Vacation Rental Management Questions

[Clark Hess]

My wife and I just moved to a small mountain town in Colorado and there is a huge demand for vacation property management here. We already have people that want us to manage their property but we are still trying to understand all the legal implications of "property management" for short-tem vacation rentals. We would only be listing the properties on sites like Airbnb, VRBO, and HomeAway. 

From what I have seen so far, we have two options:

The first option is to just run a service business that provides listing, cleaning, and booking assistance for the owner. With this option we would just charge a fee for our services.

The second option is to fully manage the property by listing the properties and collecting payment etc.. and then distributing the profit after our commission back to the homeowner.

In Colorado, to be a traditional property manager that manages rental properties, you have to have a real estate license. My main question is: does that apply to short term vacation rentals?

I would appreciate input from anyone.. I have found very little information about this online.