Una by Polydom's Odyssey to IMN's Short Term Rental Summer 2026 — June 23-24, 2026

Every great journey has a few things in common: a destination worth reaching, obstacles you didn't expect, and the realization halfway through that the point was never really the finish line.

That's roughly how we feel heading into next week.

IMN's Short Term Rental Summer Forum takes place June 23-24 at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, California, bringing together STR owners, operators, and investors for two days built around the industry's most pressing questions. For us, getting there isn't just a flight and a rental car. It's been a longer road — one that mirrors almost exactly what STR operators go through every single day, just compressed into a single trip.

So we're calling it our odyssey. Not because anything dramatic happened. Because the shape of the journey says something true about this industry — and about why we built Una in the first place.

The first leg: knowing where you're going, but not exactly how

Every odyssey starts with a destination and very little certainty about the path. For us, that destination was simple: be in the room where STR operators are talking about the problems that actually keep them up at night.

IMN's agenda this year leans into exactly that — sessions on crisis-proofing STR businesses against wildfires and market volatility, and a session specifically on the World Cup's effect on surge pricing and inventory. Knowing we wanted to be part of that conversation was easy. The harder part — for us and for every operator preparing for this summer — is figuring out how to actually keep pace once you're in motion.

That's the role Una plays in our own journey, and in the businesses we work with: not setting the destination, but making sure nothing falls behind along the way.

The marathon part: it's not about the sprint to departure

Anyone who's run a marathon will tell you the difference between a marathon and a sprint isn't just distance — it's pacing. You can't sprint the whole way. You have to know which parts of the route require a burst of energy and which parts require patience.

That's also, almost exactly, how mega-event pricing works for STR operators. A World Cup match doesn't create one big surge — it creates a sustained period where pricing, availability, and guest communication all need to move together, continuously, without anyone burning out halfway through. The operators who treat it like a sprint — throwing everything at the first few days and then running out of steam — are the ones who struggle when the demand doesn't let up.

This is precisely where Una keeps pace on our behalf. When guest messages spike during a surge period, Una keeps responding, keeps checking live availability, keeps drafting accurate offers — at the same steady rhythm on hour twelve as on hour one. The marathon doesn't wear it down the way it wears down a small team running on adrenaline and coffee.

The detours: crises don't wait for good timing

No odyssey is complete without an unplanned detour. For STR operators, that detour often looks like a wildfire evacuation order, a sudden weather event, or a regulatory shift nobody saw coming — exactly the kind of scenario IMN's crisis-proofing session is built around.

The thing about detours is that you can't plan the specific event, but you can plan how ready you are to handle it. The operators who recover fastest from a crisis aren't the ones who predicted it. They're the ones whose systems — pricing, guest communication, availability — could flex immediately instead of needing to be rebuilt from scratch under pressure.

Una was built with exactly this kind of detour in mind. When a crisis hits and guest questions flood in all at once — is my reservation still valid, can I get a refund, has anything changed — Una keeps the response moving without waiting for the rest of the system to catch up.

The companions you pick up along the way

Every odyssey has companions — people who join partway through and end up shaping how the story unfolds. For us, that's been the operators, the investors, and the technology partners we've talked to in the lead-up to this event. IMN's own sponsor and exhibitor list reads like a map of the STR ecosystem — pricing tools, insurance providers, property management platforms — each one solving a different piece of the same underlying puzzle.

None of us are solving the whole journey alone. That's sort of the point. Una doesn't replace the rest of the toolkit — it's the companion that keeps the pace steady while pricing tools, PMS platforms, and human teams each do what they do best.

Arriving at Carlsbad — and what we're actually there to talk about

When we get to the Omni La Costa next week, the conversation we want to have isn't really about us. It's about the operational gap that connects everything on IMN's agenda this year — mega-event pricing, crisis-readiness, and the everyday complexity of managing group bookings during normal operations.

That gap, in every version of the story, looks the same: demand moves faster than manual processes can keep up with, and the operators who close that gap — through better systems, not just more effort — are the ones who come out ahead.

We've written about this from a few different angles recently: why group bookings are hospitality's hardest operational problem, and what mega-event pricing means for STR operators heading into a summer of surge demand. This trip to Carlsbad is, in a way, the place where those threads come together in person.

The point was never just the finish line

If there's one thing an odyssey teaches you, it's that arriving somewhere is rarely the actual point. The point is everything you learned getting there — the pacing, the detours, the companions who kept you moving.

We're looking forward to two days of exactly that. If you're attending IMN's Short Term Rental Summer Forum next week, come find us. We'd love to hear about your own journey — and the parts of your operation that feel more like a sprint than a marathon right now.

See you in Carlsbad.

Curious how Una works in real operations?

Talk to our human sales team, see where Una is already working, and hear feedback from real use cases. Book a quick call here.