Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / Cristiana Carpini Advises STR Hosts How to Win in 2026

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Cristiana Carpini Advises STR Hosts How to Win in 2026 · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to House Planet Bite Size, the podcast
• 0:03
  brought to you by House Planet and Housefully.
• 0:05
  My name's James Farley, the founder of House Planet, and our
• 0:08
  goal is to share everything you need to know about buying and
• 0:11
  managing short term rentals. Today's guest is Christiana
• 0:14
  Carpini from Tara Home Consulting and she'll be sharing
• 0:18
  what short term rental property managers need to focus on in
• 0:21
  2026. OK, real talk now for all you
• 0:24
  hosts out there, you know that moment when your guest messages
• 0:27
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• 0:31
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• 1:47
  Christiana, thank you for joining us on House Planet Bite
• 1:50
  Size. You've got 5 tips to share with
• 1:53
  property managers who want to get ahead in 2026.
• 1:57
  So take it away with tip #1. Tip #1 Focus beats volumes.
• 2:02
  So the first thing I would say to any property manager company
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  right now is stop trying to be everything to everyone.
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  So the companies that are performing the best right now
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  for 2026 actually made some clear choice about the audience,
• 2:19
  the owners and their guests. So they are focusing in some
• 2:23
  target audience, target guests can be luxury, can be pet
• 2:27
  friendly, can be city apartments and they are really clear in
• 2:35
  saying that to their audience, to the website.
• 2:38
  Yeah, I think it's a really good point, isn't it?
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  Because I imagine there are a lot of property managers out
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  there who just want to scale as quickly as possible.
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  But if you scale with the wrong type of owners who don't have a
• 2:50
  connection with you, that can be a real challenge, right?
• 2:53
  Yeah. And the same time they have to
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  figure out the meaning of scaling.
• 3:00
  So scaling is not about numbers, you know, it's about revenue,
• 3:04
  it's about quality. And especially right now where
• 3:08
  you know, you have so much offers, if you want to stand
• 3:13
  out, you really need to be sure that you're offering something
• 3:17
  different. You know, services give me as
• 3:20
  well quality of the home. So I know some property manager
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  that they have beautiful to just work with chalet in the middle
• 3:27
  of nowhere. You need a 4 by 4 car to reach
• 3:31
  the house. You need how to know how to
• 3:33
  drive it. That's quite important.
• 3:35
  But this actually is working. It's working very well.
• 3:37
  That's their brand and that's tips #2 basically.
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  I see, I see. So yeah, it's basically like the
• 3:45
  riches are in the niches. So so yeah, concentrate on on
• 3:49
  what you're good at. Your short term rental business
• 3:51
  is evolving fast, but how do you keep up with the latest
• 3:55
  regulation, tax changes and industry trends?
• 3:59
  The answer is to attend the House Planet Roadshow, which is
• 4:02
  coming to a city near you in 2026.
• 4:05
  This is the UK's premier event for holiday let professionals,
• 4:10
  supported by the Short Term Accommodation, Associated Price
• 4:14
  Labs and the Women in Short Term Rentals community.
• 4:17
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• 4:20
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• 4:25
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• 4:28
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• 4:32
  learned with your peers. After Cornwall will be in
• 4:35
  Portsmouth on the 4th of March and London on the 23rd of April.
• 4:40
  That's the day after the Short Stay Summit.
• 4:43
  Later in the year we'll be heading to Nottingham, Bath,
• 4:46
  Chester and Edinburgh. So don't navigate the complex
• 4:50
  2026 market alone. Learn from the leaders driving
• 4:54
  the industry forward and shape the short term rental
• 4:57
  conversation in your market. Tickets are just £40 each and
• 5:02
  available now from our website. Head to Houseplanner dot Club
• 5:07
  for further details. Yeah.
• 5:09
  So just reiterate tip #2 then. Two, of course is branding, so
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  brand is no longer optional. Guess they don't book anymore a
• 5:19
  villa with a pool what they do but they want to book a feeling,
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  an emotion, trust the brand. So if the brand needs to be
• 5:32
  actually reassure guests and you need to communicate to the
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  guests, basically they're going to some place what they can do.
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  So even through imaging, I mean even through pictures.
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  So if you are in panty area, for instance, right now, I don't
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  want to book just the same pictures of the house with pool,
• 5:55
  villa and that's it, all empty. I would love to see some glass
• 6:00
  of wine at the sunset. Maybe you know something quite
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  emotional because that's actually how the guests are
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  starting to booking. You know, with your branding,
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  with your photos, like you say there, it's so important to kind
• 6:14
  of stage things. People don't just want to see
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  the a shot of a room or a shot of a bed or something like that.
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  They want to really imagine themselves there.
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  And I guess your job is to make that collaborate nicely with
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  whatever your brand is and and who your target guests are.
