VRMA 26 Nashville: the operator's guide to the year's biggest US short-term rental event
Around 2,000 vacation rental professionals take over Nashville's Music City Center on 4-6 October. The CEO of Booking.com headlines, a happiness researcher opens, and the expo hall is the largest STR marketplace in the industry. Here is how to decide if it is worth your week, and how to work it if you go.
Key points
- VRMA 26 Nashville runs 4-6 October 2026 at the Music City Center in Nashville, Tennessee. It is the flagship US event for professionally managed short-term rentals.
- Keynotes come from Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking Holdings and Booking.com, and Shawn Achor, bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage.
- More than 50 speakers are confirmed, from operators like Casago's Steve Schwab to direct-booking advocate Mark Simpson of Boostly.
- Registration is $1,150-$1,700 for property managers depending on membership and timing; one-day passes and group discounts exist.
- The 2025 edition in Las Vegas drew nearly 2,000 attendees after a format reset.
If you run serviced accommodation or short-term rentals for a living, there is one week on the US calendar that concentrates more operators, vendors and ideas than any other. This year it is the first full week of October, in Music City. Whether you are flying in from Florida or following along from the UK, here is the useful detail: what the event is, a little of its history, who it is actually for, who is on stage, and what it costs.
The basics
VRMA 26 Nashville is the annual conference of the Vacation Rental Management Association, the largest global community for short-term vacation rental professionals4. It runs Sunday 4 to Tuesday 6 October 2026 at the Music City Center in downtown Nashville, Tennessee1.
The shape of it: two general sessions with big-stage keynotes, dozens of breakout and sponsored sessions across Monday and Tuesday, pre-conference Learning Labs on the Sunday, and an expo hall the organisers describe as the largest products and services marketplace in the short-term rental industry1. More than 50 speakers are confirmed6.
A short history
VRMA started in 1985, when a small group of people who called themselves "vacation rental managers" got together at Lake Tahoe to figure out their young industry. That gathering became the association's first event5. Suppliers started exhibiting at VRMA events in 1987, and the association has run an annual conference ever since5.
In 2016 the organisation updated its name from the Vacation Rental Managers Association to the Vacation Rental Management Association, reflecting how far the sector had grown beyond individual managers5. It marked its 40th anniversary in 2025, the same year it relaunched the annual conference in a new format in Las Vegas. That "reimagined" edition drew nearly 2,000 attendees, which is the benchmark Nashville is building on2.
Who should attend
VRMA designs the event for professional operators, and the pricing reflects it. It makes most sense for:
- Property managers and their leadership teams. The breakout tracks cover growth, operations, revenue management and regulation, and the group rate exists precisely so companies can bring several people and split sessions between them3.
- Owners and hosts scaling into a real business. If you are moving from a couple of units to a managed portfolio, the peer conversations are the product as much as the sessions.
- Technology and service suppliers. The expo hall is the biggest single concentration of STR buyers in the US, and exhibitors get a full conference badge with each booth2.
- Anyone working on advocacy. VRMA is the industry's collective voice in the US, and the Advocacy Luncheon and state-association speakers are where that work happens in public.
It is probably not for the casual single-listing host: at $1,150 and up before flights and hotels, the return comes from running, or supplying, a serious operation.
The keynotes
Two headliners anchor the general sessions78:
Glenn Fogel is Chief Executive Officer and President of Booking Holdings and CEO of Booking.com, the world's largest accommodation platform. He joined the company in 2000 as an investment banker turned strategist, led its worldwide strategy and corporate development, and has run the group since 20179. For an industry that lives and dies by its relationship with the big platforms, hearing where Booking's CEO thinks travel is going, straight rather than filtered through a press release, is the closest the week gets to required listening. Glenn Fogel on LinkedIn.
Shawn Achor is a Harvard-trained positive psychology researcher and the New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage and Big Potential. His TED talk has passed 13 million views, and his firm GoodThink has trained a third of the Fortune 10010. His angle for operators: the research connecting mindset and team culture to performance, in an industry where burned-out staff and churned cleaners cost real money. Shawn Achor on LinkedIn.
