OTAs
Property Management
Airbnb PMS: Choosing the Best One for Your Needs
Airbnb PMS makes hosting easier. Find out what essential features to look for when choosing one for your short-term rental business.
Managing an Airbnb property involves many responsibilities and can feel like a full-time job. You need to stay on top of bookings, ensure effective communication with guests via messages, set up the cleaning schedules, and keep a close eye on revenue.
The more guests you welcome, the more tasks you handle, the greater the risk of losing control of your business. That’s where vacation rental software comes in. An Airbnb PMS can help you automate tiring and repetitive tasks and run your Airbnb efficiently with minimal effort, without compromising the guest experience.
What Is Airbnb PMS?
A PMS is a comprehensive software platform that helps short-term rental hosts and property managers manage all aspects of their properties from a single interface and streamline routine operations. Such all-in-one software platforms are designed to automate time-consuming, repetitive tasks that Airbnb hosts face daily, reduce human error, and enhance guest experiences.
Each PMS has its own unique features, but most can help you solve problems like automating the booking process, syncing calendars and pricing across channels, automating guest messaging, coordinating turnover cleanings, and reporting so you know what’s working and what isn’t. Top PMS platforms like Hospitable feature built-in dynamic pricing tools, offer integrations with smart devices and accounting software, and provide tools to build a direct booking website.
A PMS takes care of administrative tasks, making hosting easier and saving you time to focus on growth strategies. With it, you can run your short-term rental like a pro. Tools like Hospitable can help you automate most of your Airbnb management tasks and put your entire business on autopilot.
How to Choose the Right Airbnb PMS
With so many vacation rental software solutions available on the market, choosing the best PMS for your Airbnb business isn’t always straightforward. Here are the things to do when comparing vacation rental PMS options.
Do your research. Visit reputable online platforms such as G2 and check user reviews to find out which PMS are the top choices. User feedback can offer insights into how each PMS performs in real-life scenarios, highlighting both its strengths and red flags. Create a short list of potential options, prioritizing those with the most positive customer reviews.
Use free trials to determine if the software feels right. Test how different PMS operate, see their features in action, and evaluate their user interface. This step will help you better understand how the Airbnb PMS will perform, simplify your day-to-day tasks, and determine how efficiently it meets your needs.
Assess pricing to determine which PMS platforms offer the best value for money. Evaluate subscription fees—make sure you understand what’s included and what’s extra. Find out whether the total cost matches the expected profits and makes sense for your business.
Evaluate automation capabilities to determine which PMS offers the features and tools that best match your Airbnb management goals, reduce workload, and ensure more efficient and successful operations. Remember that even the best features are useless if the property management software is too complicated, so make sure that the platform of your choice is easy to use, feels natural to navigate, and doesn’t require extensive training to learn the system.
Best PMS for Airbnb: Key Features to Look For
A comprehensive PMS should offer a core set of features to address common challenges in managing Airbnb properties, making hosting stress-free. Let’s dive into the key features and tools you should look for when evaluating options to ensure your Airbnb PMS keeps everything organized and efficient.
Automated guest communication
Timely communication is key in hospitality, and since guest expectations are high, it requires round-the-clock attention and can take up significant time. To address this challenge, the best PMS for Airbnb, like Hospitable, provides hosts with AI-powered tools to automate guest messaging 24/7, enhancing the guest experience while freeing up your time.
With Hospitable, you can set up scheduled messages to create an automated messaging flow and handle everything from booking confirmations to pre-arrival check-in instructions to follow-up thank you messages.
Our STR super app uses AI to quickly send relevant automated replies to FAQs on more than 20 common topics, using your pre-written answers.
You can use Inbox AI tools to quickly generate and correct detailed, personalized responses to unusual guest questions and random comments that need a specific answer.
You can upload your guidebooks to the Knowledge Hub to teach the AI about your properties and policies, and our AI will use these details automatically to generate more accurate responses to specific guest questions.
