This announcement was originally published on VRMIntel.com.
Rent Responsibly, a community-building platform for local vacation rental alliances, announced today the launch of five new partnerships across the industry. Expedia Group, Breezeway, Proper Insurance, Key Data Dashboard and NoiseAware have all signed on as Rent Responsibly’s founding partners.
David Krauss, Rent Responsibly’s CEO and co-founder, said each of these founding partners was selected because of their long track record of championing the industry through education, promotion of responsible renting standards, professionalization, and advocacy efforts.
“When Alexa Nota and I co-founded Rent Responsibly, we knew that education, collaboration, and advocacy would be at the core of what we do – and what the industry needs,” Krauss said. “To now have committed, long-term partnerships, we’ll be able to support more markets faster. Imagine a world where every destination has a strong, unified vacation rental community and cohesive voice 12 months of the year.”
Rent Responsibly supports the creation and back-of-office functions of local vacation rental alliances. Their services and tools are designed to help alliances become self-sustainable long after the initial organizing efforts, and the founding partners’ support ensures they can be available for free.
Beyond supporting alliances, the collaboration will focus on education, nuisance prevention programs, events and DIY tools. Rent Responsibly also helps recruit local operators to lead these alliances, providing a playbook and leadership support to help them grow their organizations, recruit partners, and build trust with their cities.
“Our industry moves forward when we move together,” said Philip Minardi, head of public affairs for Expedia Group. “The last year has underscored what we can achieve when we collaborate not only with each other, but with our neighbors and with government officials. From promoting traveler trust through cleanliness guidelines to helping cities pass reasonable regulations, property managers, owners, and suppliers have worked together to advance the industry during unprecedented times. We are proud to have been a longtime supporter of Rent Responsibly, to be among this group of founding partners, and to work alongside the team to usher in the next era of vacation rental advocacy.”
“Breezeway is incredibly excited to team up with Rent Responsibly,” said Jeremy Gall, CEO of Breezeway. “As we’ve seen around the country, those operating short-term rentals with quality, safety and service at the forefront can be exposed to reputational damage by those who are less professional. With this partnership, we will help strengthen the standards of what it means to be a quality, responsible hospitality operator in this category, and help local alliances promote vacation rentals in the community.”
Andrew Schulz, CEO of NoiseAware, agreed. “The only path forward for our entire industry is through good neighbors practices and collaboration with each other, our neighbors, and our cities,” he said.
The partnerships will focus primarily on online resources and virtual events while the pandemic persists, such as downloadable materials, a national happy hour series, and the building out of Rent Responsibly’s new alliance management software platform.
Rent Responsibly was founded in 2019 and since then has served alliances in more than 10 markets around the U.S., including Virginia Beach, Santa Fe and Oahu. One of the most powerful frontiers for this partnership is the new data-rich educational resources the company can provide to alliances to share directly with their towns and cities, Krauss said.
Among those resources is predictive market forecasts from Key Data that can show stakeholders the potential upside of effective, easy-to-understand policies.
“Our property management clients know how valuable it is to have an accurate and detailed look at their market landscape, from occupancy to ADR,” said Jason Sprenkle, CEO of Key Data. “Imagine how powerful this can be in an ordinance development process, not just for clients but for city staff, too. This partnership allows us to provide a lot more data to local advocates to bring to City Hall for more effective, forward-thinking legislation.”
With Proper Insurance, Rent Responsibly is developing FAQ resources and education customized to the needs of local alliances.
“We get inquiries from homeowners all the time asking us to confirm if they are compliant with the rules and regulations,” said Darren Pettyjohn, Proper Insurance’s co-founder. “We have wanted to create more FAQ-style educational material but did not have an efficient way to actually get it out to people. We are excited that Rent Responsibly is taking a simple and scalable approach in which we can create a lot of value for the vacation rental community.”
Property managers and owners can join Rent Responsibly free at RentResponsibly.org
About Rent Responsibly
Founded in 2019, Rent Responsibly is a community-building platform for vacation rental alliances. The mission-driven organization specializes in empowering local advocacy, dedicated to building a sustainable future for flexible properties in every community. Leveraging its team’s industry experience, including leading their own cities’ short-term rental alliances, Rent Responsibly has built an online platform that supports a rapidly expanding network of local alliances across the U.S. Rent Responsibly believes that collaboration with all industry organizations and partners is the key to ensuring that every hour and dollar spent on advocacy goes 10 times as far.
