LHR Rentals: what nine months of booking data actually says
Every reservation, payout, review, inquiry, and automation setting in the Hospitable account for Minnesota Manor (DeLand) and the Mt. Dora Downtown Den — October 1, 2025 through July 2, 2026 — cross-referenced against the July 2 kickoff call with Emmett.
Account · LHR Rentals, LLC (Jacma Management)Window · Oct 1 2025 – Jul 2 2026, + forward pipeline to Dec 2026Records · 94 reservations · 41 payouts · 36 guest reviews · 42 inquiriesPrepared · July 2, 2026 · Adam Long
The headline numbers
$73,677 earned. $11,336 handed to platforms. 0.6% booked direct.
$73,677
Net host revenue, 66 completed-or-upcoming stays (check-ins Oct 1 – Jul 2)
206
Nights sold across both properties
$11,336
Platform service fees paid — 13.3% of gross
0.6%
Revenue from direct bookings (2 of 66 stays)
100%
Guests with a phone number on file — the retargeting asset already exists
$21,829
Already on the books for Jul 3 – Dec 2026
Five findings drive everything in this report:
Airbnb concentration is severe. 78% of revenue and 45 of 66 stays run through Airbnb — and Airbnb withholds guest emails on 91% of those bookings. The business is renting its customer list from its biggest fee-taker.
The two properties are different businesses. Mt. Dora is a high-frequency, small-party weekend machine ($200/night, 46 stays). Minnesota is a low-frequency, large-group event property ($664/night, 20 stays) — 12 of its stays had 10+ guests.
The June cliff is real — and partly self-inflicted. June occupancy: 6.7% at Minnesota, 16.7% at Mt. Dora. But two large-group June bookings (16 and 12 guests, ≈$4–6k combined) were cancelled in spring. June isn't just a demand problem; it's a cancellation-defense problem.
Booking.com cancels almost half of what it books. 6 of 13 Booking.com reservations cancelled (46%) — and it charges the highest effective fee (15%) on the ones that survive.
Revenue features are built and switched off. Early check-in, late checkout, and a $200/night Guest House add-on exist in the account as upsells — all inactive. Purchases to date: zero. This is the fastest money in the entire audit.
Portfolio
Two properties, four listings — and only two of them work
Hospitable holds four property records. Minnesota Manor is listed three ways: the combo listing (main house + guest house, sleeps 14–18), a main-house-only listing (5BR, launched ~Feb 2026), and a guest-house-only listing (2BR). The combo does nearly all the work.
236 W Minnesota Ave, DeLand · 2 blocks from StetsonMinnesota Manor & Guest House
The revenue engine. Large groups — weddings, reunions, graduation weekends, work crews. Airbnb 5.0★ across 12 reviews. Live since late Dec 2025.
$45,304
Net revenue
$664
ADR (combo listing)
20
Stays · 73 nights
10.7
Avg party size
3.7
Avg nights
28d
Median lead time
405 W 11th Ave, Mount Dora · walk to downtownMt. Dora Downtown Den
The frequency machine. Couples and small families riding the festival calendar. 24 reviews, effectively 5.0★ across three platforms. Live since Oct 2025.
$28,373
Net revenue
$200
ADR
46
Stays · 133 nights
4.9
Avg party size
2.9
Avg nights
45d
Median lead time
The split-listing experiment is stalling. The main-house-only listing has produced 1 completed stay ($1,057) plus 2 future bookings since February. The guest-house-only listing has produced zero bookings and zero reviews — it's a cold-start listing competing against its own 5.0★ parent. Either merchandise it deliberately (nurse/traveling-pro midweek rates, its own photos and positioning) or retire it and sell the guest house as the built-in $200/night upsell on main-house bookings — that upsell already exists in Hospitable, switched off.
Seasonality
January pays for June
Monthly net revenue confirms the seasonal story from the call — but sharpens it. Minnesota's January ($12.1k) was inflated by a single 19-night, $8,855 work-crew stay: that one booking is 20% of the property's lifetime revenue. February (Daytona 500) delivered $9.1k at premium rates. Then March–April fell to 16–27% occupancy — the "booked every weekend Jan–May" memory holds for Mt. Dora, not for Minnesota.
