As an agent, I personally would love to hear your thoughts on how the implementation of AI will affect agents system processes or how it already has, however I would love to hear about it's impact in all facets of real estate.Apologies if this is a repeat post, I haven't searched much on the forums for this yet. 

However, we will likely need a property manager to assist with some facets of running this rental (since we would not live locally) and would primarily market it through platforms such as Airbnb and VRBO to start, (eventually setting up a direct booking process).Here's our question for those who have experience in STR's or who might be involved in a similar scenario: How challenging is it to meet the material participation hours needed to achieve active status?

But sure as heck not impossible, it just takes a commitment to learning a very complex detailed facet of business and regulations. 

Folks very often dont  realize the cost of being self employed when every facet of your life comes out of your pocket.

You are possibly setting yourself up for immediate failure.....there are too many moving parts and too much money involved to mess up this facet of the project.

They have degrees and interests in different segments of what I think are important facets of the real estate game, one will be graduating with a degree in construction management and the other in accounting.

Based on what you share you have experience in multiple facets so there's lots of directions to go!

We have done this for over a year now and this strategy has gone really well.We are very experienced in the STR space and understand that getting bookings is multi-faceted (ie. listing photos, reviews, amenities, PRICING, description, seasonality, etc).

Risk in real estate is not beta like an equity, it's going to mitigated by the quality, location, and leverage in the property among other facets. 

and the answer is multi-faceted and a little complicated.