Airbnb Property Management: 101 Guide

Hosting on Airbnb can be a great source of extra income, but managing a vacation rental property demands time and a good understanding of guest expectations and often feels like a full-time job. That's why many property owners turn to professional managers to handle the workload.

Can't decide between becoming a DIY Airbnb host or delegating the management responsibilities to a professional? Read this guide, where we delve into the world of Airbnb property management to help you make an informed decision. 

What Is Airbnb Property Management?

Airbnb property management involves overseeing the operations of short-term rental properties, ranging from managing bookings, cleanings, and maintenance to marketing and delivering an exceptional guest experience.

Airbnb rental management is different from regular property management, although, in some instances, it overlaps it. Managing a short-term rental involves spending much more time communicating with guests and marketing the property than traditional property management.

People typically book short-term rentals on holiday, so it's essential to focus on providing a memorable guest experience. You must ensure perfect communication with your guests via messages to give them the necessary information for their stay at the right time. Guests also have a lot of questions and expect fast answers.

Being available to your guests 24/7 can be challenging, but you can streamline guest messaging using vacation rental software like Hospitable. Our system uses AI to save you time and help make your guests feel valued by sending personalized automated messages and responding quicker to guests' questions.

Managing an Airbnb can be rewarding, but because of the frequent turnover, it requires commitment and involves a range of tasks that can consume significant time. So, if running an Airbnb seems to be taking up a lot of your time and effort, you can choose from 3 options to make your life easier:

• Hire a professional property manager who will oversee the property on your behalf
• Share your responsibilities with an Airbnb co-host
• Automate your hosting routine using Airbnb management software

In the table below, we compare these options across several categories to give you a better idea of how they differ.

Airbnb Rental Management: Hire a Manager

A professional property manager can take care of your home and guests to ensure that your Airbnb property runs smoothly, gets positive reviews, and remains competitive.

Their responsibilities typically include:

• Creating and optimizing property listings to attract more potential guests
• Implementing dynamic pricing strategies to increase occupancy rates and maximize revenue
• Responding to guest inquiries and booking requests and handling guest communication before, during, and after the stay
• Screening guests and keeping properties safe
• Managing bookings, cancellations, and turnovers
• Coordinating regular cleaning and maintenance between guest stays
• Restocking supplies between guest stays
• Complying with local rules and regulations
• Managing online reviews

By taking on these responsibilities, an Airbnb property manager can help you save time and ensure your guests have a great experience. But remember that you could have little to no control over your STR property and its management.

Airbnb Management Fee

While hiring a property manager means Airbnb passive income, it also comes with certain fees you need to consider. Airbnb management fees cover the time and effort it takes to handle important tasks to keep an Airbnb up and running.

These fees can vary widely depending on different factors, such as

• Location of the property—Airbnb property management fees are likely higher if your rental is in a prime tourist area with high average daily rates.
• Size of the rental—managing a bigger property means more work than a smaller one, resulting in higher fees.
• Scope of services—the cost depends on whether you opt for a comprehensive package or a limited number of services.
• Market conditions—in markets with high competition among property managers, fees might be lower.
• The specific property management company or individual you hire—established companies with a proven track record and experienced managers may charge higher fees.

You'll encounter two most common types of Airbnb management fees: a flat fee and a percentage-based fee.

With a flat fee structure, hosts pay a fixed rate for a specified set of services required for running an Airbnb business on their behalf. The fee remains the same monthly, no matter how many nights the property is booked.

With a commission-based pricing model, the property management company charges a percentage of your monthly rental earnings, typically 20 to 30%, but it can vary from 15% to 50%. The exact rate depends on the number of services provided, the competitiveness of the market, and a specific property.

You may also want to check out our blog article to learn how much property managers charge for their services.

Hire a Co-Host to Help You with Airbnb Property Management

Instead of hiring a professional property manager, you can share your workload with a local partner or an Airbnb co-host. Co-hosts work with primary hosts and handle specific tasks, such as guest messaging, check-ins, and check-outs, to help primary hosts operate efficiently. You can divide the hosting responsibilities based on your experience, skills, and availability.

You can find an experienced co-host through Airbnb or hire a professional property management company that offers co-hosting services. Airbnb allows hosts to add several co-hosts to each listing to make hosting easier.

Airbnb co-hosts may help you with the following tasks:

• Creating your Airbnb listing
• Getting the space guest-ready
• Communicating with guests
• Cleaning and maintaining the property
• Managing bookings
• Updating pricing and availability
• Coordinating check-ins and check-outs
• Writing reviews
• Managing Airbnb supplies

Co-host fees vary significantly based on their responsibilities and the size and location of the rental property. They are typically lower than full-service management. On average, you can expect to pay an Airbnb co-host around 10-20% of the rental income.

Automate Airbnb Rental Management

If you don't mind some extra work, you can manage your Airbnb property by yourself and save on the property management fees. It's easy to minimize your work if you automate your repetitive daily tasks using vacation rental software like Hospitable.

If you decide to take the co-hosting route, you can also facilitate it with the automation tools. Airbnb offers a robust co-hosting experience. However, if you list on multiple platforms (which you should) or have a direct booking website (you should as well)—you need a team management functionality to work with your co-host.

With Hospitable, you can save time doing routine tasks, retain control over your business, manage your Airbnb remotely, and save more money for yourself. Hospitable offers advanced functionality to help you automate almost all tasks you'd ideally need a property manager to run your short-term rental business on autopilot.

Here are key aspects of hosting that you can automate with Hospitable to make your STR business more efficient.