Hospitable is the only PMS that allows you to configure AI Auto replies and let the AI automatically reply to guest messages without your review when you are not online or even 24/7.
Hospitable will help you quickly identify and address concerns that could impact a guest's stay. Our AI automatically scans guest messages for mentions of issues like broken locks or noise complaints, and highlights urgent conversations when your help is needed by displaying Issues Alerts to bring them to your attention.
Unified inbox
All-in-one PMS like Hospitable comes with a Unified Inbox that consolidates all guest messages from your listings across connected platforms. That’s very convenient because you don’t have to log into various dashboards to see which of your guests is waiting for a reply.
For example, Hospitable centralizes all messages across Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, Agoda, and direct bookings in one place. This allows you to receive messages from all booking platforms in one place and respond directly from the inbox. Your guests will never know that you’re using Hospitable because they will receive your messages on the original channels.
Task management
If you run multiple Airbnb properties, coordinating cleaning and maintenance and communicating tasks to your team is always a challenge. A strong PMS should give you task management and team coordination tools to keep everyone aligned.
For example, Hospitable includes features that let you schedule turnover cleanings and automatically assign cleaning, maintenance, and other operational tasks to your teammates, ensuring your properties are always guest-ready.
You just need to create task rules, and Hospitable will assign tasks to your cleaners automatically based on the booking schedule.
Our system will send reminders to your cleaners to notify them about upcoming jobs via SMS, email, or iCal feed on time, even if it’s the same day turnover.
You can add custom checklists with detailed instructions to any task so your cleaners know exactly what they need to do to ensure a spotless stay.
With the Marketplace Cleanings feature, we can search for reliable cleaners for each of the cleaning tasks.
Automated reviews
Getting a lot of positive reviews is crucial for your success on the Airbnb platform. So you need to encourage your guests to leave a review that reflects their experience before they check out, and to review your guests. Luckily, a good Airbnb PMS with a review management feature can automate this process for you.
With Hospitable, you’ll never miss the 14-day deadline. You can create multiple review templates and let our system randomize and auto-publish them, saving you time after every stay. If you don’t set any review rules for your property, Hospitable will use reservation and messaging history to prepare a personalized 5-star AI review suggestion.
The AI-generated review suggestion will automatically appear in the guest's conversation thread within the Inbox. You can rate your guest from Terrible to Excellent, and our AI will use your rating to suggest a review that reflects it. If you're happy with the review after editing, you can save it and schedule it for publication.
Channel manager
Listing your Airbnb property on other OTA platforms allows you to reach a wider audience and attract more guests. But manually updating your calendars increases your risk of double bookings. This leads to cancellations and negatively impacts your reputation as a host, ratings, and listing visibility.
The best way to prevent double bookings is to use a robust PMS with channel manager capabilities. Tools like Hospitable can help you avoid double bookings by automatically updating availability across all connected platforms. As a vacation rental channel manager, Hospitable will keep all your calendars and prices synced in real time across all your connected channels, saving you hours of tedious updates and reducing errors and last-minute cancellations.
Dynamic pricing
Pricing is one of the trickiest aspects of running STR properties to manage manually. It requires thorough market research and ongoing monitoring to ensure your rates are competitive and allow you to make a profit. That’s where dynamic pricing tools come in. They use advanced algorithms to calculate and adjust prices in real-time, based on market data and your strategy.
Most PMS, including Hospitable, integrate with third-party dynamic pricing tools that use real-time market data to recommend optimal nightly rates, but unfortunately, they can be costly. To help our users save money on third-party pricing tools, Hospitable features a built-in Dynamic Pricing solution that automates your pricing strategy.
While many of our competitors offer their own dynamic pricing tools as paid add-ons, Hospitable’s Dynamic Pricing is included on Host, Professional, and Mogul subscription plans at no extra cost. If you enable Dynamic Pricing for your property, Hospitable will automatically adjust your nightly rates based on demand fluctuations, competition, seasonality, and your settings to maximize revenue and optimize occupancy.
