I've briefly considered it. We are living in the States short term and decided a furnished rental was our best bet. We are in a super expensive vacation market, but managed to find something, on VRBO, and I the numbers she usuall gets for this modest place are astounding, and I looked in to it.
In the end, I just didn't want to deal with it, and the numbers didn't turn out to be as good as they first looks. Rents are much higher, but so are management expenses if you can't do it yourself because there is so much more for them to do. If we were going to be living in this area so that we could manage it, I might consider it. Tending to it during FIRE seems like it would be ideal. But the costs to pay someone to let in every new tenant, to do check out cleanings (and check to make sure there is shampoo and dish soap and toilet paper), and to deal with all everything else is pretty significant. And it's a lot more of a headache than a regular rental--not so much that it would be detrimental to a FIRE lifestyle, but more than I want to deal with from afar. If you were living abroad, do you have someone local who you could pay to do all this? Or a local service that does it? If so, look at the fees and realize how much they would cut in to the profit, and see if it still makes sense. I'd have to pay them much more than I pay the manager of my regular rental, and it seems like it would probably end up eating most or all of the extra profits of a vacation rental vs. that regular rental.
At one point, someone here posted the blog of someone who did a VRBO (or AirBnB) and compared it to his regular rental properties. I can't remember the blog, but it was pretty interesting. He was local and could self-manage, and his vacation rental ended up being slightly more profitable. But a lot more work. And that was without paying someone, as you'd need to do if you were traveling or living abroad.