Monthly net revenue by property
Host payout after platform fees, attributed to stay dates · Oct 2025 – Jun 2026 (July excluded: 2 days elapsed)
Minnesota Manor (all listings)Mt. Dora Den
Occupancy by month
Nights sold ÷ calendar nights. Minnesota went live late December; guest-house/main-house listings folded in.
Oct
Nov
Dec
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Both properties collapse in May–June. Mt. Dora never recovered after April; Minnesota's May looks decent only because of two high-value group stays ($2.1k each).
Booking velocity is the quieter warning. New reservations created per month: 11–12/mo from Sep–Jan → 2–4/mo from Feb–Jun. Some of that is seasonal shopping patterns, but the pipeline for fall is being filled at a third of winter's pace. The marketing engine needs to be running before the Sep–Nov booking season for Jan–Mar stays.
Day-of-week
The Monday–Wednesday hole is ~$18k of unsold capacity
Emmett's instinct on the call was right: weekends sell themselves. Friday–Saturday at Mt. Dora runs ~78% full; Monday–Tuesday runs ~27%. Minnesota shows the same shape at lower altitude. Filling even a third of the midweek gap at current ADRs is roughly $15–20k/year across the portfolio — that's the traveling-nurse / visiting-team / work-crew / extended-stay segment, not the leisure segment.
All completed/accepted stays with check-in inside the window
Channel
Stays
Net revenue
Fees paid
Effective fee
Cancel rate
Guest email shared
Airbnb
45
$57,195
$9,470
14.2%
17%
9% ▼ shrinking
Vrbo
12
$11,579
$1,056
8.4%
0%
100%
Booking.com
7
$4,450
$785
15.0%
46%
100% (masked relay)
Direct / manual
2
$453
$25
7.5%
0%
100%
Three things worth acting on:
Every $10k shifted from Airbnb to direct keeps roughly $700–$1,100 (14.2% platform fee → ~3–7.5% processing). At current volume, a realistic 20% direct mix is $1,500–$2,300/year in recovered fees alone — before counting the bookings a real website wins that the platforms never see.
Booking.com is the worst channel on every axis: highest fee, 46% cancellation rate, masked guest emails, and all 7 surviving stays at the lower-ADR Mt. Dora property. Consider requiring prepayment/stricter cancellation on Booking.com, or treating it as pure gap-filler.
The direct pipeline already works. Two direct bookings have gone end-to-end (payment, ID verification, smart-lock codes) — one for this month, one for November. Infrastructure isn't the blocker. Discoverability is: lhrrentals.directstays.com is unindexed and invisible, exactly as diagnosed on the call. And to be explicit about scope: the goal is not leaving Airbnb — it feeds ~80% of volume and stays. Hospitable remains the hub; marketing points new demand at its direct site.
The question Emmett will askIf Airbnb is 80% of bookings, why point traffic anywhere else?
Because the direct channel doesn't compete for Airbnb's traffic — it captures demand Airbnb never sees, and it converts repeat stays from rented to owned.
The 80% isn't his audience — it's Airbnb's audience, rented per booking. Airbnb's 14.2% is effectively a customer-acquisition fee, and it's charged again every time the same guest returns. A returning guest has already been acquired; the direct site exists to catch stay #2 and #3, not stay #1. Airbnb keeps doing what it does best: introducing new customers.
At current occupancy, direct demand is additive, not cannibal. Cannibalization matters when you're selling out. June ran 6.7% / 16.7%, midweek runs ~27%, and Mt. Dora is open nearly every night through October. The direct channel targets buyers who don't shop on Airbnb at all — wedding coordinators placing guest blocks, Stetson families in Emmett's own network, Google and AI-search queries — and those bookings land on nights that would otherwise stay empty.
Some fixes are structurally impossible on Airbnb. Group deposit terms (the wedding-cancellation defense), owning guest emails, and de-risking 78% revenue concentration in a single platform's algorithm all require a channel he controls.
