ShortTermRentalz: The London News Site for the Short-Term and Vacation Rental Industry
ShortTermRentalz, often shortened to STRz, is a London-based online news publication covering the short-term rental and vacation rental industry worldwide. Published at shorttermrentalz.com, it reports on the companies, platforms, property managers, technology providers, investors and regulators who shape a sector that grew up around online booking and has since become a major part of global hospitality. Its readers are not primarily holidaymakers looking for somewhere to stay. They are the professionals who host, manage, supply and regulate those stays, and who need daily intelligence about deals, appointments, regulation and technology.
The site sits inside International Hospitality Media, the London publisher whose portfolio also covers serviced apartments and wider urban living hospitality. That stablemate relationship matters to its identity: the previous batch entry, Serviced Apartment News, comes from the same publishing family, and ShortTermRentalz applies a similar trade-press model — free-to-read news, newsletters, webinars, podcasts and awards — to a younger and faster-changing market.
Overview
ShortTermRentalz describes its beat in broad terms: the whole short-term and vacation rental ecosystem, from individual hosts and property management companies to the large online travel platforms, software suppliers, payment firms, data providers and trade associations that serve them. Stories are typically organised by geography, with reports filed from the United Kingdom, the United States, Europe and markets further afield, reflecting the fact that a regulation change in one city or a funding round in one country often has consequences for operators elsewhere.
For a directory profile, the essential point is that this is business-to-business journalism. A consumer title would ask whether a rental is good value; ShortTermRentalz asks who owns it, who manages it, what technology runs it, how it is regulated and whether the business behind it is growing. That distinction explains its vocabulary, its sources and its commercial model throughout this profile.
History and Founding
The publication developed within International Hospitality Media as the publisher extended its hospitality coverage beyond serviced apartments into short-term rentals. By the late 2010s the site was publishing regular news and newsletters for the sector, and its public profile rose sharply around the launch of its awards programme. The inaugural Shortyz Awards were held in March 2020, staged as a boat party aboard Bateaux London on the River Thames, shortly before pandemic restrictions transformed both travel and live events.
Editor Paul Stevens has recounted joining International Hospitality Media in September 2018, shortly after graduating from the University of Southampton with a degree in French and Spanish, and progressing from intern to reporter, news editor and then editor. That personal trajectory mirrors the site's own growth during the same period, from a niche trade title into a brand with a podcast, a webinar series and an annual summit. The second Shortyz ceremony was held virtually during the pandemic, and the programme has continued in subsequent years with an expanding list of categories.
Ownership and Business Model
ShortTermRentalz is a division of International Hospitality Media, referred to in the industry as IHM. IHM is a specialist hospitality publisher and events organiser whose other activities have included serviced apartment coverage and awards, urban living events and conferences in Europe, the Americas and the Middle East and Africa. ShortTermRentalz therefore does not operate as a standalone start-up; it draws on a publisher with established relationships among hospitality operators, suppliers and sponsors.
Its business model is the standard one for modern trade media. Editorial content is published openly online to build reach among professionals, while revenue is supported by advertising, sponsorship, partnerships and live events. The Shortyz Awards, the STRz Summit launched in London in 2023 and sponsored webinars and podcasts all create commercial inventory around the journalism, allowing suppliers who want to reach property managers and platforms to buy visibility alongside the news rather than charging readers a subscription for the news itself.
Coverage and Content
Daily coverage mixes short news reports with longer analysis. Typical stories include funding rounds and acquisitions among rental platforms and technology firms, senior appointments, new property management launches, partnerships between operators and suppliers, and regulatory developments affecting short-term letting in cities and countries around the world. Founder and executive interviews are a regular feature, as are trend pieces in which the editor and contributors set out predictions for the year ahead.
Regulation is one of the site's defining subjects. Short-term rentals sit at the intersection of tourism, housing and planning policy, so the site follows licensing schemes, registration proposals, tax changes and city-level restrictions closely — including the long-running debate over controls in Barcelona and calls from European city alliances for legislative action. Technology is the other constant theme: property management systems, channel managers, pricing tools, guest communication, smart locks and, more recently, artificial intelligence products aimed at hosts and managers.
