Skift Travel News Blog

Short stories and posts about the daily news happenings around the travel industry.

Short-Term Rentals

Evolve Lays Off 14 Percent of Its Staff

6 months ago

Vacation rental property manager Evolve is laying off 14 percent of its staff — or 164 employees.

In a memo to employees, Evolve’s chief executive officer Brian Egan wrote “We are operating in a market that has become increasingly dynamic and volatile. Specifically, marketwide supply growth has considerably outpaced demand growth, which has led to average daily rates, bookings, and revenue per property coming in below our expectations,” he said. 

“This means we will be supporting fewer customers, and will generate less revenue than we planned heading into this year. As a result, we need to reduce the size of our team to align our organization and overall expense structure to this new market context.” The story was first reported by Short Term Rentalz.

Property manager Evolve’s office, as seen in 2017. Evolve

The Denver-based company announced a $100 million capital raise last February — Durable Capital Partners led the round. Evolve manages more than 30,000 vacation rentals, and it has raised $235 million. Evolve’s ​​basic plan charges a 10 percent commission and doesn’t include housekeeping or maintenance but does include all aspects of driving rental income as an on-ramp to marketing a property on major channels like Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo. Services include shooting professional photos, creating a listing, offering advice on rate-setting, and handling guest interactions.

Following the raise, in August, Evolve signed a contract with Hopper to add 24,000 homes to Hopper’s app. At the time Eric Schueller, Evolve’s senior vice president of revenue said his company seeks to get incremental bookings from Generation Z guests through the Hopper partnership, and not just shift bookings to Hopper from other distribution partners. Hopper’s guests skew younger than Evolve’s core customers, he added.

Short-Term Rentals

Zumper Enters the Vacation Rental Market

9 months ago

Rental platform Zumper is entering the vacation rental market. 

The San Francisco-based company has launched Vacations by Zumper, which includes listings Bookings.com, Vrbo, as well as hotels. It has partnered with Evolve and Rentals United — Evolve is providing 27,000 home listings to Zumper, and the site has launched with 50,000 new hotel listings. 

The company also said that it has expanded its short-term rental inventory to over 1 million listings, a 50 percent increase from its initial launch in August 2022. Earlier this month, it launched Flexpass, its subscription service targeting remote workers and digital nomads for an annual fee of $300. 

Vacation rental listed in Flagstaff. Source: Zumper

Zumper caters to mobile renters, targeting remote workers and digital nomads. Apartments listed on the site come fully furnished and equipped and can be rented for a minimum of 30 nights without leases, security deposits, application or cleaning fees. 

Founded in 2012, the company claims it wants to make renting a home as easy as booking a hotel. The company has raised a total of $180 million in funding with the latest Series D round of $30 million led by Kleiner Perkins. Blackstone Group, Greylock,Greycroft, Axel Springer, Breyer Capital and Andreessen Horowitz have also invested in Zumper. The company acquired Padmapper and NowRenting in 2016 and 2019 respectively. 

Short-Term Rentals

U.S. Vacation Rental Demand Is ‘Quickly’ Decelerating: Report

1 year ago

Traveler demand for vacation rentals in the U.S. is still growing, but the pace has “started to decelerate quickly,” according to a report from property manager Evolve.

Property manager Evolve’s office, as seen in 2017. Evolve

That was a major finding in Evolve’s report, Vacation Rental Industry Trends: Summer 2022.

While vacation rental demand was up 32 percent year over year in January 2022, it slowed to 9 percent growth in May, the report found.

At the same time, supply of vacation homes in the U.S. is holding steady, if not accelerating. Evolve said vacation rental supply growth stood at 10 percent in January 2022, and in May it notched 12 percent growth.

“This means the economic environment is beginning to impact summer travel demand, and there will be more vacation homes vying for fewer guest bookings overall,” Evolve stated.

Asked whether the slowing demand growth might cause Evolve to do a restructing, including layoffs, co-founder and CEO Brian Egan said there have been no layoffs.

“No, quite the opposite, we’re continuing to grow rapidly,” Egan said. “Relative to any pre-pandemic time period, 2022 has been an incredible year for demand, and the impact of the macroeconomy is showing up in modest ADR (Average Daily Rate) compression year over year. It’s not threatening the fundamentals of occupancy that really drive the economics of our business.” 

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