Sold honestly: direct isn't free — Hospitable's direct bookings ran ~7.5% in fees, plus ad spend to acquire the click. The win is the fee delta on repeat guests plus empty nights filled with new demand, not "Airbnb fees go to zero." If direct grows from 0.6% to 15–20%, Airbnb's absolute booking count barely moves — the only customers being "diverted" are his own returning guests, which is exactly the point.
Cancellations
Emmett's wedding-party hunch, confirmed with numbers
"We have a lot of wedding parties that… book and then a few weeks later they cancel. I don't know how we get that data."Emmett, kickoff call · Jul 2
Here's that data. 15 of 81 reservations in the window were cancelled after acceptance (18.5%). At Minnesota specifically, 5 of 7 cancellations were large groups (7–16 guests) — and two of them were the June bookings that would have rescued the month:
+ 6 of Mt. Dora's cancellations came from Booking.com (46% of that channel's volume); 4 smaller Airbnb cancels round out the 15.
The defense is a direct-booking feature, not an Airbnb setting. On the platforms you take their cancellation terms. On a direct site, 8+ guest groups can be sold on group/event terms: non-refundable deposit, balance at 30 days, and a rebooking waitlist fed by the 42 inquiries sitting in the account. This turns the direct site from a fee-saver into a risk-management tool — the strongest argument for building it that the data offers.
Guest intelligence
The audience Emmett already owns
Who books
Overwhelmingly Florida drive-market. Of guests with a listed hometown: Miami, West Palm, Jacksonville, Winter Garden, Clearwater, Naples, Tallahassee… in-state dominates. Marketing radius ≈ a tank of gas, not airports.
Mt. Dora: parties of 4–6 (60% of stays), 2–3 nights, festival weekends.
Minnesota: bimodal — 12 of 20 stays had 10+ guests (weddings, reunions, teams); the rest were small parties buying space and privacy.
Repeat guests so far: 2. With zero remarketing running, that's expected — and it's the metric a funnel should move first.
When they book
48% book 31–120 days out — the ad/SEO window for fall stays is right now (July–August).
23% book within 3 days of arrival. A real last-minute segment worth automated gap-night pricing.
Minnesota's median lead is 28 days vs Mt. Dora's 45 — big groups commit later than couples planning around festivals.
The contact-list asymmetry
Airbnb shared a usable guest email on just 4 of 45 bookings (9%). Vrbo and Booking.com shared 100%. But every single one of the 66 guests has a phone number on file — which makes the retargeting plan discussed on the call an SMS-first program, with email as the secondary channel seeded from Vrbo/Booking/direct guests (25 clean emails today).
Channel
Stays
Emails shared
Phones shared
Airbnb
45
4 (9%)
45 (100%)
Vrbo
12
12 (100%)
12 (100%)
Booking.com
7
7 (100%)
7 (100%)
Direct/manual
2
2 (100%)
2 (100%)
The inquiry pipeline: first response is strong, second touch doesn't exist. 37 unique inquiries since September (42 threads incl. duplicates); about half converted to bookings. Every inquiry gets an instant auto-reply, AI-assisted answers within minutes, a pre-approval, and one automated expiry nudge — then nothing. Nine still-bookable leads have gone cold that way, including a 12-person March 2027 wedding whose guest wrote "my fiancé is booking you currently" on June 9 — no reservation ever appeared — a 16-person April 2027 wedding group (6 nights), and a 12-person July 24–26 wedding party for a weekend that is still sitting open on the calendar. The fix is a follow-up sequence past the single nudge plus a simple group-lead tracker, pointed at a direct-booking link.
Reputation
A 5.0★ asset that isn't being spent anywhere
36 public reviews across both active listings — Mt. Dora: 24 reviews (one 4.5★, rest 5★, across Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com) and Minnesota: 12 reviews, all 5★. Hosts respond to nearly every review, quickly. Recurring themes guests volunteer, unprompted: walkability to downtown / Stetson, cleanliness, responsiveness, the guest house for wedding parties and grandparents, boat parking at Mt. Dora.
"The guest house was ideal for the bridesmaids to relax and get ready before the ceremony… We completely fell in love with downtown DeLand!"Minnesota Manor guest · wedding at Northwest Square, Feb 2026
None of this social proof exists anywhere Google or an AI assistant can see it — it lives inside Airbnb. Migrating review content (with schema markup) onto a real direct site is one of the highest-leverage SEO/AI-search moves available, because the material is already written. Guests also keep handing over the exact language for landing pages: "wedding weekend," "Stetson graduation," "our crew of 17," "close to the springs."
