Vrbo
Team management for property managers
The Problem
Property managers are Vrbo's most valuable and most underserved users. They make up just 8% of all property owners, yet manage 23% of all properties on the platform — nearly 460,000 listings. Despite this outsized impact, they were spending only 18 minutes per property per day on average, compared to over an hour for regular owners. The platform simply wasn't built for the complexity of managing at scale — and it showed.
Interview with property managers
I invited some of these property managers, who each own tens or hundreds of properties, into our user testing lab to understand what their needs are that are unique to themselves only. Together with the UX researcher, I observed our users' interactions with our product. During the interviews, these property managers expressed that they really need a system to manage groups of properties with ease. Here is the summary of their feedback:
Too much travel
Many property managers had to travel from city to city, state to state, to manage their huge portfolios of properties.
Lack of motivation
Many owners expressed that they lost some motivation to keep managing their properties. But they also wanted to keep the businesses running in these properties.
Little app usage
Property managers had lower usage rates than the rest of owners. On a daily basis, property managers spent merely 18 minutes on each property on average, while other owners spent 1 hour and 6 minutes on each property.
The Solution
The key design challenge wasn't just what the tool did — it was how to make complex permission structures feel simple. Property managers needed granular control: which team members could access which tools, and for which specific properties. The risk was creating something powerful but overwhelming. I focused on progressive disclosure — surfacing only what was relevant at each step, and keeping the most common actions one tap away.
This product allows property managers to hire a team to manage properties. The property manager can view a list of all the team members, which tool each member can access, and which properties are assigned to each team member. The property manager can always add new members, or remove current team members.
The property manager can view details of a specific team member, view exactly which tools this team member can use, and which properties are assigned to this team member, and make any adjustments needed.
This video shows the team management product in action.
Explorations
Your Team view - Option 1
Your Team view - Option 2
I explored 2 options of the Your Team view, to see which option displays property groups and single properties clearly. I asked some users and my teammates for their opinions. Overwhelmingly, the preferences leaned toward option 2, because it clearly distinguished between property groups and single properties.
Why are we focusing on property managers?
Property managers made up merely 8% of all property owners, but owned 23% of all 2 million properties on Vrbo, which are 460,000 properties. It was essential for property managers to stay motivated.
8%
of owners
46%
own
of all properties
How did the release go?
When the team management feature was released to the property managers for the first month, their reactions were mixed. Our monthly active owners haven’t changed much, at roughly about 1.5 million. About 30% of them reacted favorably at first, saying that this was what they wanted the whole time to help them manage their properties. The rest of them were not so fond of the feature for the following reasons:
They weren't used to the drastic change to their managing style
Some property managers are not ready to invite others to join them in managing their properties.
They can’t remember how to access the team management feature.
Being a new feature, the team management feature is hard for some property managers to locate, even after using it a few times.
I addressed these user concerns
A majority of their concerns were not about the usability of the feature itself, rather about getting accustomed to the feature, or giving trust to those who are part of their team. Therefore, we thought the feature itself isn’t the problem; the problem is how to introduce the feature better.
We promoted this on their newsfeeds.
We tried to generate more awareness by designing a newsfeed card that showed up on their newsfeeds, centered around the message of saving more time and effort with the help of a team. The newsfeed card has a link that can take the user directly to the team management page.
I designed an onboarding experience.
I created a step-by-step on boarding experience that highlighted essential functions of the team management process. The user can follow through each step to understand how to invite a user, choose permission levels, and assign properties.