from conferences are the ones who show up without a plan, and what to think through before you book your ticket
How getting on stage or joining a panel changes the entire conference experience, saves you money on the ticket, and gives you automatic credibility before you say a word
Why most operators underestimate how much value they have to share, and why you should apply for a speaking slot even if you are not sure you will get it
How to use the conference app to book meetings before you arrive, and why protecting your open time from aggressive vendors is just as important as who you schedule
What Freewyld Foundry is doing at VRMA Nashville: a workshop on building an AI revenue management agent (Tuesday 11:30 AM), a surprise in-person event Monday night, and a booth with free revenue audits

We also talk about:
The real value of going to a conference is not the sessions, it is the personal connections, and most people are too passive to make them
How VRMA compares to IMN and regional conferences, and which type fits your goals
Why traveling with a baby has kept Jasper to two conferences in 2026, and what the European conference calendar looks like for 2027
The energy and motivation from being around other operators is underrated, and why getting out of your day-to-day once or twice a year is worth it on its own

Mentioned in the Episode:
Freewyld Foundry Free Revenue Report: freewyldfoundry.com/get-started
VRMA Nashville: October 4-6, stop by the Freewyld Foundry booth
Email Jasper: jasper@freewyldfoundry.com

Subscribe for new episodes every Monday on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Midterm rentals are already happening in your short-term rental portfolio. Most operators just are not being intentional about it yet. Frank Bosie, Senior Director of Partnerships at Hostfully, joins Jasper to break down the data, the economics, and the strategy behind adding midterm rentals as a revenue lever, without giving up your short-term rental business.

Want to outperform the market? Freewyld Foundry's Revenue and Pricing Management service is driving an average 19% performance lift for $1M+ STR operators, even in down markets. If you are managing 15+ listings and want a free pricing audit, apply here: https://freewyldfoundry.com/get-started/

39% of STR operators have already received at least one 30+ night booking. Midterm rentals represent only 1.7% of reservations but 20% of booked nights. You do not need many of them for them to meaningfully move your occupancy numbers, especially during low season.

You will learn:
Why midterm rentals are not a separate business model but a natural extension of what is already happening in most STR portfolios, and how to become intentional about it
The hybrid strategy that works better than going exclusively midterm: keep STR open, add long-stay discounts, and let demand self-select
How to think about the occupancy crossover: why 100% MTR occupancy at $160/night generates roughly the same gross revenue as 53% STR occupancy at $315/night
Which properties and markets are best suited for MTR, including proximity to hospitals, universities, military installations, and employer hubs
What MTR guests actually need that vacation guests do not: fast wifi, a real workspace, full kitchen, laundry, storage, and the ability to live comfortably for 45 to 60 days
Why new listings should not prioritize MTR first, and when the timing makes sense to add it

We also talk about:
Hostfully's Furnished Finder integration: the first PMS to connect with Furnished Finder, currently in beta, with calendar sync, guest communication, and payment management coming through the same system
How MTR nightly rates vary dramatically by market: California averages 95% of STR rates, while Connecticut and Pennsylvania average around 30 to 35%
The tenancy regulation risk in some markets where a guest staying 30+ nights may gain renter rights, and how smart operators are navigating it
Frank's data on portfolio size and MTR activity: 7.3% of single-property operators have MTR bookings, jumping to 69% for operators managing 6 to 20 properties and over 80% for larger portfolios
Top MTR operators averaging 8 active distribution channels compared to 4.8 for non-MTR operators, and why fragmented demand requires broader distribution
Jasper's personal experience staying in his own Colombian Airbnb for three months and the improvements he made for long-stay guests, including a standing desk
Why the operational cost savings of MTR (fewer turnovers, fewer cleanings, fewer check-ins) matter as much as the nightly rate when evaluating the economics

Mentioned in the Episode:
Freewyld Foundry Free Revenue Report: https://freewyldfoundry.com/get-started/
Hostfully: https://www.hostfully.com
Furnished Finder: https://www.furnishedfinder.com
Freewyld Foundry at VRMA Nashville: October 4-6, stop by the booth
Email Jasper: jasper@freewyldfoundry.com

Subscribe for new episodes every Monday on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.