Why finding STR technology is easier than ever. Choosing it isn't.

There have never been more ways to find technology for your short-term rental business. Search Google, ask ChatGPT, scroll LinkedIn, speak to another property manager, visit an industry event and you could have a shortlist before lunch. But faster discovery doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve seen the full market, or found the providers best suited to your business.

TL;DR

• The STR technology market has expanded considerably, with hundreds of providers operating across increasingly specialised categories.
• The way buyers discover technology has changed too, with AI now playing a significant role alongside search, review platforms, peers, events and vendor websites.
• Wider B2B research suggests buyers increasingly reach a shortlist before speaking to a salesperson.
• Getting to a shortlist faster doesn’t necessarily mean you have found the providers most relevant to your business.
• SCALE Connect brings STR technology and service providers together in one place, giving property managers another way to explore the market before deciding which companies deserve a closer look.

There is certainly no shortage of STR technology

Finding and choosing technology for a short-term rental business used to involve a relatively familiar collection of names and categories.

That market looks very different today.

Research published in 2026 gives us some idea of the scale and complexity involved.

Hostfully analysed 2,248 active operator accounts and more than 31,000 integrations for its Vacation Rental Tech Stack Report, finding an average of 13 operational integrations per operator, excluding OTA and distribution connections.

Separate academic research into PropTech and the short-term rental industry, published in 2026, describes an increasingly specialised technology infrastructure and references research identifying more than 450 start-ups worldwide offering STR management technology.

Property managers are no longer choosing between a handful of core systems. PMS, revenue management, operations, guest communications, payments, accounting, access, upselling, direct booking, data and business intelligence can all form part of the modern operation.

The market has become bigger.

The question is whether our ability to understand it has kept pace.

How did that company make it onto your shortlist?

Think about the last time you researched a new platform.

Perhaps another property manager recommended it. You saw the company at an event. Someone mentioned it in a Facebook group. Its founder regularly appears on LinkedIn. You searched Google, asked ChatGPT or came across the name in an industry article.

More likely, several of those things happened.

That’s increasingly normal in B2B buying. Gartner surveyed 645 B2B buyers and found they used an average of seven information sources during a recent purchase. Forty-five per cent had used generative AI, predominantly to gather information about vendors and products.

G2’s 2026 Buyer Behavior Report, based on more than 1,000 software buyers and decision-makers, found that more than 80% had sourced software recommendations from an AI chatbot during the previous two years.

Review sites were the biggest influence on vendor shortlists at 38%, with AI chatbots immediately behind at 37%.

Technology discovery isn’t happening in one place anymore and that creates an interesting contradiction.

More information doesn’t necessarily mean a wider view

AI can produce a shortlist in seconds. Google can put dozens of vendors in front of you. Your network can tell you what they use. An event can put you face-to-face with ten companies in an afternoon.

All of those routes are useful.

But they are also influenced by what is visible within them.

A peer can recommend the technology they know, but not the platform they’ve never encountered.

Search results favour companies that are discoverable through search.

AI recommendations depend on the information models can find and interpret.

Events introduce you to the companies that are exhibiting, sponsoring, speaking or already known within your network.

None of this means the recommendations are poor, it means visibility and suitability are not necessarily the same thing.

A well-known platform may be exactly right for your business. A smaller specialist provider may be better. The difficulty is knowing whether both entered your research in the first place.

AI has made the first shortlist much easier

Software buyers are increasingly using AI to do the early research that once involved multiple searches, websites and spreadsheets.

That can be incredibly useful. Ask an AI tool for property management systems suitable for a 150-unit European operator requiring particular integrations and you can move from a blank page to a plausible starting point almost immediately.

But a starting point is exactly what it is.

Gartner’s research provides an interesting counterbalance to the growth of AI-led discovery. While buyers increasingly want to research independently, 69% said they prefer to validate AI-generated insights with a sales representative.

The human role hasn’t disappeared. It has moved further along the journey.

Operators can discover companies, investigate them and build an initial shortlist before a vendor even knows they are looking.

For technology companies, that makes being understood before the sales conversation increasingly important.

For vendors, being good isn’t enough if nobody finds you

This is the other side of the discovery problem.

A technology company can solve a very specific problem extremely well and still struggle to enter the consideration set of the operators who need it.

Brand recognition matters. Search visibility matters. Being discussed by property managers matters. Increasingly, being represented accurately in AI-generated answers matters too.

G2’s 2025 buyer research illustrates just how distributed that influence has become. Generative AI, software review sites, vendor websites, market research, independent content, peers, salespeople and forums all played a role in shaping software shortlists.

For an emerging STR technology company, that creates a considerable marketing challenge.

You’re not simply competing with another provider’s features.

You’re competing to enter the buyer’s field of view at all.

Property managers still need to do the second layer of research

The first shortlist is only the beginning.

Once you’ve found potential providers, the harder questions start.

Does this work for a business of our size? Does it support the markets where we operate? Does it integrate properly with the technology we already use? Does the commercial model make sense as we grow? What happens during implementation? What are other operators actually using it for?

This fits another finding from G2’s 2026 research: while technology discovery has become faster, evaluation has become the longest stage of the software buying journey.

Finding companies isn’t necessarily the hard part anymore.

Working out which ones deserve serious consideration is.

Giving STR technology discovery a place of its own

This is one of the reasons we launched SCALE Connect.

SCALE events have introduced property managers to technology and service providers for years, and those face-to-face conversations remain hugely valuable. But researching the market shouldn’t depend on which event you attend, who happens to be exhibiting or which company someone in your network happens to mention.

SCALE Connect brings providers from across the short-term rental industry together in one place, organised around the areas of the business they support.

It doesn’t make the decision for you, and being listed isn’t a SCALE endorsement.

What it can do is give you another way to see what’s out there, explore different categories and find companies you may want to investigate further.

Because with an STR technology market this large, the first challenge isn’t always choosing between the names on your shortlist.

It’s knowing which names should have been there in the first place.

Explore technology and service providers on SCALE Connect.