Tools for Airbnb Hosts: Best Apps to Save Time and Boost Performance

As an Airbnb host, you juggle many responsibilities even if you have only one rental property. There are numerous routine tasks on your to-do list—communicating with your guests, updating your calendar and pricing, scheduling cleaning, coordinating with your team, and managing check-ins.

Luckily, you don’t need to do everything manually. From automated messaging to dynamic pricing and market research, there are numerous great apps and tools available for almost every aspect of hosting that help automate tedious tasks. Let’s look at the top tools for Airbnb hosts that can save you time, boost your business efficiency, and give you more freedom to focus on growing your business.

Apps for Airbnb to Ensure Perfect Communication

Effective communication is essential for delivering a memorable guest experience. However, the problem is that guests typically have a lot of questions and expect quick answers, so replying to their messages takes a lot of time and effort.

Apps like HostBuddy AI, which utilize the power of industry-leading AI technology, can help you put your short-term rental messaging on autopilot. HostBuddy AI can communicate directly with your guests through your property management system, utilizing information about your properties to provide natural and professional responses 24/7.

You can rely on this app to handle guest questions, troubleshooting, and issue escalation on your behalf so you can focus on other essential tasks. HostBuddy AI supports integration with many major PMS, including Hospitable, and can provide fluent, human-like responses to guest messages.

Marketing

StayFi is a popular Wi-Fi, email, and text marketing solution tailored for vacation rentals. With StayFi, hosts can create a branded WiFi login page to collect contact information from every guest, not just the booker, while providing secure internet access.

Additionally, the app offers integrated email and text marketing tools to help you stay in touch with your guests and nurture brand loyalty. Using StayFi’s email and text marketing service, hosts can smoothly convert guests into loyal customers and increase repeat direct bookings.

Dynamic Pricing Tools

Setting the right pricing strategy is one of the most critical aspects of short-term rental management. You need to constantly monitor your competition and make sure you’re not overcharging or undercharging. Dynamic pricing tools can help you set prices that guarantee a high occupancy rate and maximize your revenue.

PriceLabs offers a dynamic pricing tool for popular rental platforms, including Airbnb and Vrbo. The software also integrates with various property management systems (PMS). Its innovative pricing algorithm uses data about local events, seasonal changes, holiday predictions, and trends to recommend daily rates for each listing.

PriceLabs offers advanced customization options that also allow hosts to maintain complete control over their rates, enabling them to implement their specific strategies. Hosts can set different minimum prices for weekends, adjust their last-minute discounts, and adjust rates based on their listing and portfolio’s own performance, among other options.

Wheelhouse is one of the most commonly used software platforms that offer dynamic pricing strategies to help STR property owners maximize their revenue. Wheelhouse combines data analytics with market insights to provide tailored dynamic pricing recommendations.

Its pricing engine takes into account billions of data points to set competitive rates based on real-time market data. The platform also allows users to mix rule-based and data-driven strategies. Hosts can utilize 15+ settings to adjust their pricing strategy, ensuring it reflects their preferences and aligns with their business objectives.

Accounting Apps for Airbnb

Keeping your finances in order is a crucial aspect of running a successful Airbnb, but managing the financial side of your Airbnb business can be pretty complicated. Vacation rental accounting software tools are designed to automate your bookkeeping and accounting, helping you stay on top of your financial health. They can handle everything from tracking income and expenses to managing taxes, and can help you streamline your operations and ensure effective financial management.

QuickBooks is one of the most popular accounting platforms, offering a comprehensive suite of tools to manage everything from invoicing and expenses to payroll. The software offers a comprehensive suite of features tailored for Airbnb hosting, complemented by numerous add-ons and integrations that enhance its functionality. With QuickBooks for Airbnb, hosts can efficiently manage their finances and stay on top of their STR business.

Clearing is a trust accounting and automated bookkeeping software explicitly designed for short-term rental property managers and real estate investors. This comprehensive tool can help you streamline your financial management by tracking your cash flow from multiple sources, managing your expenses, and paying homeowners and vendors. It allows you to quickly generate consistent and customized owner statements and invite homeowners to dedicated owner portals so that they can track their properties’ finances in real-time.

Hospitable integrates with several vacation rental accounting software tools, including QuickBooks and Clearing. You connect your Hospitable account with any of these platforms to automate and streamline your accounting process and ensure accurate financial reporting.

Tools for Airbnb Hosts: Market Analysis

When it comes to growing your short-term rental business, it’s crucial to stay current with the latest industry research and monitor key trends. Now, there are apps for Airbnb hosts that can help you stay informed and make sense of all the data. Here is one of the leading market research tools that we can recommend.

