2026 Goal: Be the BEST Short Term Rental Management Company in The Berkshires
It’s easy to say we want to be the best in our market. It’s even easier these days to just say we are the best.
Truth is, we need to keep pushing to make this business the best we possibly can for both our clients and our guests. Hence the goal, we want to be THE BEST short term rental management company operating in the greater Berkshire County vacation rental marketplace. This includes any national companies serving our marketplace as they’ve been trying to gain market share here in The Berkshire’s as well.
I first have to start by clarifying the goal a bit more and putting some metrics to it.
To be the best, we want to keep our overall review score from guests in 2026 to 4.9+. For clarity, this is almost unheard of for a management company. Yes, there are single owner / operators doing it, but not many at scale. Our current score on AirBnb is a 4.88. Great score, but not quite a 4.9 out of 5. To be at a 4.9+ this year, 98% of our guests have to give us a 5 Star review. Not easy. Compound that over roughly 1000 bookings and well, 980 of them have to give us a perfect score. We think we can do it.
How are we going to do it?
To put it really simply, we’re going to be of service. This is the hospitality industry at the end of the day. People put a lot of time and money to come on vacation here in The Berkshires and we want to do everything we possibly can to make their trip a success. For the most part, a negative review comes from not acting when something goes wrong. A hot water heater breaks, a cleaner forgets an important step on their checklist, etc. What we’ve learned after doing this for years is that it isn’t so much about what the problem is, but much more about how the problem is responded to. For us this is simple. Make it right, no matter what. If a hot water heater breaks during a guests vacation, we’ve gotta sort it out, and fast. First up, empathize. People want to know they’ve been heard. From there, forecast. We have to tell them what our plan is to fix it, and how long we’re expecting it to take. If all else fails and we can’t fix the actual problem, can we find them another place for them to go? Can we help them move into a different spot?
A quick story. This past fall we had some guests check in late at night and in the morning their sewer line was well, not ‘sewering’. We went to work fast. We found them another property, and the cleaning crew had the new house stocked to the brim with a bunch of fun local breakfast items like cider donuts and hot apple cider for when they arrived. You know what, they loved it, and we ended up still grabbing that 5 Star review from them after all was said and done.
Being of service is what we’re committed to this year, and we think if we do it right and do it consistently, we will hit our goals at the end of the year.
That’s another BnB Bulletin for ya ! If you’re interested in our services for your own Short Term Rental, we’re taking on new clients through April 1, 2026. Hit the link below to set up an intro call.
Happy hosting,
- Jaryn