ISTRM, the International Society of Short-Term Rental Management, is the first independent professional body established specifically for the short-term rental industry and the practitioners who run it.
ISTRM was founded in 2026 by practitioners who had spent years working at senior level inside the short-term rental industry. They had watched the industry grow from a niche category into a genuinely significant part of the global accommodation market, and they had watched the professional infrastructure fail to keep pace with that growth.
The people managing short-term rental portfolios professionally were doing work that demanded real commercial rigour, covering revenue management, distribution strategy, owner relations and operational discipline, without any of the professional frameworks, credentials or community structures that every comparable industry takes for granted.
Every comparable industry managing perishable inventory at scale has built professional societies, examined credentials and shared standards of practice. Short-term rental, despite growing into a genuinely significant part of the global accommodation market, had none of these things.
ISTRM was established to close that gap, not as a membership organisation built around networking events and newsletters but as a genuine professional body with examined credentials, independent research and a community built around a shared standard of practice.
Four principles that govern how ISTRM operates and what it will never compromise on.
The four pillars are not departments or product lines but the four things that a professional society for this industry needs to do to be worth belonging to.
ISTRM launched in 2026 with the Division of Revenue Management and the CSRM as its founding credential, and that is the beginning rather than the whole picture. The roadmap below sets out what the society is building and in what order, and everything on it is either already live or in active development. Nothing here is aspirational without a plan behind it.
ISTRM is a founding-stage society and the professionals who join now are shaping what it becomes. If you work in short-term rental management and want to be part of building the professional infrastructure this industry deserves, this is where to start.