Running an Airbnb is one of the best ways to make money from your home, but managing one or more vacation rental properties can be time-consuming and somewhat stressful, and not everyone has the time to do it. Today's guests have high expectations when they book an Airbnb rental—they want hotel-quality amenities, 24-hour support, and personal yet professional service.
If you have a daytime job or other responsibilities, it can be a struggle to keep up with it all. And in fact, you don't have to do everything by yourself. You can always find help with the day-to-day running of your STR properties and delegate some of your tasks.
In this blog, we'll talk about essential Airbnb hosting services you can take advantage of as a host to ensure your rental runs smoothly and efficiently and avoid added stress.
Airbnb Hosting Services: What Are Your Options?
Renting out your property on Airbnb and other OTAs can be a rewarding experience. Still, it involves many responsibilities, from managing bookings, coordinating check-ins, scheduling cleanings, and regular maintenance to marketing your rental. One of the most time-consuming aspects of hosting is communicating with guests to provide them with the necessary information for their stay at the right time.
That's why many successful hosts choose to automate guest messaging using vacation rental software like Hospitable. Our system uses AI to help you ensure fast and clear communication with guests during all customer journey stages, making them feel valued and cared for.
Have conversations with your guests even when you sleep
If managing your short-term rental seems to be taking a lot of your time and effort, you can always take advantage of Airbnb hosting services and use Airbnb automation tools to make your life easier. Let's take a closer look at the options you can choose from.
Hire a property manager
There are Airbnb hosts who hire property managers or property management companies to manage their short-term rental units for them. A professional property manager offering comprehensive Airbnb property management services can care for your property and guests.
A property manager can handle the day-to-day tasks of running your rental on your behalf while ensuring your guests have a memorable experience during their stay and your listing remains competitive. Their key responsibilities can include:
- Keeping your Airbnb listing attractive and up-to-date
- Pricing your listing strategically to get more bookings and increase your Airbnb revenue
- Maintaining consistent communication with your guests from initial inquiries and bookings to check-out
- Screening potential guests to make sure they are a good fit for your Airbnb
- Taking care of turnover cleanings and property upkeep
- 24/7 concierge service
- Restocking supplies between guest stays
- Keeping the property compliant with local STR regulations, covering such aspects as licensing, safety standards, and taxes
- Managing online reviews
- Handling financial operations, including monitoring booking income, managing expenses, and paying service providers on time.
An experienced property manager can effectively market your Airbnb property to attract bookings and increase your profits, giving you peace of mind and making your Airbnb income really passive. But hiring a property manager also means giving up full control over your property's daily operations. Keep in mind that property managers charge fees for their services—typically, it's a percentage of the rental income, which can vary from 15% to 50%.
All property management companies use automation tools because that's the most efficient way of running a short-term rental business. So, you're paying for the automation tools they use and their profit. Wouldn't it be better to automate yourself?
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Delegate your tasks to a co-host
If you want to maintain some level of involvement in your short-term rental business, you may share your workload with an Airbnb co-host. You can invite a family member, a neighbor, or a trusted friend to your listing for extra help with taking care of your home and your guests. You can also find an experienced local co-host through the Airbnb co-host network or hire a professional property management company that offers co-hosting services.
You can add several co-hosts to your Airbnb listings and set up permissions for each co-host to choose what they can access and manage on your listing. Co-hosts can take on many hosting responsibilities, including
- Setting up your listing
- Interior design and styling to get your space guest-ready
- Setting prices and availability
- Managing bookings
- Communicating with guests via messages
- Cleaning and maintaining your Airbnb rental
- Coordinating check-ins and check-outs
- Helping guests during their stay
- Writing reviews
- Restocking essential Airbnb supplies and managing inventory
- Licensing and hosting permits
- Additional services
Co-cost fees are typically lower than full-service property management, and they vary significantly based on their responsibilities, the location of the property, and its size. Still, on average, you can expect to pay 10-20% of your Airbnb rental income for co-hosting services.
Airbnb offers great collaboration tools for working with co-hosts. But what if you want to list on additional platforms and collect direct bookings? And you should, by the way. That's when you need a collaboration tool with a channel management functionality.
Take your team management to the next level
Hire a virtual assistant
Virtual assistants are independent professionals who offer administrative support to customers while working remotely. You can find a virtual assistant for your Airbnb on freelancer websites like Upwork or Fiverr and hire them to take on some of your responsibilities in handling business tasks.
An Airbnb virtual assistant can handle such routine, time-consuming tasks that limit your efficiency as
- Responding to initial inquiries
- Confirming booking requests and managing reservations
- Answering questions about your properties and amenities you offer
- Asking guests to leave a review and handling negative reviews
- Managing your booking calendar and updating your prices
- Coordinating check-in and check-out procedures
- Arranging cleanings between guests, repairs, and maintenance
Virtual assistants are usually paid hourly or on a task basis, and you can expect to pay from $3 to $20 per hour. It depends on how experienced virtual assistants are, what country they are from, and how complex the tasks are.