• 6:31
  Correct, that's going exactly talking about you know, the the
• 6:35
  correct target guest, but it's all belonging to brand because
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  when you started to be a luxury brand or pet friendly brand,
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  whatever you really need to communicate these two guests and
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  you really make to you really have to offer some new services.
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  So your brand must be appear everywhere.
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  You must what I don't like to say that, but you must send out
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  to be another Airbnb. So the first question that any
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  PMC has to ask themselves it's if my brand is going to
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  disappear tomorrow, would anyone notice it?
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  That's a good question. That's a very good question.
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  I mean, when, when, when clients work with you and they want to
• 7:22
  kind of build a brand, I where do you advise them to start?
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  How do they How do they build a brand?
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  I asked why, an interesting question.
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  You know, we had a project for a setup which is actually we're
• 7:36
  working here now. It's about 3-4 months, so we'll
• 7:42
  be ready very soon. And the first project for this
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  from the CEO was like, we're going to take whatever
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  apartment, villa, whatever. I was like, right, So you will
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  be another Airbnb. That was my first, you know, it
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  was like, Oh my God, where are we going to, to, to put you?
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  So we work with our marketing team and of course you must to
• 8:08
  do market research. So it's not only your go to.
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  Let's say I want to be there, I want to go there.
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  And we saw that there are plenty of space for real quality in the
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  luxury. So something that they must
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  communicate not only services, luxury service services, but
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  they need really to communicate the timing basically that the
• 8:33
  people are paying, you know, I want to go there.
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  So for high standard people, we, we figure out that the only
• 8:42
  things they cannot buy is basically timing.
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  So that's all the branding that we're building and start we
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  start to see actually some the 1st results in just a few
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  months. But this is basically what we
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  are going to do for any sort of client.
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  So if you are a noted European client and you want to position
• 9:04
  yourself as first noted European you, the first thing that I'm
• 9:09
  thinking about about North Europe, it's, I mean it's green,
• 9:14
  it's not true. It's wonderful, incredible
• 9:18
  landscape. So that's actually where you're
• 9:21
  going to be position it. You're not just taking.
• 9:25
  OK, we'll take, I don't know, one chalet, Norway and then one
• 9:30
  apartment in Oslo. Doesn't make any sense.
• 9:33
  Yeah, it's important to, I guess like start with your target
• 9:36
  guests in mind and then build the brand accordingly.
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  What do your customers want? It it's kind of boils down to
• 9:44
  that, isn't it? And answering those questions.
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  So so tell me then tip tip #3. So tip #3 of course, it's all
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  really it is about distribution. So right now we came out from
• 9:58
  20252025 was quite interesting because you basically had Airbnb
• 10:04
  doing a lot of changes. Airbnb is not your business.
• 10:11
  So when a property manager company says to me, you know,
• 10:15
  I'm just advertising Airbnb, it's like fantastic, it's a
• 10:20
  great company, but it's not your company.
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  So they're not doing your interest.
• 10:24
  You're not going to give your personal money or your credit
• 10:28
  card to some other people to manage, right?
• 10:31
  So why would you do it with your company?
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  And when you start to differentiate the product that
• 10:40
  you're offering to guests, the experience, the services, you
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  can as well differentiate the distribution.
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  So there are a lot of OTAs are really, really a lot of older
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  OTAs that basically they can help you out to be in a natural
• 10:58
  state, for instance, in pet friendly homes in cottages.
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  So all this guy that's you must really go and target as well
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  your distribution because distribution if it's well done,
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  it can really help your brand to stand out.
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  And in terms of distribution, if, if people are starting out
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  or they want to grow their business, what's your, what's
• 11:22
  your best advice? You know, should they be on all
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  the major OTAs? Should they cherry pick where
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  they are? They really should look for the
• 11:34
  right OTAs for them. For instance, I was talking
• 11:38
  about luxury. Luxury you have villa tracker
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  for instance, you're not going on booking.com, which is very
• 11:46
  good. If you're taking an apartment,
• 11:48
  you know you want quite or VRBO for instance.
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  VRBO is quite good for luxury industry like luxury sector
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  because it's going to target American customers.
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  And of course it means that you have to get your calendar open
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  for two years enough that in advance with prices and
• 12:08
  everything because that's when the booking are coming.
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  So if you have an apartment, Villa Traca is not for you, for
• 12:17
  instance, booking.com sure stay very flexible.
• 12:22
  It's great for that. So yeah, I'm really suggesting,
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  you know that annual com is basically coming from all the
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  sorts of OTAs that she knows every single OTAs in the world
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  and she's very good in suggesting distribution because
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  if you check with the channel manager like Next Box Rental
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  United, there are thousands of OTAs.
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  Why we're always getting this on the top 3-4, maybe it's really
• 12:56
  reducing as well your business, your margin of course.
