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In this episode of Get Paid For Your Pad, Jasper Ribbers sits down with Adriaan Sonneveld, former Director of Revenue for Riu Hotels & Resorts, where he oversaw 10,000 rooms across Aruba, Jamaica, Bahamas, and Punta Cana. After years managing one of the largest all-inclusive portfolios in the world, Adriaan stepped into the Short-Term Rental space, and discovered a revenue environment far more volatile, less predictable, and dramatically more complex.
If you are an STR operator who wants to master pricing, understand true booking-window behavior, and learn why hotel playbooks break down inside the STR category, this episode is essential. Adriaan dismantles the assumptions most hosts bring from hotels, explains why forecasting is harder in STR, and shares the systems he uses now to manage portfolios where every unit behaves like its own mini-hotel.
You will hear:
• The biggest revenue differences between hotels and STRs
• Why a hotel can operate at 10% occupancy next weekend without panic
• Why STRs can’t rely on late demand or broad booking curves
• How product uniqueness makes STR pricing dramatically harder
• Why pacing and booking windows matter far more in STR than hotels
• How pricing categories and standardized rooms simplify hotel strategy
• Why Airbnb-heavy distribution changes everything compared to hotels
• How brand loyalty affects demand (and why STRs almost never have it)
• Why rate drops are deeper and more aggressive in STR near arrival
• How hotel overbooking works, and why STRs can’t use it
We also talk about:
• Why STR volatility makes forecasting harder than hotel forecasting
• How losing “momentum” on a single listing can tank a month’s revenue
• Why operational constraints (cleaning, check-ins, minimum stays) shape pricing
• How hotel revenue teams ignore operations, and why STR revenue managers can’t
• Why cancellations are low-risk in hotels but extremely expensive in STR
• The competitive pressure inside Airbnb maps vs. hotel direct-booking behavior
• Why building a recognizable STR brand is difficult and rare
• How corporate, group, and tour-operator demand create hotel stability
• Why STR distribution is narrow and dependent on Airbnb performance
🎯 Mentioned in the Episode:
• STR vs Hotel booking windows
• STR volatility and forecasting
• Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com
• PriceLabs last-minute discounts
• Riu Hotels & Resorts
• Freewyld Foundry Revenue & Pricing Management
🔥 Favorite Takeaway:
“Managing STR pricing is not like managing 100 hotel rooms. It’s like managing 100 individual hotels, each with its own rules, behavior, risks, and demand curve.”
📍 Want us to audit your pricing strategy?
Get your free personalized revenue report at FreewyldFoundry.com/report
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Jasper: Welcome back to another episode of RevUp, where we talk about revenue management every Monday. Usually I record these episodes solo and share lessons we are learning at Freewyld Foundry across all our revenue managers. Today is a special episode because one of our revenue managers is joining me. Adriaan, welcome to the show.
Adriaan: Thank you, Jasper. It is a pleasure to be here. First podcast for me, so I am getting TV show vibes right now.
Jasper: Get ready to be famous. Give the listeners a quick introduction. You have been with us for quite a while. Who is Adriaan Sonneveld and how did you end up doing revenue management for Freewyld Foundry?
Adriaan: Thank you for having me. I am Adriaan. I am half Dutch and half Spanish, which I like to say is an explosive combination. I have always been connected to hospitality but spent most of my career in the hotel industry. I worked for Riu Hotels and Resorts, the largest all inclusive chain in the world and the largest hotel company in Spain. I was the Director of Revenue for the Caribbean and Associate Vice President. I was managing ten thousand rooms across Aruba, Jamaica, Bahamas and Punta Cana.
One day I crossed paths with you and Eric. I loved the challenge from day one. I always say this was a train I needed to jump on. Ever since, I have been working in the short term rental industry. The basics of revenue management are the same because pricing is pricing. But the approach and strategy are completely different. That is why today’s topic is interesting. Coming from hotels into STR really highlights how different both worlds are.
Jasper: Exactly. Today we are talking about the differences between hotel revenue management and short term rental revenue management. Hotel revenue management is much more mature. There are university programs teaching it. STR revenue management is the Wild West in comparison. Less consensus, fewer structured resources.
What do you think is the biggest difference?
Adriaan: The product. That surprised me immediately. In STR a property is either zero percent occupied or one hundred percent occupied. It is absolute. In hotels, if you sell one room you still have hundreds left. I worked with hotels up to fifteen hundred rooms, so occupancy is smoothed across that volume.
Second, the product itself. Hotels have standardized inventory. You might have four to ten room categories, but within each category rooms are the same. In STR every single property is different. Even in the same building two units might have completely different decoration, amenities or layout. It is almost like managing each property as its own hotel. That makes STR revenue management much more complex because you cannot leave a house empty, especially on weekends. Owners will call immediately. You must measure booking windows and lead times much more carefully.
Jasper: Booking windows are extremely important in STR. The question is not if you will book, but when. Early, mid window or last minute. That changes everything.
To help listeners understand the hotel side, let us use an example. Suppose we have a simple hotel with one hundred identical rooms. How do you determine the price? And as rooms start selling, how do you decide to raise or lower the price when you are not focused on booking windows the way we are in STR?