Industry speakers worth your time
Past the main stage, the breakout programme mixes working operators with the people building the tools they use. A selection from the confirmed list6:
| Speaker | Business and role | Why they are worth a session |
|---|---|---|
| Steve Schwab | Founder and CEO, Casago | Built Casago from a local operation into an international brand over 20 years. His theme, "hospitality that scales", is about culture as an operating advantage. |
| Mark Simpson | Founder, Boostly (UK) | The loudest direct-booking advocate in the business, and proof this is not a US-only conversation. If you want to cut OTA dependence, start here. |
| Jessica Gillingham | Founder and CEO, Abode Worldwide | Runs the PR firm behind many of the sector's proptech brands, hosts the Pillow Talk Sessions podcast, and literally wrote the book on tech-enabled hospitality. |
| Thibault Masson | Head of Product Marketing, PriceLabs; founder of Rental Scale-Up | Runs the industry publication he founded inside a pricing company, and speaks on AI and revenue management from both sides of the fence. |
| Justin Ford | Director of Safety, Breezeway | The industry's leading safety voice: a former firefighter whose inspection programme has driven more than 100,000 STR safety inspections. |
| Jeff Iloulian | Founder and CEO, HostGPO | Built the group purchasing model for STR furnishings and supplies; also a candidate for the VRMA board this year. |
| John An | Founder and CEO, TechTape | A revenue-management operator who builds custom tech stacks for managers, with a profit-first pitch. |
| Jay Ullrich | CEO and co-founder, HostBuddy AI | Manages 40-plus properties himself, then built an AI guest-messaging tool to solve his own 24/7 support problem. |
| Heather Richer | Partner, Richer Logic Consulting | Former RedAwning CMO and Kimpton revenue VP; one of the most experienced revenue strategists in lodging. |
| Eden Kupermintz | Senior Director of Customer Solutions, Guesty | Fifteen years inside one of the biggest property management platforms, spanning sales engineering, onboarding and R&D. |
| Spencer K. Bailey | President, Idaho Vacation Rental Association | Co-founded a state association and helped pass one of the strongest STR pre-emption bills in the US. The advocacy track in person. |
The full list, including speakers from Hostfully, Streamline, Minty Living and PriceLabs's US consulting team, is on the VRMA site6. The planning committee is chaired by Rachel Alday with April Burns as vice chair1.
What it costs
Registration is first-come, first-served, and cheaper tiers sell out: the limited-release rates are already gone, and the regular tier is marked "selling fast"3. Property manager rates:
| Registration type | Regular | Last call |
|---|---|---|
| VRMA member, property manager or associate | $1,150 | $1,300 |
| Non-member, property manager or associate | $1,550 | $1,700 |
| Member group rate (per person) | $920 | $1,040 |
| One-day pass, member (Monday or Tuesday) | $700 | - |
| Guest pass (social events only) | $350 | - |
Two levers cut the bill. Bringing colleagues gets 20% off all registrations, and joining VRMA takes $200 off a member ticket3. The Sunday Learning Labs (safety walk-throughs, revenue management, and a Predictive Index leadership workshop) are add-ons capped at 50 people each, so they go first3.
How the three days run
Sunday 4 October is the soft start: registration from 11am, Learning Labs from noon to 4pm, a first-timer reception at 4:30, then the welcome reception in the expo hall until 7:3011.
Monday 5 October opens with the general session at 8:30am, breakouts from 11am, the separately ticketed Advocacy Luncheon, VRMA Knowledge Collectives at 2:30, and more breakouts to 5:30. The expo hall runs 7:30am to 5pm11. There is also a 6:30am downtown walk and 6:45 yoga for the virtuous.
Tuesday 6 October repeats the pattern: general session at 9am, breakouts through the day, and a closing happy hour from 5 to 6:30pm11.
Tips to get your money's worth
- Register before the regular tier sells out. Once it goes, last-call pricing applies automatically3.
- Book Learning Labs now. Fifty seats each is nothing at a 2,000-person event3.
- Bring at least one colleague. The 20% group discount aside, the breakout tracks run in parallel, so a team of two covers twice the content3.
- Treat the expo hall as vendor due diligence. Every serious PMS, pricing tool and guest-tech vendor is in one room. Bring your shortlist and your questions.
- Go to the first-timer reception if it is your first year. Sunday 4:30pm. Conferences this size are easier once you know ten people.
What a UK operator gets from a US show
AccomStack covers both sides of the Atlantic, so the honest question for UK readers: why care about a Nashville conference? Three reasons. First, the US professional-management market is years ahead on revenue management, direct-booking infrastructure and vendor tooling, and the people who built that gap are on stage and in the expo hall. Second, speakers like Mark Simpson show the direct-booking playbook transfers; his Boostly audience is largely British. Third, VRMA's advocacy model, where a trade body negotiates with lawmakers on the industry's behalf, is the template UK operators keep saying they need as registration schemes roll out. You do not have to fly to learn from it: session recaps and speaker content flood LinkedIn during and after the event, so following the speakers above costs nothing.
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Sources
- VRMA: VRMA 26 Nashville (official event page)
- VRMA: VRMA 26 Nashville prospectus (2025 attendance, exhibitor details)
- VRMA: Registration rates and discounts
- VRMA: About (mission and membership)
- VRMA: Our History - 40 Years of VRMA
- VRMA: Confirmed speakers and bios
- VRMA on LinkedIn: registration announcement naming both keynotes
- VRMA on LinkedIn: Glenn Fogel keynote announcement
- Booking Holdings: Leadership (Glenn Fogel)
- GoodThink: Shawn Achor speaker bio
- VRMA: Schedule of events
Last checked 26 September 2026. Prices and programme details can change; check the official VRMA pages before you book. This article is general information, not travel or financial advice.