The Shortyz and the STRz Summit
The Shortyz Awards are the brand's best-known franchise. Launched for 2020 with thirteen categories, including Rising Star and Pioneer honours for individuals, the awards were presented by the publisher as the first dedicated global awards ceremony for the short-term rental industry. Winners in the early editions were chosen through a combination of expert judging and a public vote among ShortTermRentalz readers, and Stevens has described the ceremony as having been nicknamed the Oscars of the short-term rental industry.
The STRz Summit extended the brand into thought-leadership conferencing. The inaugural summit was held in London in October 2023, and sponsorship material for the 2025 edition described the event, then in its third year, as a gathering of speakers from rentals, hospitality, real estate, travel, technology and investment, with debates, panels, workshops and pitch sessions. Together, awards and summit turn an online readership into a physical professional community, which is central to the publisher's events-led strategy.
Audience and Reach
The audience is international and professional. Property managers, serviced apartment and aparthotel operators crossing into rentals, online travel agencies, software and service suppliers, investors and trade bodies all feature in the site's stories and event programmes. Its partnership activity illustrates that reach: in February 2023 Skift, the large travel industry media company, and ShortTermRentalz announced a content and media partnership linking Skift's Short-Term Rental Summit in New York in June 2023 with ShortTermRentalz's own inaugural London event later that year, with Stevens appearing on stage at the Skift event.
Reach is also built through regular formats rather than news alone. A weekly newsletter, a LinkedIn community group, the RockSTRz webinar series and podcast interviews give the title repeated contact with its niche audience between major stories. For a trade title, that depth of engagement with a defined professional readership is commercially more valuable than raw general traffic.
Editorial Voice
The editorial voice is that of an industry insider rather than a detached consumer critic. Coverage tends to treat professionalisation — the shift from casual hosting to managed, technology-enabled operations — as the sector's central story, and features frequently give founders and executives space to explain strategy in their own terms. At the same time, the site covers the tensions that come with growth: housing pressure in popular cities, discrimination and accessibility barriers for guests, and the compliance burden on hosts.
Stevens' own commentary pieces, including annual predictions, set an agenda-setting tone. In interviews he has emphasised community and celebration as part of the brand's role, pointing to how the industry rallied around the Shortyz during the pandemic period. That blend of hard news, executive access and community-building is characteristic of hospitality trade publishing at its most engaged.
Digital Presence
The website is the hub, organised around news, features, interviews, webinars, podcasts and event coverage, with stories tagged by company, person and topic so that readers can follow individual firms or themes over time. Video interviews recorded at industry events, webinar replays and podcast episodes extend stories beyond text, and the newsletter curates the week's coverage for subscribers who do not visit daily.
Social distribution leans professional, with LinkedIn prominent alongside other social channels and YouTube for webinar and interview video. The site also acts as the entry and voting platform for the Shortyz and as the promotional home of the STRz Summit, making the domain function simultaneously as newspaper, community noticeboard and events box office.
Notable People
Paul Stevens is the public face of the title. As editor, he hosts webinars and podcasts, co-hosts the Shortyz, writes prediction and analysis features and represents the brand at partner events, including the Skift summit in New York. His background in languages and travel, and his rapid rise through IHM after joining in 2018, have been documented in industry interviews about the brand.
Behind the editor sits the wider International Hospitality Media team, whose experience running the Serviced Apartment Awards was, by the publisher's own account, the template for launching the Shortyz. Judges, sponsors and supporting partners drawn from across the rental industry — including research and trade organisations — also recur in the brand's output, reflecting how trade titles are produced in conversation with the sectors they cover.
Recent Developments
In recent years the brand has moved from news and awards into a fuller events and partnerships programme. The 2023 Skift partnership and the launch of the STRz Summit in London that October marked a step up in ambition, positioning the title alongside larger travel media players. The summit has continued, with a 2025 sponsorship prospectus presenting it as an established annual thought-leadership event hosted by Stevens.
The Shortyz have likewise continued into further editions with a larger category list than the original thirteen, covering design, guest experience, technology, sustainability and leadership. Coverage themes have evolved with the market — artificial intelligence tools for hosts, consolidation among management companies, and city regulation, including the Barcelona debate, have all featured prominently — but the core proposition remains unchanged: daily, verified trade news for the people who run the short-term rental industry, published from London by International Hospitality Media.
