Good morning,

Here’s what’s going on in the vacation rental world this week:

Hospitable can now automatically split Vrbo and direct booking payouts between owners and managers, Airbnb is rolling out Groceries with Instacart across the US and Canada, and we break down a new dynamic pricing tool that only costs ~$3 per listing per month.

Lets dive in. 

NEWS

Headline Roundup

• Hospitable adds Split Payouts for Vrbo and direct bookings (The Host Report)

• Airbnb expands Groceries with Instacart across US and Canada (Airbnb)

• AirDNA's U.S. market review for August 2026 (AirDNA)

• Expedia data shows big sporting events pushed travel demand well past the host cities (Expedia Group)

• Guesty completes acquisition of Smily to expand in the French STR market (PhocusWire)

• Mountain destination summer revenue rose 7.9% while early winter bookings lag (Inntopia)

• Finest Retreats acquires My Favourite Cottages (Business Cornwall)

• StayTerra partners with Gather Vacations, adding 500+ homes in Hawaii and the West Coast (Business Wire)

See how you can stop relying on Airbnb & get a +40% increase in repeat guests

Learn more about GuestLink

INTERESTING INSIGHTS

The $3 Dynamic-Pricing Experiment

Something caught my eye this week because it was so dramatically cheaper than its competitors that my first thought was: How’s that possible?

AirROI just launched a dynamic-pricing API that costs ~$3 per listing per month. That made me look more closely at how it works to see who could realistically benefit from it.

Assumes one AirROI pricing request per listing per day and $30,000 in new bookings during the month for the 1% plans.

AirROI is 79% to 90% cheaper. So what’s the catch?

AirROI is an engine, not the whole car

The main thing to understand is that AirROI is not a turnkey “connect your Airbnb and forget about it” product.

It’s the pricing engine underneath that kind of product.

You send it the property, calendar, and pricing rules. It returns nightly recommendations and explains what influenced each price.

But AirROI doesn’t store your property’s settings or publish rates to Airbnb, Vrbo, or Booking. You still need a PMS or channel manager to push the new rates to your listing.

That’s why the comparison isn’t perfectly apples-to-apples.

PriceLabs, Wheelhouse, Beyond, and AirDNA bundle the pricing engine with a ton of other features: a nice user interface, integrations, automated publishing, analytics, monitoring, and customer support.

AirROI strips all of that away and just gives you the raw intelligence.

3 ways you could get value from this  

1. AI Revenue Manager

A technically sophisticated, AI-native property manager could connect the AirROI pricing engine to Claude or ChatGPT. Then, their AI agents could monitor the portfolio, call AirROI for recommendations, apply each owner’s pricing rules, explain unusual changes, and actually publish dynamic nightly rates through the PMS.

A simpler version could act as an AI revenue advisor, answering questions like: “What would happen if we raised the minimum to $225?” or “Draft an owner update explaining this month’s changes.”

2. Generating Pro Formas

AirROI could generate pricing projections for acquisitions, investor dashboards, and property-management proposals.

So instead of underwriting one average nightly rate for the entire year, you could model weekends, seasons, holidays, events, and demand changes.

3. A Second-opinion on Your Nightly Rates

You don’t have to replace your dynamic pricing tool, you could just run AirROI beside it.

If both engines agree, publish the price. If they differ by more than 20%, review the date in more detail.

It’s only $0.10 per comparison, so it’s a cheap second opinion.

The bigger idea

What makes this interesting to me is the larger pattern it represents.

Technology is deflationary - which means that as tech gets better, prices should come down. AI lets technical operators unbundle expensive software and rebuild the parts they actually need for much less.

But cheaper software often comes with a trade: you become the integrator. For the everyday host who wants to connect dynamic pricing to Airbnb and walk away, AirROI probably isn’t the answer.

But for an AI-native operator who already has the infrastructure? It might be a very interesting $3 experiment.

MARKET INSIGHTS

Mortgage Rate Snapshot

Mortgage rates jumped to their highest level since January 2025 after Wednesday's Fed rate hike, not because of the hike itself, which markets expected, but because Fed Chair Warsh hinted more hikes could follow. The jump didn't last, with rates falling back Thursday and holding steady through Monday as oil prices eased. Rates ended the week at a one-week low after news of a possible reopening of the Strait of Hormuz sent oil lower again.

Regulations Update

• Duluth, Minnesota will no longer issue new short-term rental licenses for entire single-family homes, though owner-occupied room rentals are still allowed

• Clark County, Nevada argued before the Ninth Circuit to lift a federal injunction that has paused its STR fines and citations since December

• Montgomery County, Maryland introduced Bill 42-26, requiring platforms to verify host licenses and stop taking payments for unlicensed rentals, with a hearing October 6

See this weeks full regulations report here: (The Host Report)