Small ops notes from private feedback worth fixing before peak season: air-filter complaint (June guest, both houses), window-privacy note at Mt. Dora, more towels/washcloths for large groups, mirror/prep-station requests from wedding parties.
Hospitable feature audit
Built, configured… and turned off
The call was right that Hospitable's toolkit is barely tapped. The surprising part is how much is already configured and just disabled:
Capability
State
What the data says
Early check-in upsell ($15–60)
OFF
Fully built with 4 price tiers + offer message drafted. Zero purchases ever.
Late checkout upsell ($15–60)
OFF
Same — built Aug 2025, never activated.
Guest House add-on ($200/night)
OFF
The single best upsell in the account: sell the ADU to main-house groups. Inactive.
Trip insurance
PARTIAL
Active but priced $0 and its offer message (created Jun 23) is disabled.
Extended-stay pricing replies
OFF
Two canned responses drafted for exactly the work-crew/nurse segment — disabled.
Review auto-responses
OFF
7 review-reply templates exist, all disabled (replies are being written by hand — good ones, but manual).
Core messaging flow
ON
Inquiry / booking / check-in instructions per unit / first-morning / checkout / review request / trash-day reminders — all running. This is in good shape.
Direct booking site
LIVE, INVISIBLE
lhrrentals.directstays.com processes bookings fine (2 completed) but has no custom domain, no indexing, no SEO.
Smart pricing / event calendar
FLAT
Forward rates are a flat two-tier week: Minnesota $728/$776, Mt. Dora $186/$216 every single week through October — no event peaks (Stetson move-in/homecoming, Mt. Dora fall festivals, Biketoberfest) and no midweek discounting.
Forward look
$21,829 booked for the back half — and a wide-open calendar behind it
13 future stays are on the books through December: Minnesota $18,476 (including a $3,668 eight-night July stay and strong Sep–Dec group bookings of 9–16 guests), Mt. Dora just $3,353. The risk is concentrated at Mt. Dora: it is available nearly every night from July 6 to October 22 at the current flat rate — the exact "slow summer we want to be ready for by 2027" that Emmett described, happening right now.
What's working in the pipeline
Minnesota's group engine keeps booking itself: 16-guest parties for Sep, Nov, Dec already locked.
2 direct bookings in the pipeline (Jul 12–15, Nov 7–9) — proof the checkout works.
Guests are already probing 2027 wedding season (Mar/Apr inquiries for 12–16 people).
Where the gaps are
Mt. Dora Jul–Oct: 2 bookings total. Festival season (Oct craft fair, Christmas-lights season) not yet priced or filled.
Minnesota midweek at $728/night with no extended-stay or corporate rate to move it.
No pricing response to known demand spikes anywhere on the forward calendar.
Call notes × account data
Scoring the July 2 conversation against the numbers
Said on the call
What the account shows
Verdict
"February just crushes it with Daytona 500"
Feb = Minnesota's #2 month ($9.1k, incl. a $3.2k 5-night 14-guest stay). But 2027 Feb is priced identically to a random Tuesday in September.
Confirmed
"Booked every weekend January to May"
True at Mt. Dora (Fri/Sat ~78%). Minnesota fell to 16–27% occupancy in Mar–Apr; March weekends went unsold.
Needs nuance
"June got slow… typical Central Florida"
Worse than remembered: 6.7% (MN) / 16.7% (MD). And two June group stays were cancelled — demand existed and was lost.
Sharper than expected
"Wedding parties have a high cancellation rate"
5 of 7 Minnesota-side cancels were 7–16 guest groups booked months out. Quantified: 18.5% overall, concentrated exactly where Emmett felt it.
Confirmed
"Airbnb has been slowly not sharing emails, only phone numbers"
9% of Airbnb stays include an email; 100% include a phone. Retargeting must be SMS-first.