Guest messaging

Communication with guests via messages is an essential component of Airbnb property management as it impacts guest experience, your reputation on the platform, and the ranking of your listing in search results.

Communication with guests begins from the moment a potential guest makes an inquiry and continues throughout their stay until they check out. It can be very time-consuming if you type and send each message manually. However, Hospitable enables hosts to automate 90% of their guest communication with the help of AI at all customer journey stages.

You just need to create message templates (or use our pre-loaded templates) that cover every stage of the message flow and use shortcodes to personalize messages for each guest (more than 50 shortcodes are available). Then, you can set up rules to schedule messages for each stage or based on the day of the week.

When creating messaging rules, you will be able to choose from a list of events that trigger an automatic response, such as

• New inquiry
• New pre-approval
• New request to book
• New reservation
• New cancellation
• Expired pre-approval
• Inquiry/booking denied
• New special offer
• New payment issue

You can also create question rules to send quick responses to your guests' most common questions. Hospitable's AI-powered system can recognize questions on more than 20 common topics (parking, WiFi, etc.) and answer them on your behalf, using your pre-written responses.

Hospitable also uses AI to help you generate a draft response to any guest message. If you click the magic wand in the Inbox, AI will craft a detailed response for you based on the content of the guest's message and booking details. Then, you can edit it if necessary and send it to your guest.

Hospitable can also send automated messages to guests when it's relevant, based on specific criteria. For example, if your Airbnb property is available before or after the guest's stay, our system can automatically upsell an extra night or late check-out.

Cleaning the property

Airbnb guests expect spotless property, and cleanliness is one of the categories in Airbnb ratings. Since vacation rental turnover cleaning is far more extensive than regular cleaning, hiring professional cleaners for this job makes sense.

And with Hospitable, you can automate sending reminders to your cleaning team about upcoming check-ins or check-outs. You just need to set rules to notify the right people, and our system will assign tasks to your team members based on your booking calendar.

Hospitable will send notifications to your team via email and SMS, so your cleaners don't have to (although they can) create Hospitable accounts. You can also add a checklist to each task to let your cleaners know what jobs you want them to complete during each turnover.  

Review management

Airbnb's community is built on trust, and honest guest reviews help other travelers choose where to stay during their trips and understand what to expect. As a host, you can also leave reviews of guests to help other hosts evaluate which bookings to accept.

Getting excellent reviews from your guests is crucial for your success on the Airbnb platform, so Hospitable can help you ensure your guests never forget to rate their stay. We'll help you automate review management and get more 5-star reviews with our Airbnb review generator and automatic review request. You can save time creating personalized reviews of your guests by using AI to draft them for you.

Our system will also protect your Airbnb profile from negative reviews by allowing you to send negative guest reviews right at the end of the response window. If you mark your review of a guest as a "Bad review," it will be rescheduled to 20 seconds before the review period is due to expire.

Creating a digital guidebook

Creating a digital guidebook is a great way to provide travelers with important information for their stay at your property and enhance their experience. Your guests can access your digital guidebook online from their smartphones anytime, anywhere, and find answers to all their questions without bothering you.

Hospitable users can take advantage of our integrations with such online platforms as Touch Stay, DACK, SuiteOp, or Charge Automation, which enable hosts to create beautiful and insightful guidebooks. The best thing is that you don't need any technical skills for that.

Connect your Hospitable account to any of these platforms. The tool of your choice will create reservation-specific links to your digital guidebook for your guests whenever someone books your property. You just need to set messaging rules, and Hospitable will automatically include the guidebook link to your guest messages. 

Upselling

Many hosts and property managers use upselling to enhance guest to enhance guest experience and get additional revenue on top of nightly rates. You can also offer some extras that your guests will happily pay for, such as luggage storage, additional cleaning, or unique local experiences. The good news is that you can automate the upselling of extra services using tech tools.

Hospitable offers an Upselling feature that allows you to build a list of your offerings. Your guests will find the available options in their guest portals. If they opt for an extended stay (early check-in or late check-out), all automated messages, cleaners' tasks, and smart lock codes will be adjusted accordingly. Learn more in the help article.

Channel manager

Listing your property only on Airbnb isn't enough to maximize your rental income. Successful vacation rental hosts diversify their booking sources by marketing their properties on major OTAs, such as Vrbo, Booking.com, or Agoda. This way, you can reach more travelers, attract more guests, and increase occupancy.

Hospitable's channel manager functionality allows you to manage listings on multiple channels as easily as one from a single centralized dashboard. You won't have to juggle calendars, messaging, and cleaners across bookings.

Our property syncing feature lets you sync your bookings, availability, pricing, and minimum-night stay across all channels. We'll help you manage listings on multiple platforms simultaneously and be protected against double bookings.

Direct booking website

Although Airbnb and other popular booking websites make it easy for property owners to reach potential guests, they charge hefty fees for their services. Hospitable can help you save on commissions charged by listing sites.

You can use our dedicated service, Hospitable Direct, to create your direct booking website using our professional, easy-to-customize website templates. Your property will get listed on Google Vacation Rental, so travelers will be able to discover it when they use Google to search for accommodation, and you'll get direct bookings without paying high third-party fees.  

Final Thought

Managing your Airbnb property effectively will generate substantial rental income while creating memorable guest experiences. By automating different aspects of Airbnb property management using advanced software tools, you can improve operational efficiency and save on management costs. Airbnb automation software can also help you enhance the profitability of your property and grow a successful vacation rental business faster.