Airbnb Hosting as an Individual or Business/Brand? Building to sell/transfer

[Eddie Gonnella]

Hi all, I want to start a thread about the pros and cons of listing STRs with a personal individual hosting account vs as a 'brand' or 'business' account. I currently own and self-manage two STRs in Maine and should be closing on a small 'cabin campground' with 10 cabins nearby that will also be operated as STRs. 

Currently, I manage my two listings with my personal Airbnb account, like most do. https://www.airbnb.com/users/s.... 

But I have seen other pages, especially ones that have clusters of listings like this cabin campground will have, have the host be a brand/business. And then the personal page host is listed as co-host. Here's an example: https://www.airbnb.com/users/s...

I'm trying to be forward thinking as far as how I will eventually exit the STR management business. I intend to continue to scale a bit in this area, but eventually I'd like to either sell or hire someone to manage everything. So I'm trying to have a "built to sell" type mentality here.

I'm curious to hear from others who have been through this longer, have more listings, have a business account, or have even sold / transitioned their properties to managers before. What would you the pros and cons are of the different hosting account strategies? Here's what I have so far: 

Primary host with personal account + co-host(manager, brand account)

-Pros: My super host status carries over which will help the new listings get off the ground. People like to rent from a person not a 'brand', it's more personal. My reviews carry with me for life, maybe I sell these properties but in 15 years I want to start another STR business.

-Cons: On sale of property, the new owner would have to start from scratch on the income generation. No way to transition listings to someone else and detach my account from the property. 

Primary host with brand account + co-host with personal account

-Pros: Could continue to scale and then sell all listings & account together as a business rather than strictly real estate assets (more valuable with the 10 cabin property than with the SFH STRs). People looking to book may see that it is a brand account and look up the brand, then book direct. Easy to transition this to a property manager, or even have multiple people run the account, than if the account is a personal account.

-Cons: Feels less "Airbnb-y" and personalized to book from a brand instead of from a person. Have to start from scratch on reviews/super host status. 

Additionally, would love to hear how others manage multiple listings with the help of others. Do you put managers/assistants/employees in as co-hosts? Let them reply from your personal account? Is this all handled by the PMS and then routed to the guest by whoever is the primary host? Do these messages disclose that you aren't speaking with the actual owner if you aren't?

[Ryan Moyer]

In the case of selling a business you're not transferring the account, you're transferring ownership of the business.  The structure of the business is changing behind the scenes, but the ownership of the accounts by the business remains the same.

IE if the guy who created the "Vacasa" account on Airbnb/VRBO leaves Vacasa, they don't have to start over with a new account just because the guy that initially created the accounts left.  The account is "Vacasa"'s, not his.

Likewise, if Elon Musk decided to buy Vacasa and tomorrow, I'm pretty sure he would retain the accounts as they are assets of the business he's buying, not any particular person.