Starting an STR Business
Property Management
Vacation Rental Management: Everything You Need to Know
Property management is the oversight of a property by a third party on behalf of the property’s owner. Property managers are generally responsible for the day-to-day operations, from communication with guests to arranging for cleaning, repairs, and maintenance. Read the article to learn the details and fruitful alternatives.
A vacation rental property is often referred to as passive income, but in fact, it’s not the type of business where you can expect to earn money by doing nothing. Running a short-term vacation rental property requires many important tasks to ensure your business succeeds financially.
Still, you can either choose to manage your property yourself or hire a vacation rental management company. As your business grows, managing your vacation rentals can become overwhelming, but it can also be gratifying when done right.
Read on to learn more about different aspects of vacation rental management and how automation software like Hospitable can help you manage your rental property like a pro.
What Is Vacation Rental Management?
Let’s start with the definition of vacation rental property management.
Property management is the oversight of a property by a third party on behalf of the property’s owner. Property managers are generally responsible for day-to-day operations, including communicating with guests and arranging cleaning, repairs, and maintenance.
When deciding whether to seek professional management or become a DIY host, consider a few important factors.
Running a vacation rental property is similar to being in the hospitality business, requiring greater attention to detail. It involves some management tasks unique to vacation rentals, such as communicating with guests before, during, and after their stay and being available to answer their questions at any time.
These tasks are a part of the hosting routine and are very time-consuming. First of all, you should enjoy being a host and deliver a great experience for your guests. Make sure you have enough time to manage your short-term rental and be available to your guests nearly 24/7.
Vacation rental property management can come with a diverse set of challenges and responsibilities, and in fact, work never stops. That’s why automation, as much as possible, is now a necessity. In this article, we’ll discuss the basics of automation. You may be interested in our automation guide for further reading.
How Do Property Management Companies Work
Since managing short-term and vacation rentals involves a lot of work, many homeowners prefer to outsource these operations to short-term rental management companies. Owners pay property managers a fee or a certain commission from every booking.
If you lead a busy life, hiring a property manager to help you stay on top of your business can be a good option. So, how do property management companies work? Let’s take a look at the process. It includes a long list of essential operations and tasks:
Listing the rentals on third-party online booking platforms, including Vrbo, Airbnb, and Booking.com;
Pricing each rental and adjusting prices for specific calendar dates;
Communication with existing guests and responding to inquiries from potential guests;
Alignment of calendars on multiple channels to avoid double bookings;
Coordination with property cleaning and maintenance staff to ensure the rentals are prepared for each stay;
Addressing any issues that arise during a guest’s stay;
Improvement of the guest experience.
If you hire a professional company, they will take care of all aspects of managing your vacation rental property and turn it into a passive-income asset. You can be sure they know how to get the most profit from your listing, which means more cash in your pocket.
The problem is that with hundreds of STR management companies offering “full-service” options, finding the right fit can feel overwhelming.
Luckily, Hospitable can help you lighten your load. We’ll help you skip the endless search and connect you with vetted top-performing property managers in your market so you can choose confidently.
Hiring an experienced professional to handle all aspects of your vacation rental will give you peace of mind knowing that everything is properly managed. And as an added benefit, you’ll get more “you” time to relax and do what you enjoy. You will earn money from your property without the hard work of being a host.
One more aspect you should consider: are you really comfortable giving a third party full control over your property? Because if you are not, it would be better to do everything yourself.
It would be very stressful for you and your property manager if you try to control them at every step and challenge every decision they make. This will lead to a bad experience for both of you.
If you think you’ll be more comfortable being a DIY host, the best approach is to manage your listings yourself and outsource the tasks you don’t enjoy or don’t have time for, such as cleaning.
How to Manage Rental Properties on Your Own with Hospitable
Although there’s much to juggle, choosing to manage your vacation rental yourself doesn’t have to be as time-consuming as you might think. You need the right automation tool to run your STR business on autopilot.
Hospitable is an all-in-one short-term rental software that offers many valuable features to help hosts manage vacation rentals. Let’s briefly overview the critical advantages of our system that can help you manage different aspects of your business.
Firstly, Hospitable lets you manage and update your property calendars across multiple channels, communicate with guests, and answer inquiries from a single central location.
You can schedule automatic messages to your guests triggered by events such as a new booking request, check-in, checkout, a new inquiry, and more. And you can use Hospitable to automatically upsell an extended stay or late checkout if your listing is available.
Moreover, you can set up automatic responses to your guests’ questions. Our AI will recognize specific questions from your guests on more than 20 common topics and instantly answer on your behalf based on your canned responses.
You can use the AI tools in your Inbox to quickly draft and correct detailed responses to tricky guest questions. If you prefer a hands-off approach, you can enable AI Auto Replies and let the AI respond to guest messages automatically without your review.
Our system will help you manage and assign tasks to your team members automatically. Hospitable will notify your team members via email or text/SMS whenever a new job comes up.
It lets you easily manage multiple platforms and keep your calendar and pricing up to date. You can also use our built-in Dynamic Pricing tool, which automatically adjusts your rates based on real-time market conditions to maximize your property’s revenue potential. It’s included in Host, Professional, and Mogul plans, saving you money on third-party tools.
Our vacation rental property management software will protect you from double bookings with instant calendar synchronization across multiple sites, including Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, Agoda, and Google Vacation Rentals.
With Hospitable’s iCal Imports, you can sync your Airbnb calendar with niche sites like Hipcamp, Hopper, and more, and extend your reach without scheduling headaches.
Want to be less dependent on OTAs and consistently build your brand? With Hospitable, you can easily create your own fully functional direct booking website to help you stand out, generate more leads, and drive repeat direct bookings. We’ll list your property on Google Vacation Rentals, and you’ll have an opportunity to get direct bookings without paying high third-party fees.
Hospitable will help you minimize the risk of dealing with bad guests. You can create templated short-term rental agreements and automatically send them to your guests for signature. You can request ID verification from your guest directly during the rental agreement process. You can also request additional verification on any guest who booked your property.
Our STR super app includes a built-in Upsell feature, so you can increase your revenue per booking by offering paid upsells in your guests' Guest Portal without requiring any additional software.
Final Word
Some hosts believe that vacation rental property management is the best way to ensure everything runs smoothly, but many still decide to manage their property themselves.
Although earning more money on your vacation rental property when you do it alone requires dedication and effort, it can be quite rewarding with the right vacation rental management software.
Modern software like Hospitable can streamline your workflow and ensure perfect communication with your team and guests. With Hospitable, you can automate almost every aspect of running your vacation rental business.
