How many employees should you have? The Scaling Formula

Based on the findings from the 2018 European Vacation Rental Survey, Lighthouse discovered the average number of employees that property managers have with regards to the current state of their portfolio of properties. The Survey was answered by 552 Property Managers, representing close to 30,000 properties across Europe, and provides key insights into Europe’s current and future short-term rental market.

The Scaling Formula demonstrates the ratio between the number of properties a property manager has and the number of employees. Cleaning staff have been excluded from this formula for more accurate results.

The graph below represents that for every 9.5 properties that a property manager has, they will be expected to have one employee (not including a founding base of 1.9 employees). Therefore, on average, European property managers have approximately 1 employee for every 10 properties (not including the initial 2 employees).

Some outliers on the chart may be because property management companies are running vacation rentals as a secondary business line.

If this is not the case, too many staff members can be the symptom of a slower than expected growth rate or poorly run operations.

It is important for property managers to focus on scaling so that they continue to grow without being held back by increasing costs. The right hiring strategy will allow you to increase your revenue without incurring significant costs, for instance, by building centralized marketing / pricing / reservation / customer service teams.

Most of the time, technology can help you balance the cost of scaling. For example, by using the right PMS, your team will be able to save precious hours in guest communications, reporting to your owners, accounting, etc.

A tool, such as Lighthouse’s Short-term Rental Solutions, will help the person(s) in charge of your pricing strategy save countless hours by gathering all the necessary insights on your markets and competitors in one place.

Tools, like Properly, can help you save time and money managing your cleaning staff and ensuring the utmost level of customer service.

Finally, using a CRM can also help your team stay organized by sharing a common database for contacts as you scale. We recommend Pipedrive.

Check out how many employees your company should have if you want to be in line with the market.