A global pandemic and record-breaking heat haven't stopped travelers from escaping to the desert.
While many hotels are open for business, an influx of travelers heading to the Coachella Valley is fueling an unexpected boost in summer demand for vacation rentals.
Kylee Niederhauser, a valley native who is one of the founders of the vacation rental company Haustay that has five vacation rental properties in La Quinta, said the majority of their guests are people looking to escape urban settings and spend time with their family in a new environment.
"We get a lot of people working remotely who just want a change of scenery or a place with a pool," she said. "We get families who have been feeling cooped up, and want to get away."
VRBO, a popular app-based vacation rental service owned by Expedia Group, says there is a 15% jump in demand for vacation homes within a 500-mile distance of someone's home destination, or a day's drive — roughly the distance between Palm Springs and San Francisco. About 95% of the demand is for non-urban destinations.
In Southern California, that means VRBO is seeing more demand for Palm Springs than it typically would in the typically slow summer season. A third of the guests are coming from Los Angeles, but other top origin cities are San Francisco, Phoenix and San Diego.
Data from VRBO and anecdotes from property owners also indicate that people are staying longer than usual. VRBO says the average length of booking for the first half of the year is up two days over the average from 2019. Niederhauser said their homes are sometimes being booked for a few weeks at a time.
While many Americans are canceling travel plans for 2020, vacation rentals sit at the intersection of people who want to minimize contact with others but also have the means and desire to leave their homes.
Bruce Hoban, co-founder of Vacation Rental Owners and Neighbors of Palm Springs, said the demand for vacation houses in the city of Palm Springs is "like nothing we've ever seen."
A typical July and August might have a vacation rental property see a handful of weekend bookings, Hoban said. But this year, "basically every vacation rental in Palm Springs is occupied." Just under 2,000 properties are registered with the city.
Hoban said the boost could provide much-needed transient occupancy tax revenue to the city at a time when officials are expecting to lose 89% of its pre-pandemic projections. Those taxes are the city's top revenue stream and were gutted by the shutdown to travel during the area's peak season.
“We’ll take something, because we could be sitting here closed still," Hoban said.
Demand during a pandemic
The Palm Springs area had a vacation rental marketplace long before app-based booking companies like VRBO and Airbnb introduced many travelers to the experience of staying at a private home.
Still, Philip Minardi, head of public affairs at Expedia Group, which owns VRBO, said these kind of vacation rental destinations are uniquely positioned for this moment when people are looking for private places to stay with their families.
"They offer them the ability to be with their family under one roof, and not have a hotel lobby to check into or an elevator," Minardi said.
But there's still "a lot of uncertainty" in the marketplace, Minardi said. Destination Analysts, a market research firm for tourism, found in its latest weekly survey that 41.5% of American travelers say they don't plan to travel in 2020.
And while 35.7% say they will travel in the fall, that number was about 50% at the beginning of June, Destination Analysts found.
California officially began allowing activity at hotels and vacation rentals about a month ago, but locally, short-term rental properties were allowed to re-open by Riverside and San Bernardino counties before that. The counties did offer guidelines: San Bernardino County limited guests to people from the same household, while Riverside County said there couldn't be any large gathering or shared spaces with the property owner.
Still, traveling beyond one's community during this pandemic is still considered a risk. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises against leisure travel, as it can increase the chances of getting infected and spreading the disease.
“Staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others from getting sick,” the CDC says.
Staying safe while traveling
Certain search terms on Google, like "California vacation rentals" or "Los Angeles hotels" bring up a “COVID-19” alert that brings searchers to the CDC website’s information for U.S. travelers. A search for "Palm Desert vacation rentals" or "Palm Desert hotels" brings up the alert, though the same searches for "Palm Springs" do not.
In the attempt to allow travel while promoting safe practices, vacation rental companies and government agencies are coming up with guidelines for property owners on how to minimize the transmission of coronavirus.