Smart devices automation
Many hosts install smart locks and smart thermostats in their short-term rentals because these devices enable automated self-check-in, ensure a comfortable temperature when guests arrive, and optimize energy use to save on utility bills. Managing your smart locks and smart thermostats in your Airbnbs will be easier if you choose a PMS that offers smart device management.
Many Airbnb PMS offer smart lock management as a paid add-on, but only with Hospitable is the smart lock and smart thermostat automation feature included in the price from the Professional subscription plan onward. The Professional Plan includes two smart devices per active property, and the Mogul plan includes 4.
If you connect the supported smart locks and smart thermostats to your account, Hospitable will sync them with bookings. Door codes and temperature settings will be updated automatically, saving you time and money.
Security deposits
Charging a security deposit is an effective measure to encourage guests to treat your property with care and protect yourself from financial risks. The problem is that Airbnb doesn’t allow hosts to charge a security deposit on the platform, and only select software-connected hosts can collect and manage security deposits off the Airbnb platform.
So if you want to add a security deposit to your listing to reduce the risk of damage and cover costs when they occur, it’s essential to manage your Airbnb through an API-connected PMS like Hospitable, which has official Airbnb integration. Hospitable has a built-in Security Deposit feature that lets you collect, hold, and release deposits automatically, protecting your property without extra work.
Automated security deposits are currently available for Direct Premium, Airbnb, and Booking.com reservations. You can add a security deposit to any of your properties—enter the amount you’d like to collect between $100-$5000. Hospitable will automatically charge your guests 2 days before check-in and refund them 2 days after checkout if no charge request is submitted. Our system will also handle all guest communication.
Rental agreements
Airbnb allows hosts to ask their guests to sign rental agreements to get additional legal protection and set clear expectations. However, it doesn’t provide any functionality to implement rental agreements on the platform.
Still, you can automate the entire process using a PMS like Hospitable, avoiding the extra work of creating a new contract for each booking and getting guests to sign it. With Hospitable, you can create templated agreements, and our system will automatically populate them with guest and booking data for each unique reservation.
Your guests will see their rental agreements in their guest portals as the registration task they need to complete to finalize their booking, and will be able to sign their contract digitally. You can also require your guest to complete ID verification when signing the agreement.
Upsells
Offering your Airbnb guests additional services and amenities that enhance their stay is a great way to increase your revenue per booking and make them happy, which can lead to positive reviews. So you should look for a PMS with upselling features that will help you offer paid upsells to your guests without requiring third-party tools.
If you opt for Hospitable, you’ll be able to offer paid upsells to your Airbnb guests in their guest portal and increase your listing’s profitability without sounding too pushy. Just create a catalog of your offerings and send your guests the link to their guest portal. Our system creates this link automatically for each booking, and you can find it in every conversation in your Hospitable inbox.
On top of multiple options of upsell services that you can provide yourself, Hospitable allows you to offer your Airbnb guests Trip Insurance and private chef experience, and earn commission on every policy sold.
Analytics and reporting
Airbnb management isn’t just about keeping things organized. It’s about understanding what’s working and what isn't, and making informed decisions to adjust your strategies accordingly so you can stay competitive. That means you need an Airbnb PMS that offers reporting and analytics tools and allows you to track your performance over time.
Hospitable makes it easy to see your property’s performance in real time using Metrics. It’s an advanced analytics system designed to give hosts and property managers greater flexibility, insight, and control.
Metrics brings your performance data together and presents it in a way that’s easier to explore. Based on your subscription level, with Metrics, you can
Get access to a pre-built Metrics dashboard with curated insights
Build custom dashboards to track metrics that matter to you
Add widgets from a growing library
Apply dashboard filters to focus on a specific slice of your data
Download reports via Exports
Share dashboards with your stakeholders who don’t have a Hospitable account.
With Hospitable, you also get Copilot, your personal AI assistant that can help you efficiently manage your properties and operations. The Copilot has access to your account data and can analyze your reservation metrics, financial performance, guest reviews, team tasks, property details, and more.
