Vacation rental properties are at the peak of popularity these days. Tourists love using online platforms like Airbnb to book accommodation for both business and leisure trips. That implies the technology is what made this business popular in the first place.
It is time to take the next step and make things easier for Airbnb hosts. Using vacation rental software can save time and reduce the risk of human error while supporting business growth and increased revenue. Let’s take a look at how you can use vacation rental management software to your benefit.
Automated Guest Messaging and Communication
Vacation rental owners list their properties on multiple platforms. That way, more people can know about their accommodation, which can result in increased occupancy rate and profit. However, this might affect the promptness of replying to inquiries that potential guests sent to their inbox.
This is where vacation rental software comes into play. The idea of this platform is to automate guest messaging and communication. First, you will receive all messages to a single inbox, which means you do not have to visit multiple sites.
Additionally, you can create answer templates for the most common questions and set-up automatically triggered messages for instances like check-ins and checkouts. That can speed up the answering process, and save you the time and effort on typing identical replies. Advanced property management software will also offer message variables that you can use to personalize the message for every guest.
Channel Manager and Multiple Account Management
If you have the same listing available on multiple platforms, a channel manager might be a true lifesaver. It is the best way to prevent double bookings since it allows you to integrate multiple channels like Vrbo, Airbnb, and others, into a single app.
Imagine if you designed a website with your properties and included online booking, but your guests can also book the rental via Airbnb. That can lead to double booking, and you don’t want to end up leaving a bad impression with potential guests. It is why you need a reliable booking software that will synchronize your calendars and show availability and reservation info in real-time.
Apart from integrating booking information, the best vacation rental software will allow you to manage active accounts and listings from within the app. That saves a lot of time because you avoid the process of switching between accounts and platforms, which makes you more efficient.
Cleaning Services and Team Management
Keeping a property clean and in top condition requires regular maintenance, and this is a must for every property owner. If you have multiple properties, memorizing all cleaning and maintenance information might be a headache. Why would you bother writing everything down when you can use a property management system to organize the cleaning crew and the support staff for your rentals?
You can create a detailed cleaning schedule with tasks for every member of the cleaning crew. Advanced software solutions like iGMS allow you to create staff accounts to manage your cleaning crew. As soon as you create a task for a crew member, they receive a notification in the form of a message or email. They can access the platform to confirm or reject the work. And the best part is that you control the access rights for every individual, which ensures a high level of flexibility.
Reviews Automation
While it is important that your guests feel comfortable while staying in your rental, that doesn’t mean the process ends once they leave the property. Reviews are a crucial part of guest management, which is why you should be prompt in publishing them.
A reliable vacation rental software solution allows you to use templates for guest reviews and publish them directly from the tool. This simplifies the process and increases the odds of your guests reviewing their stay in your accommodation. According to statistics, only 20% of vacation rental guests leave reviews, but you can increase this rate by publishing a review first.
Key Exchange Management
Owners who have multiple properties have a hard time knowing where their keys are at every moment. This might cause some misunderstandings, and even lead to losing the keys to your property.
The key exchange management feature in vacation rental tools is there to help you track your key remotely. Not only will you know where your key is, but it will also inform you whether your guests are still in the property. It might be uncomfortable for cleaners to appear if your guests haven’t left yet, and key exchange management prevents that from happening.
Most tools also have a dedicated mobile app for both Android and iOS, which means you can access the tool from any location, and check out where property keys are.
Pricing Management
A pricing management tool can help to increase your occupancy rate and maximize profit by helping you to adjust prices and other settings related to booking the property.
For example, you can add last-minute discounts in case your accommodation hasn’t been booked for the next week or so. Reducing the price might attract tourists, which increases the occupancy rate and maximizes your earnings.
Additionally, you can also change the minimum and maximum stays for every property you rent, as well as take advantage of automatic price fluctuation. This is the feature that might help with improving your ranking on Airbnb and similar platforms.
Financial reporting
You might enjoy running a vacation rental business, but it all comes down to profit. That is why you can benefit from automated financial reporting. Vacation rental management tools will provide a detailed report on your finances based on the information the software can access, and this includes booked days, rental prices, management expenses, etc.
Financial reports allow you to see whether you are profiting from your rentals, and identify ways how you can maximize earnings.
Conclusion
Vacation rental software can help property owners in multiple ways and save them time and effort in managing properties. When choosing the tool for your business, make sure that it contains all the features you need.
Most developers are ready to offer a free trial for their software, which is a great way of trying it out and ensuring it meets your expectations. If you like it, all that you have to do is to find the most suitable pricing plan, and start using the software to make your life easier!
