Property Management Solutions for Short-term Rentals
In this article, we’ll explore how property management software can help you put repetitive administrative tasks on autopilot, and how to choose the best solution for your business.
Being a short-term rental property manager can be extremely rewarding, as short-term rentals often offer higher earnings than traditional long-term rentals. Yet, if you have multiple vacation rental properties in your portfolio, managing them effectively involves many responsibilities, from communicating with guests to setting prices to coordinating cleaning and maintenance tasks to managing finances.
STR property management professionals face many challenges in staying on top of things and ensuring that both property owners and guests are happy. But with the right vacation rental software that offers a comprehensive set of features, you can spend less time on administrative tasks and focus more on enhancing the guest experience and growing your business.
In this article, we’ll explore how property management software can help you put repetitive administrative tasks on autopilot, and why Hospitable stands out as the top solution for STR property managers, enabling you to scale efficiently with AI-powered automation.
Benefits of Short-Term Rental Management Software
Property management software (PMS) is designed to address common challenges in short-term rental management. A robust PMS centralizes and automates business operations and is a valuable tool for anyone who is running STR properties, giving you more time to focus on strategy.
For professional managers looking to scale, property management software is crucial, providing a framework for efficiently managing complex tasks and maintaining professional standards across dozens or hundreds of properties.
Here is how using a PMS can make a difference for your STR property management business:
Centralized management: A PMS provides a centralized platform for managing bookings, maintenance tasks, payments, and guest communication across booking channels, eliminating the need to log into multiple sites.
Saves time with automation and streamlined workflows: Automating administrative tasks like calendar updates, guest messaging, scheduling cleanings, creating invoices, and processing payments, etc., frees up your time to focus on other aspects of your business.
Better guest experience: Short-term rental software with AI-powered guest messaging features like Hospitable helps ensure timely communication with guests to provide them with accurate information and to resolve issues faster. This way, you make your guests feel taken care of and welcome, which leads to positive reviews and repeat bookings.
Data and insights: PMS offers reporting and analytics features, giving you a clear view of how your properties are performing, which allows you to make informed decisions about pricing, marketing, and property improvements.
Financial management: Property management systems like Hospitable provide tools for creating invoices and owner statements, payment processing, and integration of accounting software.
Supports business growth: As your portfolio expands, a PMS allows you to manage additional properties and ensure accuracy and consistency without proportionally increasing staff.
How to Choose the Right Property Management Solution for Short-term Rentals
Choosing the right property management solution is a critical decision that can significantly impact the operational efficiency and profitability of your STR property management business. But with a wide range of options available, it’s not easy to figure out which provider is best for you.
Ultimately, choosing the right PMS depends on your specific needs for short-term rental management. Property management systems differ in their capabilities and features, so it’s important to have clearly defined criteria that will help you evaluate and compare different solutions for property managers. Here is what you should consider.
First, assess your needs and priorities and create a list of must-have features and nice-to-have features. Making a list of the biggest challenges you and your team face can help you prioritize features and assess the software's actual functionality.
Pay attention to available integrations. Ensure the PMS integrates seamlessly with major booking platforms and other tools you currently use, such as smart locks, smart thermostats, accounting software, noise monitoring solutions, etc. The best solutions, like Hospitable, offer a variety of connections, making it easier to use all your favorite tools more efficiently.
Prioritize user-friendliness: Look for a property management solution with an intuitive interface that is easy for you and your team to learn and use efficiently. This allows you to reduce the time and resources needed to train your staff.
Evaluate cost: Balance features and pricing to ensure that the solution offers good value and you won’t overpay for tools you don’t need.
Keep in mind your business model and plans: Select a property management solution that is flexible and scalable so that it will evolve with your business, and you won’t have to switch platforms as you grow.
Take advantage of free trials to test out different options and their features to see which solution best aligns with your business priorities and fits your workflows. Free trials also allow you to test the user experience.
Key Features to Look For
A good STR property management solution should offer a core set of features to effectively manage your short-term rentals and keep property owners updated on their property’s performance to maintain good relationships with them without the time commitment.
Robust solutions like Hospitable include features designed to address common challenges in short-term rental management and ensure efficient operations.
Core management features and operational tools:
Channel manager: Sync rates, availability, and reservations across multiple booking channels in real time to prevent double bookings.
Dynamic pricing: Set competitive rates automatically based on market conditions to maximize revenue.
Guest communication tools to automate guest messaging at all guest journey stages
Unified inbox: A centralized platform to manage all guest messages from different channels.
Task automation: Schedule and assign cleaning and maintenance tasks for your team based on the booking information.
Listing management across booking platforms: Manage and update your listings on OTAs and a direct booking website from a single platform (property details, photos, amenities, etc.)