Adriaan: In hotels we have much more data. At Riu we even had our own PMS, built in house. That system fed our business intelligence tools, like MicroStrategy. You also rely heavily on STR reports, where you see exactly how your comp set is pricing each day across categories.
Because hotel rooms are so standardized, the first step is looking at your comp set. What is the Marriott doing? What is the Hilton doing? The differences between them are not that big within the same category. But in STR, two one bedroom homes can be completely different. Decoration matters more. Amenities matter more.
In hotels you start with a base rate for the lead category, then add supplements for upgrades: balcony, superior view, suite and so on. Then distribution adds complexity. STR relies mostly on Airbnb, some VRBO and Booking.com, plus direct websites if a company has a strong brand. Hotels have direct channels, OTAs, corporate contracts, groups and even tour operators. Pricing varies across each channel.
After building rates, hotels can fill last minute more easily because they have broader demand segments. A hotel can fill a large portion of its rooms in the last week. For STR, waiting until the last minute is dangerous. Families booking Thanksgiving are not planning one week before. Same with concerts or major holidays.
Jasper: Exactly. Now let’s say your hotel has ten percent occupancy for next weekend where you would typically have twenty or thirty percent. Would you drop prices like we do in STR?
Adriaan: Yes, but not as aggressively. In hotels you know a lot of demand will come last minute. And because you have one hundred rooms, your risk is lower. The cost of opportunity is not zero versus one hundred. It might be fifty five percent versus sixty five percent occupancy.
In STR, especially on special dates, you cannot risk being empty. That is why STR managers drop rates aggressively. If you manage only two homes and depend on that income, being empty hurts. For Thanksgiving or Christmas we might book at five hundred to seven hundred dollars a night months out, but last minute it might only fetch one hundred fifty to two hundred.
Another huge difference is last minute discounting. In hotels, I never discounted thirty five percent last minute. In STR, a thirty five percent discount twenty one days out is normal.
Forecasting in hotels is easier because of volume and demand diversity. In STR, a property can perform at ninety percent occupancy for months, then suddenly drop to fifty or sixty because it lost momentum. Getting that momentum back is harder because every property is unique.
I came in thinking managing fifty STR units would be easy after managing ten thousand rooms. But I quickly realized fifty STR units is like managing fifty individual hotels. Much more complex. Fewer tools. More uncertainty.
Jasper: There is also randomness. Sometimes a listing looks great but just will not book, even when everything seems right. In hotels things are more predictable.
Adriaan: Correct. Hotel brands have loyal, consistent demand. Marriott knows they will receive fifty to sixty percent occupancy from loyalty members and business travelers. You can predict around that. STR has no equivalent brand loyalty. If I ask someone their favorite short term rental brand, most people do not even have an answer.
Jasper: In hotels people often go directly to the brand’s website. In STR people open Airbnb and start scanning prices on the map. Their decision is influenced by price, photos and small details. Competition is fierce, especially last minute when unprofessional hosts slash prices.
Hotels can refuse to drop rates because they have loyal customers. Riu had a fifty two percent loyalty rate. STR hosts do not come close unless they have an exceptionally strong brand across multiple markets.
Adriaan: Exactly. In Airbnb, price competition becomes extreme, especially in markets down twenty or thirty percent. You see comps dropping prices fifteen percent or more. That creates chaos in the marketplace.
Another key difference is operations. In hotels, I barely spoke to operations. They handled costs. I focused on revenue. In STR that separation does not exist. Operations heavily influences revenue management. Cleaning availability, minimum stay rules, check in restrictions, guest experience issues, amenities not working, all directly affect revenue.
A hotel can accept one night stays freely. STR owners often refuse short stays because of cleaning fees or fear of parties. That changes your pricing strategy completely.
In STR, guest experience matters far more. A single one star review can damage performance for sixty days. In hotels, reviews matter but not at that level. The volatility in STR is much higher. Weekend demand swings are larger. Occupancy is binary. Forecasting requires more intuition. If you like adrenaline, STR is a great industry.
Jasper: And operations make STR harder to scale. The big companies like Vacasa and Sonder struggle because maintaining consistent service across distributed homes is extremely difficult.
Adriaan: Exactly. Logistics are harder. Maintenance is harder. Cleaning is harder. It all affects revenue. Understanding operations is essential for STR revenue managers. You must study how the business works to make good pricing decisions.
Jasper: Anything else you want to add?
Adriaan: Just that volatility is the biggest difference. STR is unpredictable. Every house behaves differently. Momentum is fragile. You have to be connected with operations, constantly watching reviews, understanding booking windows and adapting quickly.
Jasper: Adriaan, thanks for joining. There are so many differences between hotel revenue management and STR revenue management. We could talk for hours. We should do a future episode about hybrid models like boutique hotels or aparthotels.
To our listeners, we hope this helped you understand why STR revenue management is more complex than it looks. Hopefully this gives you more appreciation for the work revenue managers do in this industry. Thanks for listening and we will see you next time.
