Vacation Rental Management Association Seeks New Allies and a Stronger Voice

25.08.2023 - 13:15 / skift.com / Dennis Schaal

Kimberly Miles, the executive director of the Vacation Rental Management Association, acknowledges that there is a “new normal” for the sector this year as demand softens or over-supply takes hold in certain markets, but there is also a reset for the association in terms of unlikely allies and members.

Miles, who marks her second anniversary leading the property manager-oriented VRMA this month, noted in an interview last week that she previously worked for 19 years for the American Hotel & Lodging Association, and departed in 2020 as its senior vice president of operations.

That’s the same hotel association that praised then-Hawaii Governor David Ige in 2019 for vetoing vacation rental legislation that might have eased the path for hosts and property managers without permits to rent to vacationers in residential areas, and targeted “commercial investors who use online platforms like Airbnb, resulting in depletion of housing options, fracturing of communities and threatening thousands of tourism jobs that support Hawaii’s economy.”

But today, Miles said, the two associations, one representing vacation rentals and the other hotels – some of which like Marriott now offer vacation rentals – have worked together on lobbying efforts.

“And I think that now there’s a place for everyone under the tent and there’s a place for those different swim lanes of lodging,” Miles said. “There are areas that we can align for certain advocacy and legislation, and there are certainly going to be areas where we differ.”

The following are additional takeaways from the interview:

When Airbnb and Expedia/Vrbo file lawsuits against cities to fight certain regulations, you seldom see VRMA as a litigant.

“We don’t get involved in legal fights once they get to that point, but we can get involved in funding a lobbyist or funding a marketing campaign, or helping those local jurisdictions through our advocacy fund grant program so that we can have a broader reach on the ground,” Miles said.

Companies such as Airbnb and Expedia have much deeper pockets than the vacation rental association, of which they both are members. Airbnb, for example, spent more than $1 million on   in 2022, according to Open Secrets, but that doesn’t include local campaigns, where it can be very active.

VRMA, which is based in Washington, D.C., with another office in Chicago, has what it calls The Collaborative Committee, which last year had a $690,000 budget to donate to local lobbying or marketing campaigns on regulatory matters. There are three dozen committee members, ranging from Emerald Isle Reality to Red Sky Travel Insurance and Vacasa, which make the calls on where the funding goes.

There historically has been friction between property managers and