Choosing PMS to Simplify Operations for Your Vacation Rental Business

When choosing the right PMS, it’s essential to focus on tools and features that matter most for your processes and workflows. Here are key features to look for to ensure more efficient STR operations;

• Task management: Automate assigning tasks to your team and sending reminders based on the booking information.

• Team collaboration: Assign clear roles to your teammates and work together with them on a single platform.

• Dynamic pricing: Optimize your rates automatically based on demand, competition, and seasonal trends to maximize your income.

• Smart device integrations: Connect and manage your smart locks and smart thermostats to ensure seamless self-check-ins and automatically control the temperature in your short-term rentals.

• Analytics and reporting: Get insights into your STR properties’ performance to make data-driven business decisions.

What Is the Best PMS for Automating Vacation Rental Operations?

When looking for a property management system to streamline your operations, you’ll want to choose a provider that offers as much value as possible to reduce manual work and make your business more efficient and more profitable. Whether you self-manage your own property or manage vacation rentals for multiple owners, a powerful PMS with advanced features is the backbone of efficient operations.

So take a look at this chart that compares Hospitable and other popular PMS across key features designed to simplify operations.

As you see from the comparison chart above, Hospitable really stands out as the only PMS that offers a comprehensive set of features essential for automating operations as a part of its subscription plans. With Hospitable, you get everything you need to simplify your daily operations included in your plan, and you don’t have to pay extra for additional features or third-party tools. 

Key Features That Make Hospitable the Best Choice for Your STR Business

Let’s take a closer look at the key automation tools and features that make Hospitable the right choice for STR hosts and property managers seeking scalable, all-in-one software to simplify STR management, automate workflows, and maximize revenue.

Team management

Hospitable allows you to take the guesswork out of coordinating and communicating tasks with your team. You can invite your co-hosts, concierges, and cleaners to work together with you on the Hospitable platform, each with their own login and access level.

• Assign clear roles to the members of your team, such as Cleaning, Laundry, Check-in, Checkout, Maintenance, Concierge, Owner, and Manager. The roles determine which communication and task assignments a teammate can receive.

• Choose what information your team members can see and what they can do on the platform.

• Give your teammates access only to the necessary information, features, and listings that they need to ensure pleasant stays for your guests and nothing more, to protect guest privacy and property security.

• Automate cleanings and turnovers—create task rules, and our system will generate and assign tasks automatically based on bookings.

• Attach custom checklists to each task to provide detailed instructions and let your team know exactly what they are expected to do and how.

• Your cleaners don’t have to download the Hospitable app—you can let the system keep your team informed about new jobs coming up by setting task reminders to be shared via email, SMS, or iCal feed.

• You can also automate recurring tasks, such as monthly lawn mowing or weekly pool cleaning, by setting recurring task rules based on the day of the week.

• You can view and filter all property tasks in one calendar to keep track of them and quickly check what has been done and what is next.

If you are a property manager managing short-term rentals for multiple owners, you can add property owners to your team by creating a branded owner portal for each of them to keep them updated on their properties’ performance. Here, your owners can access a dashboard that provides a consolidated view of KPIs and revenue breakdowns for all their properties. You can also choose to create custom dashboards and share them with owners via a shareable link.

If you are a co-host, Hospitable makes it easier to manage operations across listings on different booking channels, not just Airbnb. You can manage all your cleaners from a single platform and assign cleaning and maintenance tasks automatically based on check-in and check-out windows.

Marketplace cleanings  

Since turnover cleaning is the most challenging short-term rental operation to scale, Hospitable partners with Cleanster to help you with it. It’s a platform that connects STR hosts with vetted, experienced professional cleaners, making property care effortless by automating workflows, facilitating quality control, and streamlining payments.

Currently, Hospitable users in the US can take advantage of cleaning services powered by Cleanster through Hospitable’s Marketplace by opting for autopilot cleanings. They work similarly to task rules, when our system automatically creates cleaning tasks for new bookings. The difference is that Hospitable will source cleaners for you through our partner's network. Professional cleaners from Cleanster who work in your area are matched to the job.

Here is how autopilot cleanings work: 

• Hospitable will provide you with an automatically generated new task checklist, which you can preview and edit before activating autopilot cleanings.

• We will use your property details to get an estimated cleaning time from Cleanster.

• Our system will automatically calculate the cost of each autopilot cleaning based on several factors, including cleaner availability and ranking in the marketplace, date and timing, travel distance, and local market rates.

• You’ll be able to communicate with your cleaner directly inside the task modal.

• We will notify you when the cleaner is on their way to your rental (via Inbox), and once the cleaning is done, the task will be marked complete with photos of completed jobs and checklists provided.

Dynamic pricing

Hospitable helps you set competitive nightly rates and make the most of every booking. Our system directly integrates with top dynamic pricing tools, including Beyond, PriceLabs, DPGO, Wheelhouse, Rategenie, and Rankbreeze. These tools use real-time market data to recommend an optimal nightly rate based on your strategy. Then, Hospitable applies correct markup for each platform and pushes the updated prices across your connected channels, including Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, and your direct website.  

Hospitable users can also take advantage of our built-in Dynamic Pricing, saving money on third-party pricing tools. While many of our competitors offer their own dynamic pricing solution as a paid add-on, Hospitable’s Dynamic Pricing is included on Host, Professional, and Mogul plans at no extra cost.

You can activate our built-in Dynamic Pricing feature for some or all of your STR properties and let our pricing engine take care of updating rates for you. Hospitable’s Dynamic Pricing engine automatically adjusts your nightly rates to maximize revenue and optimize occupancy based on market conditions, including demand fluctuations, seasonal trends, and competitor rates. The nightly prices are updated automatically every 24 hours across Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Agoda, and your direct booking site.