Methodology

published managers

9,255

countries

128

booking systems detected

26

Data as of 17 Oct 2026. Every public number on VRM Atlas (the homepage, software pages, this page and our data reports) comes from one snapshot of the published directory, refreshed hourly.

Published managers are businesses that manage holiday homes and have a public listing. Single-home hosts (owners with a booking website for their own home) aren’t published: they don’t manage homes for other owners. Listings with no known country stay hidden until we can place them. At launch we cover the core vacation rental segment; hotels and B&Bs are left out where we can identify them.

• Technology detection (a commercial web-technology data provider): which booking or property management system a website appears to run. This is how most businesses first enter the directory. We use it for aggregate counts only and don’t show it on a named manager’s listing.
• Short-term rental market data (AirROI): active listings, average nightly rate and occupancy for destinations, and listing counts we match to managers. Shown as aggregates and estimates, refreshed monthly; never individual listings or hosts.
• Public business websites: name, location, services, logo and social links the business publishes about itself.
• Geocoding (Google and Mapbox): turning a published address or town into a map position.
• Web research: automated checks of a business’s own site, sometimes AI-assisted, for facts such as whether it manages homes for owners or is still trading. Unclear results are left blank, not guessed.
• The business itself: once claimed, managers correct and add to their own profile.

We dedupe by root domain: www.example.com, book.example.com and example.com/rentals are one business. When we find the same business under two domains, we merge them and keep one listing. Parked, dead and non-rental sites are removed.

We count websites where a system’s booking engine or widget appears, not properties, bookings or revenue. A manager with 500 homes counts once, like a manager with five, so tools popular with large operators on custom-built sites look smaller here than their property share.

Detected on public websites, not market share. These are aggregate counts. Detection is often incomplete or out of date for a single site, so we don’t show which system a named manager uses, list the managers behind a count, or let you filter managers by it.

Multi-PMS rule: a site running more than one system counts once for each (1,034 published managers today), so shares add up to more than 100%.

Some systems (for example Beds24 and Smoobu) also serve small B&Bs, so their counts may run slightly high. We don’t report a “direct booking” share: every listing was found by detecting a booking engine, so it would be circular.

Organic order = relevance + profile evidence. Relevance is how well a manager matches the search (place, service area, filters). Evidence is what a profile shows owners: completeness, owner reviews and verification. Payment is not an input.

Sponsored placement is separate. A paid slot sits apart from the organic list, is capped (a small number per page), is always labelled “Sponsored”, and its links carry rel="sponsored". It never changes the organic order, a manager’s score or their rating.

Paid plans (Pro and Growth) give managers tools. They don’t buy a better organic position or the Verified badge: the Verified check is free and the same for everyone. CloudStay, which our founder also founded, appears only as a labelled featured partner on profiles of managers without a booking website, never in owner comparison views.

Claimed (free) means someone proved they control the business. It’s about identity, not quality. Accepted proofs, strongest first:

• signing in with an email address on the business’s own domain;
• adding a DNS record to that domain;
• adding a small file or a meta tag to the business’s website;
• managing the matching Google Business Profile (name plus website, phone or town);
• a code sent by text or automated call to a phone number published on the business’s website, never one typed in;
• or, when none of those work (for example with only a Gmail or Outlook address), business documents checked by a person within one business day. We never ask for passports, personal ID or bank statements, and we delete the files 30 days after deciding.

Claim attempts are rate-limited per listing and per connection. If someone tries to claim a listing that already has an owner, we tell the owner and a person reviews it: ownership never moves automatically.

Verified (paid) adds checks by VRM Atlas: a live, branded website for the business, a registered-business check, and insurance declared (or documented where required). Verified managers show a dated badge, “Verified <month year>”, and are re-checked every year. If the plan ends, the profile shows the last verified date instead of the badge.

Reviews are labelled Email confirmed (the reviewer confirmed their email), Invited by the manager (they came through the manager’s invite link) or Owner verified (they also showed evidence of the relationship, kept private). No score is shown until a manager has 3 published reviews, and in ranking, reviews count through a Bayesian average (a neutral 3.4 stars weighted as 3 reviews) so a single review can’t jump the queue. Managers can’t pay to remove reviews. Details in our reviews policy.

Verification is free. The business asks for it from its dashboard by uploading two documents in its own name (or a trading name it has declared), and a person at VRM Atlas checks them.

• A business registration document: a company or trade register extract, certificate of incorporation, business licence, tax registration or NIB. Where there’s an official register we can query, we confirm the number, the name and that it’s active: Companies House (UK), ABN Lookup (Australia), the NZBN register (New Zealand) and VIES for EU VAT numbers. In the US (state registries), Indonesia (OSS) and elsewhere a reviewer checks the public register by hand.
• One supporting document: a holiday-let or short-term rental licence or permit, an in-date insurance certificate, or a trade-body membership.

We read each document automatically (with an AI processor) to pull out the name, number, type and dates and to compare the name with the listing; a person then approves or rejects. We aim to decide within 1 business day. We never ask for passports, personal ID or bank statements, and delete any we receive.

What the badge says. An approved business shows, for example, “Verified · Business registration and insurance checked · Oct 2026”: what was checked and when. A verification lasts 12 months, or until the insurance expires if that’s sooner. We remind the business 30 days before; if it isn’t re-verified in time, or we withdraw it, the profile shows “Last verified <month year>” instead. Registration numbers, documents and addresses are never shown publicly.

Your documents. They’re stored privately and only our reviewers can open them. Files are deleted 30 days after the decision; we keep only the outcome, the document types, the dates and who reviewed it.

Appeals. Disagree with a decision? Email hello@vrmatlas.com and a person will look at it again. Every decision is logged.

Businesses can claim their listing for free to correct it, or ask us to remove it; we act within 48 hours and keep a suppression record so it isn’t re-added or emailed. Spotted something wrong? Email hello@vrmatlas.com.