"Location, location, location" is still true for STRs — but the definition of a good location changes completely. School district? Irrelevant. Fifteen minutes from the national park entrance? That's the whole ballgame.
Drive-to markets (within 3–4 hours of a major metro) book more resiliently: weekend trips, last-minute getaways, less exposure to airfare and economic swings. Fly-to markets can post higher ADRs but with longer booking windows and sharper downturns. Neither is wrong — but your client's risk tolerance should match the market type, and you should be able to name which type yours is.
Guests search by distance to the thing they came for: the lake, the lifts, the strip, the stadium, the trailhead. A property 10 minutes from the attraction and one 35 minutes away are in different businesses, even at the same price. Map every candidate property against the market's top three demand drivers before showing it.
A beach market might earn 60% of annual revenue in 14 weeks. A market with a ski winter and a hiking summer earns year-round. Neither pattern is bad — but a client who needs steady monthly cash flow should not buy a 14-week market, and it's your job to surface that mismatch early.
Booming markets attract supply faster than demand grows. Watch for: rapidly rising active listing counts, falling market-wide occupancy, and hosts discounting aggressively in shoulder season. A market can be genuinely popular and still be a bad buy because 400 new listings arrived last year.
Go deeper: the Market Research Guide walks the full process, and STR Analytics covers the data tools that make saturation visible.
ACTION: Write a one-paragraph profile of your market: drive-to or fly-to, top three demand drivers, peak weeks, and whether listing supply grew last year. This paragraph becomes your investor-client opener.
Next lesson: the features that actually drive bookings — and the expensive ones that don't.