It's up to you to decide which responsibilities you are comfortable delegating to free up valuable time to focus on marketing your property or expanding your portfolio. An experienced virtual assistant can help you stay organized, but keep in mind that it may take some time to find someone who can be a good fit for this job.
Working with virtual assistants, you will often have doubts regarding their reliability. Moreover, they are not protected from human error and don't work 24/7. Automation tools never sleep.
Hire cleaning services
Cleanliness is the top priority for Airbnb guests, and it's one of the categories in Airbnb ratings, so you should ensure your property is cleaned properly during each turnover. Doing it yourself can be challenging and rather stressful since vacation rental cleaning requires more attention to detail and involves more tasks than regular cleaning of your own home.
You need to prepare your rental space for guests who expect perfection, so it makes sense to outsource this important task to professionals. You can find a good Airbnb cleaning service that can ensure consistent cleaning practices and quick turnaround times.
Professional vacation rental cleaners can do this job quickly and thoroughly—just provide them with a comprehensive cleaning checklist to ensure they've covered everything. They will make your listing look spotless and welcoming to help you keep your guests happy and save you time and effort. Check the Operations section of our integrations page to find a reliable cleaning partner.
Airbnb Hosting Services: What Is the Alternative?
If you self-manage your Airbnb while outsourcing some of your work to a cleaning service to maintain full control over your property, you can use technology to save time on other repetitive tasks. Different Airbnb automation tools can help you streamline routine operations, making your business more efficient.
Use a dynamic pricing tool
Setting the right price for your Airbnb can help you attract guests and make more money, but navigating the pricing complexity is tricky. Although you have an opportunity to turn on the Airbnb Smart Pricing tool that can help you adjust the nightly rates for your listing based on different factors, it may not be the best option for you.
Some hosts claim that the tool prioritizes bookings over host income and sometimes suggests lower rates than they'd prefer. Besides, Airbnb Smart pricing is limited to only the Airbnb platform, so controlling your prices can be challenging if you also list your property on Vrbo or Booking.com.
A better solution to optimize your listing prices is to use a third-party dynamic pricing tool designed to maximize your revenue. Dynamic pricing tools analyze market data and trends, including local supply and demand, seasonality, holidays, events, and competitor pricing, to recommend the most effective rates for your listings and help you maximize your profits.
For example, Hospitable users can benefit from our integrations with industry-leading dynamic pricing solutions, such as Beyond, DPGO, PriceLabs, Rankbreeze, Rategenie, and Wheelhouse. These tools use more advanced algorithms that can automatically set prices for your properties based on thousands of data points, allowing you to maximize occupancy and revenue.
Create a digital guidebook for guests
Creating a digital guidebook is a great way to give your guests immediate access to important information they may need for their stay at your property and enhance their experience. A comprehensive digital guidebook also makes the management process easier for you as it helps you save time on guest communication and reduce the number of questions you receive.
No matter how comprehensive your listing description is, travelers may have many questions about your STR property, amenities, surrounding area, and local attractions from the moment they book your listing and start planning their trip. If you include this info in your digital guidebook, your guests can access it online using their smartphones anytime from anywhere and quickly find answers to all their questions without bothering you.
You can also easily update the content of your digital guidebook with the latest information in real-time, whether it's a new WiFi password, changes in public transportation, or an adjustment in check-out time.
Different software tools enable hosts to create beautiful and insightful web-based guidebooks. Hospitable has integrations with some of them, including such online platforms as Touch Stay, DACK, Charge Automation, Chekin, and SuitOp. Hospitable users can take advantage of any of these integrations and easily create comprehensive guidebooks that look professional and organized.
Connect your Hospitable account to any of these platforms. The tool you choose will create reservation-specific links to your digital guidebook for your guests whenever someone books your property. Hospitable will automatically communicate this link in messages—you just need to set a messaging rule.
Automate your hosting routine
Many DIY hosts manage their Airbnb listings using property management software like Hospitable to streamline routine operations and improve efficiency. If you connect your Airbnb account to Hospitable, our tool will allow you to automate 90% of day-to-day tasks so you can run your vacation rental business on autopilot.
Hospitable offers advanced functionality to help you manage everything hassle-free, even remotely, save time, and minimize costs associated with managing a short-term rental property. With Hospitable, you can automate almost all aspects of Airbnb hosting, so you won't need the services of a property manager.
Hospitable users can take advantage of our integrations with many platforms and tools that extend Hospitable's features and capabilities, including
- Top dynamic pricing tools
- Cleaning management tools
- Smart lock systems
- Noise monitoring systems
- Accounting software
- Data tools
- Guest portals, and many more.
You'll also be able to easily build a fully functional direct booking website for your properties using Hospitable Direct functionality to encourage direct bookings and become less dependent on OTAs. We'll list your properties on Google Vacation Rentals so you can get direct bookings with zero investment in promotion and without paying high third-party fees.
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