Your AI assistant will provide you with instant, meaningful insights if you ask it simple, conversational questions. For example, you can ask Copilot to check revenue and occupancy rates, analyze guest feedback and highlight common complaints, show availability and pricing over specific dates, etc.
Direct booking website builder
Relying solely on OTAs like Airbnb or Vrbo means paying commission fees that eat into your revenue. Having a website with booking capabilities is a significant advantage because it allows you to build strong relationships with guests, accept direct repeat bookings, save on OTA fees, and increase profitability.
Top Airbnb PMS like Hospitable feature integrated tools to help build your own direct booking website and capture commission-free reservations. With Hospitable, you can launch a modern, mobile-friendly direct booking site in minutes using our dedicated service, Hospitable Direct, or add the Hospitable booking engine to your website and start accepting bookings immediately.
We’ll list your property on Google Vacation Rentals so travelers can discover it when they use Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Travel to find stays in your area. If the travelers decide to book a stay with you, Google will redirect them to your Direct booking site, and you’ll get direct bookings without high third-party fees.
Integrations
No matter how advanced and powerful an Airbnb PMS platform is, it’s impossible to create software that covers every aspect of running a STR property and does everything that your business needs. That’s why it’s essential to assess whether or not your PMS of choice can integrate with other tools to help you save time, and what integrations it offers.
Hospitable integrates seamlessly with numerous platforms and tools that enhance its capabilities, including smart locks, smart thermostats, cleaning management apps, guest screening tools, noise monitoring systems, marketing automation tools, accounting software, and more. These integrations help ensure your tech stack works together, eliminating the need to switch between multiple services and keeping everything automatically up to date.
Final Thought
Using a PMS to handle the tedious, manual tasks that come with Airbnb hosting allows you to streamline your rental management and be as hands-off as you want. Even if you manage one or two STR properties, the right Airbnb PMS will reduce your workload, saving you hours each week, especially during busy seasons, so you can focus on the bigger picture—offering your guests a memorable stay and growing your business.
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Common questions
What is an Airbnb PMS (Property Management System)?
An Airbnb PMS (Property Management System) is software that helps hosts manage their short-term rental operations from one central dashboard. Instead of relying only on Airbnb’s built-in tools, a PMS allows you to automate guest messaging, sync calendars across platforms, coordinate cleaning tasks, manage multiple listings, and track reservations in one place. In simple terms, an Airbnb PMS helps hosts save time, reduce manual work, and prevent mistakes like double bookings.
Do Airbnb hosts really need a PMS, and when does it make sense to use one?
Not every new host needs a PMS on day one. If you manage a single property on Airbnb and handle everything manually, you can often start without one. However, it makes sense to use an Airbnb PMS when you: • List on multiple platforms (e.g., Airbnb and other booking sites) • Manage more than one property • Spend significant time answering repetitive guest messages • Want to automate check-in instructions, reviews, or reminders • Need to coordinate cleaners or co-hosts As your hosting business grows, a PMS becomes less of a luxury and more of a time-saving necessity.
What features should I look for in a good Airbnb PMS?
When evaluating an Airbnb PMS, look for features that directly reduce manual work and prevent errors. Key features include: • Automated guest messaging • Calendar synchronization across platforms • Channel management to prevent double bookings • Task management for cleaners and team members • Automated review requests • Reporting and performance tracking • Easy integration with Airbnb For beginner hosts, simplicity and ease of setup are just as important as advanced features. A good PMS should save time, not create additional complexity.
How to choose the best Airbnb PMS?
To choose the best Airbnb PMS, start by defining your needs. Consider how many properties you manage, whether you list on multiple platforms, and which tasks you want to automate. Then evaluate software based on: • Automation capabilities • Integration quality with Airbnb • User interface and ease of use • Pricing structure • Customer support The best Airbnb PMS is one that fits your current stage of business while allowing you to scale. For most growing hosts, the right system should reduce repetitive work, improve guest communication, and centralize operations without requiring technical expertise.