Vacasa's (VCSA 3.84%) path to become the largest vacation rental manager in the U.S. has been an impressive growth story, but the company still manages fewer than 1% of all vacation homes. In this Fool Live video clip, recorded on Dec. 7, Vacasa CEO Matt Roberts explains to Fool.com contributor Matt Frankel how he plans to maintain the company's rapid pace of growth for years to come.
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Matt Frankel: I know the COVID pandemic couldn't be easy on you. I can't imagine 2020 was a fantastic year for the business.
Matt Roberts: Actually, interesting enough, the start of 2020, not so much. The end of 2020 or summer of 2020, business went booming. It was like, talk about a V-shaped move. When things were shut down, obviously there's not much we could do about it. But as soon as markets opened back up, and this is even pre-vaccines, people are dying to travel. They are so eager to travel, they want to get out of their house, they were so stir-crazy.
We're the direct beneficiaries of that because they want to be in a house, just not in their house anymore. They wanted to see different places and they wanted drive-to locations. Actually, there was a lot of tailwinds that were created for our business. You think about the way people are working now, working more remote and taking four days. That's perfect for our business because people want that extra room that they can cut away to, to get some work done and then rejoin the family later. I wouldn't say 2020 was overall a bad year for our business at all. It was a tale of two cities or a tale with two periods.
Frankel: Sure. Not an ideal 12-month period.
Roberts: Not an ideal 12-month period.
Frankel: That would be the best way to put it.
Roberts: Lots of reasons, not an ideal 12-month period.
Frankel: Speaking of ideal 12-month periods, 2021 seems like fits that bill a little bit.
Roberts: Absolutely.
Frankel: I saw your revenue guidance jumped up by about $100 million last I looked. Revenue and bookings were at the highest levels ever I think in the third quarter.
Roberts: You got it.
Frankel: It's impressive, especially given that the pandemic's not over yet and we're not getting the benefit of international travel to the U.S.
Roberts: Right.
Frankel: Do you think this is going to be sustainable for a few years? What do you see as the primary drivers of this growth? Is it just people want to get out, or do you see it as more organic and sustainable growth?
Roberts: Well, for our business, a couple of big drivers. I think foundationally, our business growth is going to be really focused on supply addition. I think to the extent that all of the things remain equal in terms of the overall macro environment, our growth will be to add supply, get more bookings. It's like that Field of Dreams: "If you build it, they will come." If we add supply, it gets booked. It's really about executing against our growth playbook and adding properties.
This year has been unbelievably positive in terms of the amount of demand exceeded our expectations. That led us to have higher occupancy. With occupancy increases, you can charge more per night too. The blend of those two really fueled a lot of our performance this year. We didn't know what to expect for next year, but we're much more convinced that we're going to stay at an elevated level of occupancy and ADR [average daily rate]. Even as go, as we look at our own bookings right now going into the first quarter, things remain pretty strong, very strong actually.