Connectivity with smart devices: Manage smart locks and smart thermostats to enable a self-check-in and save energy.
Direct booking websites: Accept direct bookings to reduce reliance on OTAs and build your brand.
Financial and analytical tools:
Analytics and reporting: Dashboards and reports that provide insights into the performance of your properties to help you make data-driven decisions.
Accounting solutions: Integrations with accounting software to simplify bookkeeping, organize expenses for tax purposes, and streamline financial reporting, owner statements, and owner payouts.
Owner portals: Allow property owners to access data on their property’s performance, view owner statements and invoices, and book time for their personal stays.
What Is the Best Solution for STR Property Managers?
When looking for a property management solution to scale your business, you’ll want to choose a provider that offers as much value as possible to make your daily operations easier and more profitable. If you manage STR properties for multiple owners, a robust PMS is the backbone of efficient operations. So take a look at this chart that compares Hospitable and other popular PMS across key features designed specifically for property managers.
| Hospitable | Hostaway | Guesty | Lodgify | Hostfully |
Owner portals | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Reporting dashboards | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Owner statements | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Expense management | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Listing management | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Professional accounting integration | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Owner payouts | Yes | No | No | No | No |
As you can see from the comparison chart above, Hospitable really stands out as the only property management solution that offers owner payouts while providing the full feature set.
Hospitable’s Solution for Property Managers: Key Features
Let’s take a closer look at the key AI-powered automation tools and features that make Hospitable a top choice for STR property managers with growing portfolios seeking a scalable solution to simplify management, save time, and optimize revenue.
Automated guest communication
Hospitable uses AI to handle up to 90% of routine messages, ensuring timely, consistent communication with guests across different booking channels at all stages of the guest journey. Hospitable AI tools help quickly draft detailed personalized responses to answer tricky guest questions and unusual requests.
Hospitable is the only property management solution that allows you to opt for a fully automated AI inbox by setting up times when the AI can automatically reply to guests’ inquiries. This feature significantly saves time and ensures 24/7 guest support.
Moreover, Hospitable is the only PMS that scans guests’ messages across all channels for mentions of issues that may be causing a bad guest experience, and highlights the conversation in your Inbox to alert you or your team to step in. This feature helps keep your team informed, helping them stay ahead of issues and prevent bad reviews.
| Hospitable | Hostaway | Guesty | Lodgify | Hostfully |
Scheduled messages | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Guest reply drafts with AI | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Automated upsells of vacancy nights | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
Full guest reply automation option | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Dynamic pricing
Hospitable features a Dynamic Pricing engine that adjusts nightly rates automatically based on demand fluctuations, competition, seasonality, and other factors to help maximize your revenue and maintain optimal occupancy. While other PMS offer this feature as a paid add-on, Hospitable’s Dynamic Pricing is included on every plan at no extra cost, saving you money on third-party pricing tools.
You can use this feature for some or all of your properties. As soon as you activate it, Hospitable will immediately push the current recommended rates to your connected booking channels, including Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Agoda, and your direct booking website. Then, the nightly rates are automatically updated every 24 hours based on the latest market conditions and are applied instantly wherever you list.
Hospitable also integrates directly with top dynamic pricing tools for STR managers that leverage real-time market data to recommend optimal nightly rates aligned with your strategy. If you decide to use alternative solutions, Hospitable will apply the correct markup for each platform and push the updated prices across your connected channels.
Smart lock and thermostat automations
Hospitable integrates with many brands, including Schlage, SmartThings, August, Yale, Nuki, and IglooHome app-connected smart locks. See the complete list in our support article. You can connect supported smart locks to your Hospitable account in the Device Dashboard for automated, contactless self-check-in. Then, Hospitable will automatically create unique door codes for each stay and share them with your guests in your messaging flow.
Hospitable also integrates with Honeywell and Ecobee smart thermostats, so you can connect the supported models and manage them from your Hospitable account to save on energy costs while maintaining guest comfort. Hospitable will adjust the temperature automatically based on your booking schedule to optimize energy use.
The smart lock and smart thermostat management feature is included in the subscription plans. The Professional Plan includes 2 smart devices (smart lock and/or thermostat) per active property, and Mogul contains 4.
Analytics and reporting
As an STR property manager, you need data about your performance to make informed decisions to grow your business. With Hospitable’s Analytics and Reporting feature, you can access all the necessary data across your entire portfolio in easy-to-read metrics dashboards.
You can filter data by property, guest, teammate, and timeframe to see what is working and fix what’s not.
You can build and save custom dashboards for task counts, revenue, occupancy, tax totals, and more, and share them with your team.
