If managed and taken care of adequately, a short-stay rental can bring in significant cash, allowing you to relish financial freedom and lead the life of your dream. But experienced vacation rental entrepreneurs are fully aware of the fact that keeping the business profitable requires serious time and effort investments.
Every single day, hosts and property managers have to toil at communicating with clients, handling bookings, arranging upkeep, dealing with guest reviews, adjusting prices to fit the demand, and simply keeping everything streamlined, synchronized, and controlled.
Managing an Airbnb home is not so easy as it may sound.
To reduce the workload and optimize repetitive daily operations, many vacation rental hosts and managers implement dedicated Airbnb property management systems into their business and are very happy with this decision.
A vacation rental management tool is essentially software that integrates with your account on such booking marketplaces as Airbnb, VRBO, and their ilk to bring a good dose of automation to your job. Such a tool can automate guest communication, bookings, payments, reviews, team management, and much more.
With such a nifty solution at your hand, you can better focus on other aspects of your business rather than wasting precious time on an unrelenting Groundhog Day of responding, assigning, managing, and updating.
The market abounds with various rental management software solutions, making it hard to choose the right one. To help you find the best one for your needs, we have concocted a list of the most popular products.
Hosty
Hosty is the ultimate variant for rental property managers who want to have everything at once. Allowing you to unite several online accounts under a single dashboard, this powerful software is jam-packed with useful functions to be enjoyed both on mobile and desktop devices.
This clever tool will help you handle listings and reservations across different booking marketplaces, streamline communications with guests and prospects, synchronize all your availability calendars, build your own landing pages and websites, and organize your workflow among other tip-top features. A robust analytical engine will provide detailed reports on vital KPIs to let you have a better understanding of your business’s strengths and weaknesses.
An all-inclusive type of property management software, Hosty is available at a highly affordable price. There are three pricing plans to select from, the cheapest of which costs $7 per month per active rental. You can request a free-of-charge demo session to find out whether Hosty is a perfect match for your needs.
Smartbnb
It is a good time-saving tool that provides a professional and consistent level of service to Airbnb owners. Smartbnb saves you from the stress to manually reply to customers’ messages, align your availability across different platforms, and notify your cleaners about new tasks. The software does all this (and much more) instead of you.
Some of the most prominent features include automated replies, centralized inbox, double-booking protection, channel management, team collaboration, and reporting on performance and financial metrics. €20 is the starting rate for all clients willing to connect up to two properties to the service with a 14-day free trial period. While there are much cheaper products available in the market, Smartbnb delivers solid value for its price.
Guesty
Yet another smart choice for strenuous Airbnb hosts, Guesty is designed to streamline virtually every aspect of a vacation rental business. The offered functionality is truly generous and encompasses almost every tool a property manager may need: unified inbox, a multi-calendar, a channel manager, business automation, revenue management to name a few.
The level of functionality will mainly depend on how much you are willing to pay. The more you splurge on the Guesty subscription, the more handy functions you unlock and the more units you can connect to the software. There are no unified pricing plans to choose from as the vendor offers customizable price models to be negotiated with every individual client. It is also unclear from their website whether Guesty has a free demo version, but fingers crossed it does.
Lodgify
Designed to help Airbnb professionals increase their occupancy and income, Lodgify is lauded property management software that is also chock-full of various functions. The solution can address almost every part of vacation rental management, so you can grow your business steadily.
It is a fully integrated program that comes with such features as a reservation system, guest experience management, task allocation, business processes automation, reporting, and accounting. The software is also known to offer instruments for building branded websites and collecting online card payments.
With such a diverse array of indispensable features, Lodgify makes an ideal platform for Airbnb hosts to carry out all their routine procedures. You can get started with Lodgify paying only $12 per month, but the price will increase exponentially depending on the number of property units to be managed. You have a 7-day free trial without any obligations.
Igms
A go-to solution for Airbnb professionals, Igms invites you to embrace the full power of automation.
- The software offers all the functions a rental manager may need on a daily basis, including a channel manager that integrates with different booking portals;
- Inbox and automated messages to hit replies to inquiries 24/7;
- Direct booking management to immediately accept reservation requests; payment processing to collect transactions from third-party websites.
The software also provides functionality for task management, team collaboration, workflow automation, and performance insights. New users can expect to pay $9 per property per month, but the final price depends on several factors, though. You have a 14-day trial period to see Igms in full action before you make a purchasing decision.
Being an Airbnb host or manager means being overwhelmed with responsibilities. A single negative review can ruin your reputation and jeopardize the success of your venture. To achieve full control of major business aspects, many vacation rental owners rely on computer technologies, with the help of which it is possible to automate repetitive Airbnb management tasks and give your business a serious boost. We have collected the best short-term rental management tools of today, but it is up to you to decide which one to adopt.