• 12:59
  And then it happens that ABNB wake ups today and say we're
• 13:04
  going to sell tomatoes and you have nothing left because
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  basically they can do it. You know, they have a lot of
• 13:11
  database, so they could actually try to sell whatever to be the
• 13:15
  next, I don't know, Amazon, they could basically be and you have
• 13:22
  nothing left. So start to do your distribution
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  start to work as well. We of course your direct
• 13:29
  bookings, direct bookings cost a lot.
• 13:33
  We know that it's about 20% of your margins.
• 13:38
  But you know there are a company like Simply Owners that
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  basically help you out to communicate strict direct with
• 13:44
  the owners and buy that. With a good distribution where
• 13:48
  your brand is really on the top line, you can actually start to
• 13:55
  get your direct booking strategy and invest in that as well.
• 14:00
  Good advice tip #4 then. Technology, I was quite
• 14:06
  surprised to go to conference and see that people they don't
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  use AI still not confident about that.
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  It was like, oh, come on, really?
• 14:16
  So it's not about having a chat boot answering to the guest.
• 14:21
  It's really you know, AII was actually booking my holiday
• 14:25
  through AII went I went to Chachi PT, which has got a name
• 14:31
  the name is Luna. I ask Luna, could you please
• 14:34
  check for a really pet friendly home fenced garden, you know in
• 14:39
  the middle of nowhere basically and she gave me some link.
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  Most of them they came from the biggest OTA have to say that
• 14:51
  booking.com on that is really standing out and few direct
• 14:59
  property managers. So if you ask your AI why my, my
• 15:06
  brand is not coming out, she's already OE already depends,
• 15:11
  gives you some idea, you know, why your brand is not sending
• 15:15
  out. And then of course, you need to,
• 15:18
  you need as well to, to build the story of the properties by
• 15:22
  using some specific words that AI will basically reconnect to
• 15:28
  their website. So AI is becoming really
• 15:31
  essential even to be found for direct bookings.
• 15:36
  So technology, of course, property manager software.
• 15:39
  I mean, we have, you know, I'm comparing PMS for short term
• 15:45
  rentals and PMS in hotels as well.
• 15:50
  Right now, if you ask me, PMS for short term rentals, they're
• 15:55
  really working very well and they're really step forward in
• 16:00
  comparison to the hotel. They got a lot of AI, They work
• 16:03
  very, very well. You can have it for every kind
• 16:07
  of companies. So when I hear that someone's
• 16:11
  not yet using any PMS, even the basic one, it's like, oh, come
• 16:17
  on, really? You, you use an Excel file?
• 16:19
  Yes, we do all we use Airbnb calendar, which is not really
• 16:23
  the question, the answer. So technology as well can help
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  you to leverage your brand because there are really very
• 16:30
  good PMS that you can put your brand everywhere.
• 16:35
  So when the guest is going to experience the booking through
• 16:39
  your PMS, it's not direct to any other software's name and they
• 16:45
  don't trust them and then they leave it down, but they go
• 16:48
  straight to your brand. They're just probably not
• 16:51
  knowing guest Hosaway Ignea page, and that's quite
• 16:56
  important. Yeah, there's, I mean with AI
• 16:59
  especially, it's interesting, isn't it?
• 17:01
  I think you made a really good point there in relation to chat
• 17:04
  bots. I guess there will be a lot of
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  people out there who think, oh, I don't want AI because I don't
• 17:09
  want AI responding to all my guests.
• 17:11
  But actually AI is already embedded in in probably
• 17:14
  everything that you're doing in terms of like dynamic pricing,
• 17:17
  in terms of like where you appear on Airbnb, because
• 17:20
  Airbnb's got very specific algorithms and using all sorts
• 17:24
  of technology to work out where you should appear in searches
• 17:26
  and that kind of thing. So AI is already here.
• 17:29
  So it's just so important to, to leverage it.
• 17:31
  And, and the point you make there about the, the searching
• 17:34
  as well, searching for holidays like you mentioned there that,
• 17:37
  that that's going to be the next huge thing.
• 17:39
  I think in the industry where people don't necessarily go to
• 17:42
  airbnbandbooking.com to search for a place.
• 17:45
  They go to ChatGPT or or Gemini or or other large language
• 17:49
  models to search 1st. You know, as well as something
• 17:52
  that I notice because I try myself with my second home.
• 17:56
  If you put pictures of your home or your owner's home on any AI
• 18:04
  tool and you must describe it, it's going to put you, it's
• 18:08
  going to give you a long description.
• 18:10
  Not on living room. They will say this is the place
• 18:13
  where you can watch television or you know, you can play with
• 18:17
  your family during your holiday. So it's always sponging eyes,
• 18:21
  quite funny because AI is sponging out on emotion.