You can share dashboards with owners via a shareable link and generate clear, professional performance reports in Excel format.
Owner portals
Keeping owners informed is as important as setting the right pricing strategy and providing excellent guest experiences. With the Owner Portals feature, you can easily keep owners updated on their property’s performance by creating a branded owner’s portal for each of your clients.
Here, owners can get access to a dashboard that offers a consolidated view of KPIs and revenue breakdown for all their properties and check their performance at any time.
Owners can also view the details of monthly statements and invoices that are published or paid and download these documents in a PDF format.
In the Calendar view of the Portal, your owners can see their property's calendar for current and future months and add their own stays.
Owner statements
Hospitable makes it easier for you as a property manager to arrange finances with your property owners. You can generate invoices and owner statements and share them in the Owner Portal for instant access. Each statement shows income, expenses categorized for proper bookkeeping, property management commissions, taxes, and net payout.
Owner payouts
Hospitable really stands out with the Owner payouts feature. It allows property managers to schedule a payout to their owners when they publish their monthly statements and then pay the amount through Hospitable. You need to connect your business account and invite each property owner to connect and verify their bank account in the Owner Portal.
Integrations with accounting software
For STR property managers, accounting isn’t always straightforward, but keeping track of revenue, expenses, and owner payouts is crucial to ensure accurate financial reporting and to simplify tax time. So Hospitable integrates with trusted accounting software to help you keep your books in order and stay tax compliant. Currently, the accounting connection with QuickBooks is included for users within the Mogul plan.
Once you connect your QuickBooks account to Hospitable, our system will automatically sync your financial data from reservations, transactions, and owner statements into QuickBooks, ensuring your financials are categorized correctly in the accounting software. This eliminates the need for manual data entry to update your accounting information and ensures that all financials are accurately reflected in your balance sheet and profit and loss report.
Listing management
When you list properties across various booking channels, making changes to property details and adding or removing photos for each listing can be rather time-consuming. With Hospitable, you can manage and update your Airbnb, Booking.com, and Direct listings much more quickly and easily in a single platform. Any changes that you make to your listing details or calendar (availability and pricing settings, discounts, fees) on Hospitable are automatically pushed to all three accounts simultaneously.
Copilot
Copilot is your AI assistant, designed to help you access real-time insights, analyze the performance of your properties, and manage operations. You can ask Hospitable’s Copilot questions in plain English about bookings, guests, reviews, amenities, cancellations, tasks, and more, and make informed decisions.
Copilot pulls data from across your business and can help you check revenue, occupancy rates, length of stay, and booking trends, compare performance across your properties, and track workload distribution across your team. It’s important that Copilot continues to improve and that new tools and capabilities are added regularly.
As you can see, with Hospitable, you can get all the property management tools to streamline your daily operations, optimize performance, and save time. Our STR super app will help you put repetitive tasks on autopilot, deliver an excellent guest experience, maintain strong relationships with property owners, and improve your bottom line. Hospitable consistently earns raving user reviews across multiple platforms and wins awards for product innovation and an excellent user experience.
Consider Pricing Structure
Pricing is an important factor to consider when comparing STR property management solutions. Not all providers are transparent about pricing for property management solutions.
Typically, PMS providers offer custom pricing for short-term rental management businesses, and you need to reach out to their sales team for a quote. They may offer you a demo to test the system, then require you to sign an annual contract you can’t terminate without losing money. If the system requires personalized configuration, some PMS providers charge an initial setup fee. Many platforms also add charges for additional features and capabilities.
Hospitable is different because it offers a transparent pricing structure that delivers value for money without hidden costs, allowing you to calculate your costs upfront and avoid unexpected expenses. The platform uses a subscription-based pricing model and offers three tiered plans tailored to meet the needs of hosts and property managers. Each plan includes a 14-day free trial with no setup fees, and users can cancel at any time.
| Hospitable | Hostaway | Guesty | Lodgify | Hostfully |
Top-tier package for 3 properties per month | $99 | Custom | Custom | $147 | Custom |
Free trial | 14 days | No | No | 7 days | No |
Dynamic pricing | Included | Paid add-on | Paid add-on | Paid add-on | Paid add-on |
Smart locks | Included | Paid add-on | Paid add-on | Paid add-on | Paid add-on |
Smart thermostats | Included | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported |
Hospitable is a powerful, all-in-one solution for vacation rental property managers seeking a comprehensive platform that provides the foundation for growth. Whether you manage 10 STR properties or a few hundred listings, Hospitable offers tools to streamline operations, enhance guest experience, and keep owners happy. With AI-powered automation, built-in dynamic pricing, and advanced financial and analytical tools, Hospitable is built to help property managers scale confidently and stay in control.