Key Data is the leading provider of real-time business intelligence and benchmarking tools for the short-term rental industry. The platform combines rental data from OTA websites with booking data sourced directly from 65+ of the world’s top property management systems to provide benchmarking and accurate insights based on the actual performance of more than 700,000 properties worldwide.

By using Key Data’s intuitive dashboards, vacation rental property managers can access 45+ key metrics they need to make smarter business decisions. Hospitable users can integrate Key Data with their Hospitable account to get customizable dashboards that provide accurate visibility into the performance of short-term rentals.

Vacation Rental Website Builders

A direct booking website is a great distribution channel that can help you save money on OTA fees, build strong relationships with guests, and attract more repeat bookings. Creating a beautiful direct booking website for your properties is easier than you think, and you don’t need to be a coding expert.

The most straightforward and cost-effective option is to use a website builder. Here are two of the top website builder tools for vacation rentals.

CraftedStays is a platform that enables hosts to build their own direct booking websites using templates specifically designed for short-term rentals. You don’t need any technical skills or design experience.

Simply connect your PMS to import your properties, select any professional template, personalize it with your colors, logo, and content, and publish your website with a custom domain in just 15 minutes. CraftedStays supports several PMS, including Hospitable, with property sync, so your direct booking website will get updated like an OTA.

Webready is an easy-to-use website builder tailored for short-term rentals. With Webready, you can build your own professional-looking website where guests can book your properties directly. You can choose from a variety of high-quality website templates and then customize the design to fit your personal style and professional needs.

Guest Portals

Guest portal apps are designed to make guests’ stays smoother, providing them with digital tools and services for a streamlined experience through web-based platforms. Guest portals enable guests to manage their bookings, complete registration tasks such as guest verification or signing a rental agreement, and purchase optional add-ons.

For example, Checkin is designed to provide guests with a simple, fast, and pleasant check-in experience and help hosts run a more efficient and automated management. Checkin integrates with 35+ property management systems and offers solutions for legal compliance, online check-in, guest verification, damage protection, tax management, upselling, digital guidebooks, keyless access, and online payments.

Linkbase is a guest experience platform and automation tool that helps hosts take control of their digital guest journey. It offers such features as automated check-in and checkout processes, smart upsell recommendations, guest ID verification, damage deposit collection, digital guidebooks, and more. Linkbase integrates with major property management systems, including Hospitable, without requiring you to change your current workflow.  

Best Apps for Airbnb Hosts: Guest Screening

Guest screening is a crucial aspect of the vacation rental management process. Although Airbnb does background checks on guests, they have limitations, so you can’t completely rely on them. Still, there are guest screening tools that can help you thoroughly vet each guest, reduce risks associated with bad guests, and ensure the safety of your property.

Autohost is an intelligent guest screening platform that utilizes a proprietary risk algorithm to automate the process of reviewing and verifying online reservations. Autohost offers comprehensive identity verification and fraud detection solutions for short-term rental property managers. The platform offers multiple types of background checks, including global checks utilizing open-source intelligence, criminal background checks for US-based guests, and credit history checks for guests in the US and Canada.

Truvi is an innovative risk management platform that provides advanced, customizable screening and protection tools for hosts, helping them enhance their guest screening process. Truvi automates the guest screening process, integrating it seamlessly into the booking journey. The platform offers ID verification, a sex offender check, and a criminal background check, allowing you to manage guest-related risks effectively.

Digital Guidebook Apps for Airbnb

Top apps for digital guidebooks enable you to create comprehensive, web-based guides that offer all the essential information guests need for their stay. This way, you can effectively share information about your property and local recommendations with your guests, reducing the number of questions you receive. 

For example, with Touch Stay, hosts can create interactive welcome guides that guests can access from any device, wherever they are. You need to share a link to your guidebook via automated emails/SMS or add the link to your existing messaging flow. Creating your digital guidebook with Touch Stay is easy—select your template, organize the info you want to include, add images and videos, and customize your layout and design. You can also enhance guest stays with Touch Stay’s upsell widget, offering extra products and services, embed Google forms to capture data, and playlists.

Happy Guest is a flexible check-in solution that helps you with upsells and digital guidebooks. With Happy Guest, you can automatically collect guest contact information, verify their IDs, ensure guests accept your house rules, and request that they sign rental agreements. After your guests sign the agreement, they will receive their guidebook, where you can offer them upsell options, recommendations for local dining, activities in your area, and more opportunities for reservation upgrades.

