As I came into contact with other Property Managers, and with more directors or managers of vacation rental agencies, I began to realize that logic was a common argument among the many and varied ways of managing an agency, also its protocols and procedures, however, I soon began to realize that in our industry there are no rules, there are always exceptions.

During more than 10 years I have come to know many different types of tourist rental agencies and in turn in many different countries, they all have one thing in common, they all work according to their experience and according to their criteria (not always the most optimal possible).

In my first years of experience in this sector, we began to educate and train many professionals, we wanted to teach them how to properly handle our tool and how to get the most out of a technology that at that time was innovative and pioneering.

For a long period of time, I started to look around our sector and found a wealth of references and valuable content, but there was only one problem, it was the rival sector, the Hotel sector, and just for that reason, many professionals refused to observe and learn from some practices and protocols that nevertheless, gave very good results at the business level and commercial success.

It did not take me long to realize that our sector, what it needs to grow and advance, develop and compete is precisely this, standards that allow the industry to create compatible tools for a large majority on the one hand, and on the other that allow professionals to work in a linear and stable way.

A third party, which has played a very relevant role in the development and popularization of our sector, has been the OTAS, they have understood the importance of industry standards and therefore, although in 2014 they began their “colonization” of the sector allowing and assuming the chaos and the “commercial” noise that existed in the sector, they quickly realized that either they standardized for example the cancellation rules (at that time everyone had their own) or they would not be able to present a reliable product with which to scale to the market, which at that time did not know very well what the rules were, since each experience with a supplier was totally different.

The OTAS helped to establish certain standards in the Industry, regarding marketing and cancellation and reservation rules, although in this aspect, those standards only helped the OTAS themselves to market the products of third parties and did not contribute much value to the real needs of the sector.

Today we face many challenges as a sector, the first is a huge (global) wave of legislation specifically developed to prevent or harm Vacation Rental, it is not legislation to regulate and improve the sector, it is legislation to prohibit, partly as a scapegoat for a problem that is also global, access to housing and the exponential rise in property prices, in many cases unaffordable for families, especially young people.

The second challenge is to unify as an industry standards that allow us to give a well-defined image regarding : Cleanliness and hygiene, safety, convenience and comfort, customer service, Amenities, accessibility, maintenance and sanitation of infrastructures, information and communication, pricing and sales channels, economic and environmental sustainability, quality processes and control of services provided to customers, legislation and respect for current regulations.