Short-term rental
Short-term rental
Also written: STR, short term rental, vacation rental
What Short-term rental means
A furnished residential property, apartment, or single room rented to guests on a temporary basis, typically for fewer than 30 consecutive nights. In hospitality, it represents non-hotel accommodations operating via peer-to-peer platforms or professional management companies in direct competition with traditional lodging.
How it is used
Asset managers and hotel operators monitor short-term rental inventory within their competitive set to understand total market supply and pricing pressure. Rising local listings signal potential compression drops during peak dates, directly influencing a hotel's dynamic pricing strategies. Municipal regulations—such as licensing caps, occupancy taxes, and zoning bans—dictate market expansion rates, making regulatory compliance tracking vital for underwriting regional hospitality investments and assessing competitive risk.
Worked example
A boutique hotel revenue manager tracks 150 short-term rental listings within a one-mile radius. When municipal authorities enforce a strict primary-residence rule, 40% of those active listings are removed from booking channels. The hotel capitalizes on this constrained local supply by increasing weekend BAR by 15% during peak seasonal demand.
Common mistake
Underestimating short-term rentals as mere amateur hosts, ignoring the professional operators managing multi-unit portfolios with dynamic pricing engines identical to hotel tech stacks.
Related terms
Work it out
Airbnb Occupancy Rate Calculator — Work out true occupancy, ADR and RevPAN for a short-term rental — including blocked nights.
Rental Arbitrage Calculator — Whether subletting a leased property as a short-term rental actually clears a profit.
Cash-on-Cash Return Calculator — What a short-term rental returns on the cash you actually put in.
Short-term rental in our reporting
Recent stories where this term does real work.