Becoming rentABLE

BecomingrentABLE: Changing the way you look at accessible short-term rentals

 

One in five Americans reports living with a disability. Failure to have your short-term rental accessible is a missed opportunity in growing your bookings. We know that the short-term rental (STR) industry has long neglected the accessible needs of people with disabilities. The good news is that times are changing creating an accessible property doesn’t have to cost a lot of money or look like a hospital setting.

 

Find Rentals is teaming up with Becoming rentABLE to create a paradigm shift within the STR industry toward inclusivity. Our two organizations are in position to help property owners understand the needs for accessible properties as well as introduce Becoming rentABLE’s certification program.

 

Our goal is to make those looking for accessible properties easier so that grandpa can go a family vacation, or best friends can travel to the lake for a fun weekend or co-workers can attend an out of town work conference.

 

Accessible Short-term Rental Properties is personal

Becoming rentABLE’s CEO, Lorraine Woodward was diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy at the age of 2. Growing up, she and her family did not go on traditional vacations. Instead, her summer trips was going to s hospital for testing or medical treatments. Now, after having 2 boys with Muscular Dystrophy, she wanted their vacation experience to be different. Unfortunately, finding accessible rentals were hard to find. All that changed in 2019 when Lorraine finally decided to build her own accessible beach property and rent out one floor so others could enjoy it too.

 

“To my surprise, the demand for our rental has been outstanding with over 240 families visiting. Time in time again, I hear how hard it is to find accessible rentals and how thankful they are that our rental is exactly what we said it would be,” Lorraine recalled. Seeing the success of her own personal property led Lorraine to start Becoming rentABLE, a listing platform designed to change the way we view accessible short-term rentals, in 2021.

 

How adding accessibility to your listing will help your property stand out from other listings

There are over 70,000 searches each month for accessible short-term rentals, yet less than 1% of these 1.3 million property listings are accessible.

 

The disability community is 26% of our population with great demand for accessible STR properties, yet there is very little supply. Focusing on this specific niche, largely untapped and unrecognized market has the potential to provide excellent returns by adding more potential consumers for our property listings, states Cindy Dahlen, Vice President of Client Relation. Find Rentals recognized that this will only work when potential renters can easily find and book properties that meet their needs. A Becoming rentABLE certification will validate your property's accessibility features to help your company increase bookings and capture some of the $645 billion in disposable income available from the disability community in the United States.

 

Becoming rentABLE is also the first rental platform to expand what it means to have an accessible short-term rental property beyond just having wheelchair accessibility. Becoming rentABLE not only includes wheelchair accessible properties, but also includes accessible properties for walker, hearing, vision and Autism/IDD.

 

The Benefits of an accessible certified property

When Becoming rentABLE announced they will offer the first ever short-term rental accessibility certification program, we knew that our subscribers could benefit from this effort. The certification program evaluates and validates property features so the renters can feel confident that when they choose a property it will have exactly what they need. “It takes the guesswork and frustration out of the equation for renters who have been traditionally left out of the short-term rental property industry,” Lorraine said.

 

Becoming rentABLE staff list the following benefits of certification for property managers: boost sales with more bookings by reaching more customers, increased confidence knowing listings are accurate, enhance credibility and stand out from others by having accessible properties and enhanced company marketability. A recent report from Wunderman Thompson stated that accessibility and inclusion is a huge opportunity for businesses to “ensure they stay relevant and capture both consumer attention and spending power.”

 

Rental owners or management companies can submit their property for certification by simply going to www.BecomingRentABLE.com/certification and completely the small form. For questions or to find out more information about a Becoming rentABLE certification, contact Cindy Dahlen at cindy@findrentals.com.