Confirmed
"Airport workers / job crews ~10–15% of bookings"
Visible and undervalued: the single 19-night crew stay was $8,855 — the largest booking in account history. Extended-stay reply templates exist but are disabled.
Bigger than stated
"Direct site is cookie-cutter, no SEO, probably not ranking"
2 direct bookings in 9 months (0.6% of revenue). The machinery works; nobody can find it.
Confirmed
"Bunch of Hospitable tools we haven't tapped into"
Upsells, guest-house add-on, extended-stay replies, review automation, trip-insurance offer: all built, all off. Zero upsell revenue to date.
Bigger than stated
"Pricing algorithm hasn't figured it out yet"
There is no algorithm to figure it out — forward rates are flat two-tier through October on both properties.
Sharper than expected
"Mount Dora books well on weekends because of festivals"
Fri+Sat = 46% of all Mt. Dora nights sold. Mon–Wed runs ~27–33%.
Confirmed
Recommended plan
Sequence for next week's client meeting
Updated after the July 2 team sync: Hospitable is the hub we build on. No Airbnb exit, no custom re-platform. First-party guest data is collected and worked inside Hospitable, and marketing drives traffic to its direct booking site.
Switch-flipsWeek 1 · ~0 cost
Activate the three upsells — early check-in, late checkout, and the $200/night Guest House add-on on main-house bookings — and re-enable their offer messages. Industry attach rates put this at $2–5k/yr found money.
Re-enable extended-stay canned responses and add a monthly/weekly rate — the $8.8k crew booking proves the segment.
Shape the forward calendar: peaks for Daytona 500, Stetson homecoming/graduation, Mt. Dora Oct–Dec festival season; Sun–Thu discounts (10–15%) + gap-night pricing for the 23% last-minute segment.
Tighten Booking.com terms (prepayment / stricter cancellation) given the 46% cancel rate.
Everything here uses features already configured in the account. No build required.
Own the audienceWeeks 2–6
Work the guest list inside Hospitable — no export, no external CRM. All 66 guests (100% phones, 25 emails) and every inquiry thread already live there; run the "book direct next time" rebooking outreach through Hospitable's own messaging before fall booking season.
Inquiry follow-up past the single expiry nudge — sent from Hospitable's inbox, targeting the still-bookable 11–16-person groups first (the July 24–26 party, and the March & April 2027 weddings).
Group/event terms via Hospitable direct quotes: non-refundable deposit for 8+ guest parties + a waitlist backfill from open inquiries. This is the wedding-cancellation defense.
Everything stays inside Hospitable — the data, the messaging, the quotes. Nobody is speaking to the list yet, and two guests already rebooked with zero marketing.
Build the front doorWeeks 4–12
Make Hospitable's direct booking site the front door — put a custom domain on it, get it indexed in Search Console, and surface the 36 five-star reviews with schema/AI-search optimization. No re-platforming: Hospitable stays the hub and the checkout.
Segment landing pages that mirror actual demand: DeLand weddings & events (courtyard + guest house), Stetson families/teams/graduation, Athens Theater performers, Mt. Dora festival weekends, traveling nurses/extended stays (bridges to Marion Ct & Furnished Finder) — every page funnels to the Hospitable direct site.
Paid traffic + a B2B referral channel: ads and promotions pointed at the direct site, plus direct outreach to wedding coordinators and venues (Northwest Square has already sent a wedding party) — alongside local directories (Stetson, Athens Theater, Mt. Dora events) for backlinks and referral/affiliate revenue.
Strategy locked on the July 2 team sync: drive traffic to Hospitable's direct site rather than rebuild the stack. 48% of guests book 1–4 months out, so a marketed site by early fall catches the Jan–Mar 2027 booking wave — ahead of Emmett's "ready before next slow summer" timeline.
The one-line pitch for the client meeting: Hospitable is the hub — the customer list, the 5-star proof, the direct-booking machinery, and the upsell catalog already live in it. Nobody leaves Airbnb and nothing gets re-platformed: switch on what's built, price with intent, and point traffic (ads, wedding-coordinator/venue partners, SEO) at the Hospitable direct site. Conservative year-one impact of the plan above: $8–15k (fees recovered + upsells + midweek/June lift), before any paid acquisition.