The vacation rental industry has evolved far beyond simple dynamic pricing algorithms. Today’s property managers need sophisticated revenue management solutions that combine automation with strategic control—tools that don’t just react to market conditions but proactively maximize every booking opportunity.
Jason Gann, Account Executive at RevMax, recently joined Lynell Gordon to discuss his surprising discovery after transitioning to Inhabit’s revenue management platform. With a decade of industry experience and previous work with competing pricing tools, Jason’s perspective offers valuable insights for property managers evaluating their revenue strategy. This conversation, sponsored by RevMax, reveals how the right revenue management solution can transform both operational efficiency and bottom-line results. This episode is sponsored by RevMax.
The Revenue Management Solution That Does More Than Dynamic Pricing
“I always competed against Inhabit and I’ve always understood the value of the products. But dynamic pricing specifically, you know, I worked for another company and never really considered RevMax a competitor. I had no idea what it did. I thought, oh, it’s just a yield map only. Much to my surprise, I could not have been more wrong.”
Jason’s admission reveals a common misconception in the vacation rental industry. Many property managers assume all revenue management tools essentially do the same thing—adjust prices up and down based on demand. But RevMax delivers far more than basic dynamic pricing.
The platform includes comprehensive comp set analysis, allowing managers to benchmark their properties against true market competitors. It features maximum yield optimization through detailed yield mapping. Most significantly, it offers length-of-stay pricing—a feature Jason had never encountered in any other tool during his years in the industry. This combination of capabilities means property managers aren’t just reacting to market conditions; they’re strategically positioning their inventory to capture maximum revenue across every possible booking scenario.
Length-of-Stay Pricing: The Game-Changing Feature Nobody Talks About
“Length-of-stay pricing. I’ve never—even having been in the industry for so long and talking about data and revenue management for so long—never thought about how it was used. Usually discounting is typically the only way I thought of it. Buy six nights, get seventh night free. Which is cool, but we do the inverse, the premium lift.”
Traditional length-of-stay strategies focus on discounting longer stays to fill gaps. RevMax flips this approach entirely through premium lift pricing. Consider the common scenario: an owner insists on a five-night minimum booking. Without length-of-stay pricing, that property becomes invisible to travelers searching for two, three, or four-night stays on Airbnb, Vrbo, and other OTA platforms.
RevMax solves this through automated premium pricing. The system allows a three-night booking but charges the equivalent of five nights’ revenue. The owner receives their required five-night revenue total while the property remains visible and bookable for shorter stays. Even better, those remaining two nights stay available as bonus inventory that can generate additional revenue from another booking. For property managers working with protective or involved owners, this feature transforms impossible restrictions into profitable opportunities.
The automation extends to compliance as well. In markets like Florida’s Gulf Coast, where regulations restrict properties to one tenant per week, RevMax automatically blocks remaining nights after securing premium-priced shorter stays. Property managers maintain regulatory compliance while maximizing revenue—all without manual intervention.
Real-World Results: When Automation Meets Strategy
“I actually spoke to Cottages on the Quay. They’re on the west coast of Florida. When I worked for my last company I said, ‘Come do a demo.’ They said, ‘Well, do you have length-of-stay pricing?’ And I went, ‘No.’ And they went, ‘Sorry, RevMax has length-of-stay pricing.’ That was the moment—about two weeks before I came over—when I realized why they needed it, because it was so vital to their business.”
Lynell shared her personal experience with length-of-stay pricing at her property managed by Hobbs Realty at Holden Beach. During what she thought was the off-season, her mother noticed cars at the property. The booking had happened automatically—a last-minute three-night rental priced at the full weekly rate. No phone calls, no manual adjustments, just automated revenue optimization generating significant income during a period Lynell hadn’t even considered bookable.
This real-world example illustrates the difference between reactive and proactive revenue management. Without automation, property managers spend hours daily identifying gaps, manually adjusting rates, and desperately marketing unsold inventory. With RevMax’s length-of-stay pricing, the system continuously optimizes availability and pricing across all possible stay durations. Property managers save countless hours while capturing revenue they didn’t even know they were missing. The platform turns what would have been empty nights into profitable bookings without any additional effort.
Beyond Inhabit: RevMax Opens to New Integration Partners
“For the first time ever, yeah. It’s been great. You know, we’ve always kept busy because we had several PMSs in the Inhabit branch. But there are a lot of other PMSs out there and clients that need a really great revenue management tool.”
RevMax has historically integrated exclusively with Inhabit’s property management systems—Streamline, LiveRez, and others within the family. This limited availability to property managers using those specific platforms. That’s changing now as RevMax expands integration capabilities to property management systems outside the Inhabit umbrella.
