5 travel trends for niche short-term rental listing sites

Rentals United, channel manager and technology solution for the short-term rental industry, has released a first edition of ‘Who’s Who of Short-Term Rental Listing Sites’, which is a comprehensive, categorised resource of niche listing sites for short-term rentals and an invaluable resource for property managers as well as travellers.

Included in the report are five top travel trends for niche listings sites predicted for 2020. With hundreds of niche sites to date, this is a growing sector backed up by recent investment in sites such as The Plum Guide, which received GBP14 million in funding last March 2019 and in June 2018, the Madrid-based rental property listing site Spotahome signed a USD40 million investment deal.

According to Rental’s United’s report, the five predicted trends for niche travel sites in 2020 include:

Digital nomads and sabbatical nomads

Digital nomads are on the rise as flexible working, combined with improving tech, enables workers to travel for longer and set up remotely in foreign countries. Sites such as 2ndaddress, spotahome and anyplace are catering for this growing trend of footloose workers using the world as their office as well as sabbatical nomads.

Often families taking a year out from life/work/school for a myriad of reasons, sabbatical nomads stay for extended periods in destinations. These families target niche sites during their research and have specific requirements due to the increased length of their stay.

Transformation trips

The age of ‘experience travel’ is coming to an end and will be replaced by transformation trips. People increasingly want to be changed by giving back to the community which they visit. Ethical holiday rental site fairbnb.coop promotes a conscious form of tourism and proposes to give 50% of their fee to a social project chosen by local residents. It plans to grow its operations in 2020.

Staybillety in Canada is similar whilst Enjoy Apartments donates 1% of each booking to a  charity as well as planting one tree per review received in forests around the globe.

Diversity trips

Short-term rentals hosted by owners and managers who respect female only, LGBTQ travellers and halal-friendly communities, for example, can now be found more easily on sites like Golightly and misterbnb and also Halalbooking. These sites aim to connect these communities and allow them to travel more safely.

Micro-trips

As the industry becomes more professional, we are seeing a surge in sites accepting 2-night stays and last-minute bookings. Niche sites taking care of this particular type of trip are Whimstay in the US and Snaptrip, offering live availability on short-term rental deals in the UK.

Sports tourism

Sports tourism has become widely popular and involves travelling in order to observe or participate in a sporting event. Sites like World Sports Villas and Sportihome offer short-term rentals around big sporting events or for individuals looking for outdoor sports destinations.