Many people invest in vacation rental properties because they think it can be a great way to generate real estate passive income. But in fact, owning a vacation rental property comes with many responsibilities and is rather time-consuming. Being a STR host often feels like a full-time job, and it’s natural that you may need assistance running your Airbnb or Vrbo.
That’s where the use of a co-host comes in. Airbnb has such a useful feature, and it’s quite easy to add an Airbnb co-host to your listing. But it’s not that easy to delegate some of your responsibilities to a Vrbo co-host.
So is there a way someone can manage your Vrbo listing, helping you take care of your vacation home and guests? Can you have a co-host on Vrbo? Let’s find out.
Can You Have a Co-Host on Vrbo?
Adding co-hosts on Airbnb means allowing someone to help you with some of the hosting responsibilities from their account. You can add a family member, a trusted friend, or someone you hired to help you, and they will be able to manage your listing from their co-hosting account. They won’t have access to your personal account, personal details, and payment and taxpayer information.
On your behalf, a co-host can perform such tasks as
Manage the listing
Update calendar and pricing
Coordinate the property cleaning and maintenance
Handle reservations
Message with guests
Write reviews
Restock essential supplies
Greet guests in person and help them during their stay, etc.
Co-hosts can take the pressure off you when you need a break from your hosting routine and help ensure your vacation rental runs smoothly.
But unfortunately, Vrbo doesn’t allow co-hosting, so there is no way to add a Vrbo co-host on the platform. In fact, Airbnb is the only OTA platform that offers the co-hosting feature.
Is There a Solution to This Problem If You’re A Host on Vrbo?
Vacation rental management involves doing a lot of essential tasks. So can someone else help you manage your Vrbo listing if you don’t want to hire a property manager who’ll be responsible for your STR property’s overall success? Yes, if you opt for vacation rental management software like Hospitable.
With Hospitable, you can gather a team, assign specific roles to each team member, and work together with them on a single platform to ensure all your guests have the best experience during their stay.
Take your team management to the next level
You can manage your team from your Hospitable account and give them access only to the features and properties they need to do their job. Actually, Hospitable offers two ways for you to share the necessary information with those that you work with directly:
Create Hospitable accounts for team members giving access to specific properties and functions.
Sending automated reminders to team members via SMS and emails without having them create Hospitable accounts.
You can create teammates and their profiles under Operations and assign specific roles to them, including
Cleaning
Check-in
Concierge
Check-out
Laundry
Maintenance
Owner
Manager
You can assign one or several roles to each teammate, and these roles will determine what communications they receive. You can select specific features and properties your teammates will have access to and set rules to let our system assign tasks to your team automatically.
Hospitable’s User Management section allows you to invite others to join your Hospitable account as secondary users with their own separate email and password. You can then set permissions to give them full or custom access to your account.
So if you decide to hire a Vrbo co-host, you can invite them to join your Hospitable account as a secondary user and set specific permissions they will have. That will depend on the particular responsibilities you want to delegate to them, for example:
Manage reservations
Update pricing and minimum stay
Update calendar and availability
View tasks associated with properties they have access to, etc.
You can also give your virtual assistant
Full access to Guest experience so they can manage guest communication via messages
Full access to Operations so they can add teammates, edit task rules, etc.
Full access to the Direct booking site
How Hospitable Can Help You Manage Listings on Multiple Channels
As you see, Hospitable makes it easier to manage your team if you have a listing on Vrbo. But sticking to just one booking channel can leave serious money on the table for your STR property.
To increase your occupancy rate and revenue, you must list your vacation rental on multiple channels, including Vrbo alternatives like Airbnb and Booking.com. It’s the surest way to reach more travelers and get as many bookings as possible.
And the best thing is that you don’t have to manage it all manually if you use Hospitable as your channel manager. With Hospitable, you’ll be able to streamline and automate the entire process on all your channels and have complete control over it.
Your entire STR business in one convenient platform
Start today with a 14-day free trial.
With Hospitable, you may not even need any assistance from an Airbnb or Vrbo host. Our tool makes it possible to automate almost all your hosting routine and manage everything stress-free without much effort.
No matter how many listings you have, you can run your entire vacation rental business from a single platform without worrying about regularly checking several websites and juggling calendars, messaging, and bookings.
You’ll be able to manage communication with guests in one centralized inbox, making it less time-consuming, and never miss a booking request or a question from your guest. We’ll also protect you from double bookings with instant calendar synchronization across platforms and automate assigning tasks to your teams based on booking information.
Hospitable will help you manage your STR business more efficiently, putting everything on autopilot, so you can focus on things that really matter.