To our valued partners,

This week marks the official start of our Summer season and the whole Gather team is hard at work in preparation for a record number of June guest check-ins (over 1,000 different reservations).

Looking further afield, one of the more notable industry announcements last month was the newly announced partnership between Uber and Expedia Group, which is expected to bring Vrbo inventory directly into the Uber ecosystem. With Uber’s enormous global reach and high engagement during travel moments, this has the potential to create another meaningful source of exposure for professionally managed vacation rentals like yours. At the same time, Airbnb continues rolling out new guest-focused booking tools, including its recently announced Extended Cancellation Policy option, designed to give travelers additional confidence to book while still protecting host payouts under existing cancellation terms.

On the Gather front, we continue investing heavily in strengthening our own direct relationship with guests. Over the past year, we’ve expanded our marketing efforts through refreshed branding, new original content creation, and more sophisticated email marketing campaigns. In the first 4.5 months of the year, our database marketing generated $385,000 in direct bookings, more than tripling performance compared to the same period last year. This kind of direct engagement is increasingly important in an environment where guest acquisition costs are rising and platform dynamics continue to shift.

We’re also closely watching how AI is reshaping how travelers search, compare, and book vacation rentals. This was a major focus at the recent VRMA Executive Summit I attended, and is already influencing how listings are surfaced and evaluated online. Read on for more on how we’re positioning your homes to stay visible and competitive as travel discovery continues to evolve.

As always, thank you for your continued trust and partnership, and do reach out if you have any questions.

Warmly,

Guest Outreach Campaigns

In the past year, we have invested additional resources into marketing outreach to attract new visitors to your properties and deepen relationships with returning guests. Our investments included:

• Refreshing our brand identity which we started to reveal last October (and look forward to enhancing further through our new Gather website launching this summer)
• Developing new original content and shooting on location to feed our digital media presence, and
• Increasing the frequency and personalization of our database marketing campaigns.

The success of our email marketing efforts is what we want to spotlight this month. Since the start of the year, we have deployed 44 different campaigns (from new listing announcements and Spring Specials, to “nurture” emails highlighting local events in the destinations) to over 229,000 contacts, generating $385k in direct bookings. This is more than 3 times what we generated from our database marketing over the same period last year.

To give you a glimpse into what guests receive, we’re happy to share a few of our recent emails that had a positive response. We will keep iterating and improving our database marketing program with two roll-outs in the works: smarter segmentation using richer guest profile data and behavioral signals; and enhancements to the checkout experience with personalization and proactive abandoned-cart recovery.

Recent Marketing Email Campaign Previews: 

🌴 Christmas in Hawaii Email Campaign

   🏊 Ironman 2026 Email Campaign

April booking activity continued to show healthy diversification across the different booking channels we market your properties through, with strong performance for both OTAs and direct bookings.

Many of our owners chose to spend time enjoying their properties in April, and while this did impact available “sellable” inventory, we still managed to maintain strong adjusted occupancy with an overall stay revenue only 2% behind last year.

Big Island

The Big Island portfolio maintained strong diversification across channels. Airbnb generated approximately 30% of confirmed bookings, while Direct Bookings, owner usage and Vrbo each contributed roughly 20% of confirmed reservations. From a booked-night perspective, owner use represented the single largest segment at approximately 36% of booked nights, followed by Airbnb, Direct Bookings, and Vrbo. Longer owner stays meaningfully impact available inventory, though the remaining available nights continued to perform well across multiple demand channels.

Oahu

On Oahu, booking mix remained much more balanced across channels, led by Direct Bookings, which generated approximately 33% of confirmed bookings and nearly 43% of booked nights. Vrbo and Airbnb both remained strong contributors, while owner usage accounted for approximately 15% of confirmed bookings and nearly 20% of booked nights. 

Kauai

On Kauai, bookings were distributed relatively evenly between Vrbo, Airbnb, and Direct Bookings, each contributing meaningful booking share throughout April. Owner use represented approximately 13% of confirmed bookings but accounted for a larger portion of booked nights at approximately 34%, reflecting longer owner stays booked. Vrbo remained the leading non-owner contributor to booked nights, followed closely by Direct Bookings and Airbnb demand.

Maui

On Maui, Airbnb remained the dominant booking source during April, accounting for approximately 59% of confirmed bookings and 61% of booked nights, reinforcing continued strength from the Airbnb traveler segment within the market. Vrbo followed as the second-largest contributor at approximately 18%-19% of bookings and booked nights. Owner use represented approximately 7% of booked nights, while Direct Bookings and other channels continued to contribute additional occupancy.

California

In California, April bookings remained well balanced across channels, with Airbnb and Vrbo each contributing approximately 32% of confirmed bookings. From a booked-nights perspective, Airbnb led at 30%, followed by Direct Bookings at 24% and Vrbo at 20%. Owner use accounted for approximately 17% of booked nights, while the portfolio continued benefiting from strong diversification across both OTA and direct demand.

Washington

In Washington, Airbnb remained the primary booking driver, generating approximately 53% of confirmed bookings and 29% of booked nights. Owner usage represented a larger share of occupied nights at approximately 50%, reflecting longer owner stays during the month. Even with reduced sellable inventory from owner use, the remaining available nights continued to perform well across Airbnb and Vrbo channels.

AI, Bookings, and What It Means for Your Home

AI is reshaping how travelers search for and book vacation rentals, and it's happening faster than most realize. Today's guests are increasingly using AI-powered tools to compare destinations, evaluate reviews, and get personalized recommendations. That means visibility is no longer just about beautiful photography. It's about structured listing content, accurate amenities, strong review sentiment, and the kind of data-rich optimization that AI-powered search tools are learning to reward.

We recently attended the VRMA Executive Summit, where AI dominated nearly every conversation. One perspective that stuck with us: as people grow wealthier, they spend more on experiences, hospitality, and services where the human element matters, not less. That's a tailwind for what Gather does and the homes we represent.

At Gather, we're actively positioning your home to meet this moment. We're continuously refining listing content, amenity mapping, guest review strategies, and platform optimization to align with how modern travelers, and the AI tools guiding them, evaluate properties today. The broader goal is to use AI to handle the repetitive and analytical work, so our team can focus on what really drives results: high-touch hospitality, genuine relationships, and creating experiences guests remember.

The intersection of travel and AI is still early. We think that's an opportunity.

Understanding Your Monthly Owner Statement

In response to your feedback, we’ve created a new quick tutorial guide to help walk owners through how to review and better understand their monthly Gather owner statement. This helpful resource breaks down key sections of the statement, explains common line items, and provides additional clarity into revenue, expenses, payouts, and reporting. We invite you to take a look whenever convenient, and as always, our team is happy to help answer any additional questions along the way!

Resource Center

The Gather Resource Center is a comprehensive collection of articles designed to provide valuable information and help homeowners quickly find answers to common questions.

Owner Portal

The Track Owner Portal allows homeowners to view reservations, access monthly statements, generate reports, retrieve important documents like tax forms, ACH forms, and invoices.

We'd Love to Hear From You

As a valued owner and key stakeholder at Gather, your feedback is essential in shaping our services and ensuring our shared success. We’d love to hear your thoughts on what we're doing well, and where we can improve. Please take a moment to share your insights, and help us grow!