This vacation rental company has a big market opportunity.
Vacasa (NASDAQ:VCSA) is the largest vacation rental management company in the United States, but still only manages fewer than 1% of the properties in its addressable market. In this Fool Live video clip, recorded on Dec. 7, Fool.com contributor Matt Frankel sits down with Vacasa CEO Matt Roberts to learn more about what the company does and how it’s different from other recent vacation-focused IPOs like Airbnb (NASDAQ:ABNB).
Matt Frankel: I’ve been following your company for a while as a vacation homeowner myself. It’s a very interesting business and I’m curious to dig into it a little bit here. For those who are not too familiar, will you explain what Vacasa does? In other words, what makes it different from an Airbnb, which is a stock that a lot of our viewers are very familiar with.
Matt Roberts: Sure. I think the important thing to say is, we really focused on the supply side of the overall ecosystem, so vacation rentals have grown in popularity as an option for travel, and the demand is amazing right now. It’s going crazy. There’s plenty of demand but there’s not enough supply to actually meet that demand. What Vacasa does is through our technology platform in our local operations team, we create supply in the market. We bring online the available nights for people to rent, and we do that in a way that makes it so easy for homeowners. That’s what I would say is our difference. We definitely have our own direct demand channel, 30%-35% is direct, but the majority of the nights that we sell are actually in partnership with Vrbo, and Airbnb, and Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG). We bring the product to the shelf of the stores. Think about it in that way.
Frankel: You are a full-service management company. Unlike if I were to simply list my house on Airbnb, it’s still me doing a lot of the work.
Roberts: You got it. Exactly. We do everything. Matt, you have your second home and really all you want to do is get a check every month when we sell nights that you don’t want to use and that’s what we do. We do everything to allow you to hand over the keys to us and just book the nights that you want for personal use, and then we write you a check, that’s answering the call at two o’clock in the morning if the guest needs something or marketing and pricing your property to sell-through the most nights at the highest rate possible.
This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the “official” recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. We’re motley! Questioning an investing thesis — even one of our own — helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.
Matthew Frankel, CFP® has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns and recommends Airbnb, Inc. and Booking Holdings. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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