While it's up to individual property owners to implement the protocols, VRBO's cleanliness guidelines include steps that build in time between bookings to allow for more cleaning and avoid back-to-back renters, and stocking cleaning supplies for guests to use if they want to sanitize surfaces themselves.
Niederhauser's husband Steve, who also co-founded Haustay along with Nick and Elisa Foster, said they're using contactless check-ins and upping cleaning protocols to prevent the spread of coronavirus as they host travelers.
"There's no contact between us as managers and guests ... the kitchen is there if restaurants have restrictions or people don't feel comfortable going to restaurants," he said. "It's just a comfortable space that people know they can spread out and it's their own for the time they're there."
Thomas Fjallstam, who organizes the Joshua Tree Gateway Communities Vacation Rentals Association that represents several hundred property owners in the Morongo Basin, said property owners are making new cleaning procedures the norm.
Guests may be asked to bag their own laundry before they leave, for example, and some hosts are raising the cleaning fees to compensate for the additional time and expense of housekeeping, Fjallstam said. Some property owners are making sure to leave time between bookings to "air out" the space.
Overall, he said travelers haven't raised concerns about sanitation measures.
“One host said that guests are more concerned about the speed of the internet then they are the cleaning protocols,” Fjallstam said.
Concerns about cross-community spread
Despite the assertions and steps that many are taking to encourage travel and give people a safe reprieve, there are still concerns about cross-community spread as coronavirus cases continue to mount.
Many travelers coming to the desert are hailing from Los Angeles, which on Tuesday reported the highest number of new cases and hospitalizations in a single day so far during the pandemic, with 4,244 new cases and 2,103 people currently hospitalized.
When asked about concerns that travelers could bring the coronavirus with them to their destination, Minardi from Expedia said operators have to take a "holistic approach" to keeping their places safe. He also said having local regulations in place for vacation rentals is a critical component of ensuring responsible travel.
He pointed to a recently reached framework for vacation rentals in San Diego that were agreed to by city leaders and the union that represents local hospitality workers. The agreement would reduce the overall number of rentals, while still allowing regulated operation.
"I think there is an understanding in our marketplace that in order to address community concerns, we have to have responsible limits on vacation rental activity," Minardi said.
In Palm Desert, where there about 900 registered vacation rentals, director of community development Ryan Stendell said they don't have any coronavirus-specific policies for rentals in place at this time. But they're still issuing fines for unregistered vacation rentals, he said, as they had to do this spring when short-term lodging was still banned during the state's shelter-in-place order.
Based on the frequency of unregistered vacation rentals the city's code enforcement is seeing, there seems to be strong demand, Stendell said.
"We still see a very strong short-term rental vacation market," he said. "It's very lucrative right now."
More: As airport exec Tom Nolan departs, how Palm Springs International will move forward
Palm Springs Mayor Geoff Kors said the city's code enforcement team has given out citations for having too many people at the property during the pandemic. A review of the most recent available calls to the city's vacation rental hotline shows two citations for too many cars during the week of June 29 through the July 4 weekend.
The citations also come with a "strike" — and after three strikes, a property owner loses their permit.
Kors said there isn't a reason to restrict leisure travel to the area based on public health data. He said congregate settings, large gatherings and big box stores have been more linked to outbreaks than people traveling.
“If it was tourism, you think we’d be seeing a much higher percent increase compared to the other cities, which we’re not,” Kors said. “But it’s something, of course, I’m concerned about ... we’re watching.”
The city of Palm Springs has sought to educate travelers about staying safe with banners and road signs reminding them to wear masks as they head down Palm Canyon Drive.
“We have to figure out how to learn to live with COVID because it’s going to be here the rest of the year, and it could be here all of next year,” Kors said.
Melissa Daniels covers local business, hospitality, and economic development in the Coachella Valley. Reach out at (760)-567-8458, melissa.daniels@desertsun.com, or on Twitter @melissamdaniels.
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California desert vacation rentals proving a popular pandemic-era getaway - Desert Sun
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