Jason emphasizes that while Inhabit’s PMS options remain strong (he calls Streamline the best PMS option after competing against it for years), the revenue management power of RevMax should be available to more property managers. The platform connects to nine different property management systems and pulls direct OTA data—not just scraped pricing but actual booking and performance data. This expansion means property managers can now access enterprise-level revenue management regardless of their PMS choice, bringing sophisticated pricing strategies to a much broader market segment.
The Fractional CRO Advantage: Professional Revenue Management Without the Six-Figure Salary
“The revenue manager—we call it full service—we have trained professional vacation rental revenue managers that are on our team that will work as your revenue manager, an extension of your team in weekly calls to say, ‘Hey, this is what you did last week. This is what we’ve seen. Any pivots that I think we need to do, we can adjust.'”
Hiring a dedicated revenue manager typically requires a minimum investment of $90,000 to $100,000 annually—and that’s for entry-level talent. Property managers need six-figure expertise to truly maximize revenue across their portfolio. RevMax’s full-service option provides exactly that through what Lynell calls a “fractional CRO” model.
For a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire, property managers gain access to trained revenue management professionals who become an extension of their team. These experts conduct weekly strategy calls, review performance data, suggest pricing pivots based on market conditions, and train internal teams on best practices. They’re not just system administrators; they’re strategic partners who understand both the local market and the specific inventory challenges each property manager faces.
Jason calculated the ROI for one company considering the full-service option. The cost came to approximately $30,000 annually—a standard rate of $2,500 monthly. Compare that to the minimum $90,000 salary for an internal hire, and the value becomes clear. Some RevMax customers don’t technically need the revenue manager service because they’ve mastered the system themselves, yet they maintain the full-service subscription simply for the weekly strategic insights and relationship with their dedicated revenue manager.
Data-Driven Decision Making: LSI Premium and Rental Projection Reporting
“A lot of that’s coming from LSI. We have LSI Plus, LSI Premium. So not only do you have the basic KPI dashboards that you want—occupancy, ADR, revenue, pacing—we’re talking about rental projection reporting for owner performance. I cannot tell you how long it took me to do that. I would go and use two different data tools to try to get an average of a number and then make a pro forma for my owners separately. Now with a click of a button, I have this automated thing with my logo and what these revenue projections for these owners.”
Revenue management extends far beyond setting the right nightly rate. Property managers need comprehensive performance data to make strategic decisions, communicate value to owners, and identify growth opportunities. RevMax’s LSI (Lodging Solutions Intelligence) tools provide this critical layer of business intelligence.
The platform delivers standard KPI dashboards showing occupancy rates, average daily rates, total revenue, and forward pacing. But LSI Premium goes deeper with rental projection reporting and owner performance analysis. Jason described the painful manual process he previously endured: pulling data from multiple sources, calculating averages, building spreadsheets, and creating custom pro formas for each owner. The process consumed hours and required juggling multiple subscriptions to different data tools.
RevMax consolidates this entire workflow into automated reporting. Property managers generate branded rental projections with a single click, providing owners with professional, data-backed forecasts of their property’s revenue potential. The system pulls from direct sources—actual booking data from nine integrated property management systems plus real OTA performance metrics, not just scraped pricing. This level of data accuracy and automation transforms owner communication from a time-consuming burden into a strategic advantage that builds trust and retention.
Moving from Reactive to Proactive: The True Value of Automation
The vacation rental industry has matured beyond the days when property managers could manually adjust rates and hope for the best. Today’s competitive landscape demands sophisticated tools that combine automation with strategic control. RevMax represents this evolution—not just another dynamic pricing tool, but a comprehensive revenue management platform.
Jason’s journey from skeptic to enthusiast illustrates the gap between perception and reality in revenue management technology. What he initially dismissed as “just a yield map” turned out to be the most powerful solution he’d encountered in a decade of industry experience. His enthusiasm after just four months stems from seeing firsthand how the platform transforms operational efficiency while driving measurable revenue growth.
For property managers still relying on manual pricing strategies or basic dynamic pricing algorithms, the opportunity cost grows daily. Empty nights remain unfilled not because of lack of demand, but because of invisible inventory and missed pricing opportunities. Owner restrictions become deal-breakers rather than solvable challenges. Revenue managers spend hours on tasks that should take minutes, if they need to happen at all.
The future of vacation rental revenue management isn’t about working harder—it’s about working smarter with tools that handle complexity automatically while leaving strategic decisions in expert hands. Whether through the full system approach for hands-on managers or the full-service model for those wanting expert partnership, RevMax provides the framework for maximizing every property, every night, every season.
To hear the full conversation between Lynell and Jason on The Vacation Rental Show, follow the links below:
Learn how RevMax integrates with Streamline at www.streamlinevrs.com.