• 18:24
  So it's not like us. It's the living room, spacious
• 18:27
  living room. That's it.
• 18:28
  They're really didn't say you are there.
• 18:31
  You can play with your family after probably, I don't know,
• 18:34
  months that you're not seeing each other, meeting each other.
• 18:38
  And if you put this description on the OTA that you're using it,
• 18:44
  it's going to rank in high. Yeah, because there's, there's
• 18:46
  more descriptive words, it's that there's more kind of like
• 18:50
  from an SEO point of view when people are searching.
• 18:52
  So yes, and that, that's a great tip.
• 18:54
  If you need descriptions for your, your listings, use ChatGPT
• 18:59
  and and other other models like that.
• 19:01
  They, they will help you and come back with the content
• 19:03
  straight away. And it's it might be better than
• 19:05
  the content that you come up with yourself.
• 19:07
  So, so give it, give it a try. All right then, Christiana.
• 19:10
  So 5th and final tip. Final tip, gets out of your
• 19:15
  comfort zone. I was writing about that
• 19:17
  yesterday night, but right now every single client that's
• 19:22
  working with us is feeling, it's feeling very uncomfortable,
• 19:26
  which is good. It's a good sign for us at
• 19:30
  least. So when you start to expand,
• 19:32
  because this year was like getting a lot of restrictions,
• 19:36
  so a certain point was like to be bumped from everywhere, you
• 19:40
  know, restriction on that, restriction on checking every
• 19:44
  single country, every single place in the world, they got
• 19:48
  restriction short term rentals. So expansion is not more an
• 19:53
  option. If you don't want to see your
• 19:55
  revenue just shutting down or reduced, you really need to
• 19:59
  figure out other place to go. And when you do that, of course,
• 20:05
  make a market study, ask a consulting company to do that
• 20:08
  maybe. And it means as well to be out
• 20:13
  of your comfort zone because replicate your model in another
• 20:17
  country, other languages or even, you know, like 200
• 20:22
  kilometers far away is taking you outside the comfort zone.
• 20:27
  Something quite important as well is that when we're talking
• 20:30
  about expansion of scaling cities, they are getting and
• 20:36
  there will be much more restriction on that.
• 20:39
  So city centre like London, Paris, Milan, they will get much
• 20:44
  more restriction. So if you are a property manager
• 20:48
  that's operating that go a little bit outside the city
• 20:52
  because that's will work anyway. Of course, going outside the
• 20:58
  city, it means that probably you won't have a concentration of
• 21:02
  apartments or villa, you know, in just five kilometers.
• 21:06
  It means that your operation and your operation tools must be
• 21:11
  perfect. So you really need technology to
• 21:14
  go there and yes, getting out your comfort zone, of course.
• 21:20
  Very important indeed. Just before you go then,
• 21:23
  Christiana, tell us about Tara Home Consulting, who you help
• 21:27
  and where people can find out more information.
• 21:30
  Well, we basically have of course short term rentals of
• 21:34
  property managers and hoteliers as well in doing exactly what I
• 21:40
  what I was saying before. So in expanding their activity,
• 21:44
  in scaling, our goal is not really make companies, being a
• 21:49
  big making company bigger at all costs, but stronger, more
• 21:53
  profitable, more sustainable. To give them, you know, sort of
• 21:59
  identity kit, a brand new brand most of the time to be found to
• 22:05
  be recognized for the value, like to be sustainable or
• 22:11
  friendly, which is something that for me it's really
• 22:14
  important. Or you know, luxury or sea
• 22:19
  destination. So that's what we do and we take
• 22:23
  them. It's not just giving them some
• 22:24
  suggestions, some study, that's it.
• 22:29
  We basically work together with them.
• 22:31
  So our marketing team is working with the marketing team or just
• 22:36
  substituting them if there is no one we work like in operation.
• 22:43
  So we have a person that's specified, that's really
• 22:46
  specific and she knows all the PMS that's around our industry
• 22:52
  and you know, coordinating people growth, much more
• 22:56
  margins. Very good.
• 22:58
  And what's the website? Tara home dot consulting quite
• 23:01
  easy. Superb.
• 23:03
  Check it out and we'll put all those details in the show notes.
• 23:06
  Christiana, thank you so much for joining us on House Planet
• 23:09
  Bite Size and for sharing those 5 tips.
• 23:12
  Thank you very much for having me James.
• 23:14
  Have a great rest of your holiday.
• 23:16
  All right, that's it for today's episode.
• 23:18
  My thanks to Christiana for joining us.
• 23:20
  I hope you found those tips useful.
• 23:22
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  To grab these deals, click the link in the show notes or head
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  trends from the STR industry, visit Houseplanet dot Club,
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  managers. That's it for today's episode.
• 24:04
  Until next time, happy hosting.