Cleaning Apps

To ensure your guests feel safe and comfortable during their stay, it's essential to keep your Airbnb clean and well-maintained. Therefore, you may want to consider hiring professional cleaners. Some apps can help you quickly find experienced cleaning staff for your Airbnb property. We recommend these apps to help you streamline your rental property cleaning and turnover process.

Turno allows hosts to find vacation rental cleaners for their Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com listings. It’s a marketplace where you can connect with and get bids from cleaners in your local area. Turno also works as a centralized platform where you can manage all your cleaning projects and communication with your team in one place. It automatically syncs your calendars from all major booking platforms into one centralized location, helping you put everything on autopilot with auto-scheduling and auto-payments.

Cleanster is an innovative platform that connects hosts and property managers with vetted professional cleaners, making cleaning coordination simple and stress-free with the help of AI. Cleanster operates as a marketplace in the US and Canada, providing access to a vast network of 150,000 vetted professional cleaners. You can easily book their services and pay them through the platform.

You can also opt for the SaaS model to integrate your existing cleaning team and utilize the Cleanster platform to manage your cleanings. The Cleanster app offers auto-scheduling, customized checklists, in-app messaging, problem reporting, and quality control.

Noise Monitoring

Airbnb noise monitors help prevent disturbances before they occur, ensuring a peaceful environment in your short-term rental property. Such devices measure noise levels in real-time and alert you if they exceed a specific threshold, enabling you to address issues promptly.

Alertify is a platform designed for short-term rental properties and hotels. Alertify devices detect indoor smoking, excessive noise, and unauthorized occupancy, allowing hosts and property managers to take proactive measures. With Alertify, you can monitor decibel levels in your property in real-time, get instant alerts for loud noises and smoking, and access detailed after-incident reports for 180+ days. Alertify is privacy compliant because it doesn't monitor guests and doesn’t record audio.

Minut provides a comprehensive solution for vacation rental noise monitoring, helping you catch problems early. The Minut sensors can detect noise levels inside and outside your vacation rental as well as cigarette smoke, temperature changes, and humidity shifts to keep guests comfortable during their stay. You can track, measure, and detect disruptions in your guests’ stay from anywhere in the world using any mobile device or desktop.

All-in-One Vacation Rental Software

Whether you are managing a couple of properties or a portfolio with a hundred listings, you need an all-in-one property management system that will help you stay on top of all aspects of your short-term rental business.  

Vacation rental software, such as Hospitable, offers a comprehensive set of tools to help you manage your properties efficiently. Our STR super app provides everything you need to streamline your operations, eliminating the need for multiple tools.

Hospitable offers solutions for self-managers, co-hosts, and property managers. As an Airbnb channel manager, Hospitable enables you to list on multiple channels and manage all your listings from a single, centralized dashboard. Our system will sync your listings’ calendars on Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and your direct booking website, protecting you from double bookings.

With Hospitable, you can automate 90% of guest communication with the help of AI and provide guests with a concierge-level experience throughout their entire journey. You can use the Suggest with AI and Improve with AI tools in the Unified Inbox to quickly draft and refine detailed, personalized responses when messaging a guest manually.

You can teach our AI about your properties, policies, and local area, and help it write more accurate messages by uploading a property guidebook to the Knowledge Hub. Once you feel confident in our system, you can also enable Auto Inbox, and our AI will automatically reply to guest messages while you sleep or 27/7.

You can utilize our built-in Dynamic Pricing solution to automatically optimize your listing rates, maximizing revenue and occupancy. The best part is that our Dynamic Pricing feature is included in the Host, Professional, and Mogul plans at no additional cost. If you activate this feature for your property, Hospitable will automatically adjust your rates based on market demand, seasonality, and other factors, and push the recommended prices to all your connected channels, including Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Agoda, and your direct booking website.

With Hospitable, you can build your direct booking website using our professional website templates in minutes and reduce your reliance on OTAs. Your Hospitable Direct properties will get listed on Google Vacation rentals, and you’ll be able to reach millions of potential guests searching Google daily and get direct bookings without paying high third-party fees.

You can provide your guests with a guest portal where they can manage their booking, complete required tasks such as guest verification and signing short-term rental agreements, and purchase optional upgrades. Hospitable also integrates with the best platforms and tools for Airbnb hosts, extending its features with additional functionalities such as cleaning management tools, smart lock systems, smart thermostats, noise monitoring devices, digital guidebook apps, accounting software, and more.

Final Thought

The best apps for Airbnb hosts provide a wide range of features to simplify hosting and enhance the guest experience, while saving you time and money. They have become the standard in short-term rental management, so you should consider using them to automate repetitive tasks and streamline your operations. This way, you can make your business more efficient, reduce your expenses, and ensure that you deliver a seamless and memorable stay for your guests.