Great Reasons To Use A Vacation Rental Property Manager

Hilton Head Vacation Rental Company

Managing a vacation rental can be a lot of work, especially if hosts are dealing with guest bookings, choosing the right pricing, and juggling vacation rental platforms and listings.

A property management system can give hosts a critical advantage in better managing their time, guest bookings, and listings. Here are the top reasons why a vacation rental hosts should use a property management system to help manage their listings.

Automate Replies for Better Communication

Communication is vital when it comes to hosting an Airbnb, and property management systems provide hosts a suite of tools to communicate more efficiently with their guests and ensure that any messages or requests are quickly taken care of.

These systems allow for easy automation of messages, allowing hosts easily stay on top of communications at any time of day or night. From sending check in and check out messages to automatically sending house rules once guests have confirmed their bookings, automated messages save hosts from the time and hassle of writing out the same messages over and over.

Some property management services even include built-in guidebook creation services, making it easy for hosts to create a welcome guidebook for their home which already answers a lot of the first questions guests may have after they’ve checked in.

Easily Manage Multiple Vacation Rental Platforms and Listings

For vacation rental hosts looking to maximise their bookings, listing their home on multiple platforms such as Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com is a must, but managing bookings across more than 1 platform can bring about a lot of busywork.

Just about every property management system comes equipped with a master calendar, allowing hosts to easily observe the various bookings of their vacation rental across any websites they’ve listed their home on. This helps avoid schedule conflicts, ensuring hosts don’t double book their home for the same days and allowing them to easily stay on top of the house prep in between bookings.

For vacation rental hosts managing several properties the master calendar feature is much more helpful, giving them the ability to find the bookings on all platforms for all of the properties they’re managing. This enables property managers to suggest alternative vacation rentals if a potential guest property is unavailable, since they’ll be able to find all of their properties and bookings at a glance.

Advanced Pricing Tools and Features

Pricing is essential for vacation rental management, as it can be the difference between profitability and non-profitability. If a listing is priced too low, hosts are leaving revenue on the table, and if it is overpriced they’ll struggle to secure enough bookings so as to stay profitable.

Having fluid pricing that fluctuates based on historical data about popular seasons, local events near your listing, and hotel room availability and demand for vacation rentals in an area can give a huge advantage over those who use an unchanging pricing arrangement.

Property management systems leverage both historical information and real-time data about the area around a listing to ensure it’s always priced competitively.

Certain property management systems even enable hosts to offer perks and features like mid-stay cleaning and other additional amenities to make sure every guest request that is possible is taken care of. Hosts can even automate discounts based on different parameters or provide special one-time discounts for loyal returning guests, giving hosts control on their vacation rental’s pricing and booking opportunities.

Easily Manage Team Members and Payments

For property managers and vacation rental hosts that have a team that can help prepare and manage listings, a property management system can help automate team management and payment tasks.

A central master calendar allows every team member to see all listings and bookings so everyone is up to date with what properties will need to be cleaned or prepared for guest arrivals. Managers can easily see who is assigned to which tasks, allowing them to quickly assign and schedule team members into the next task that needs doing.

While dealing with payments can often cause headaches, a property management system makes it easy to ask and record payments, accept direct bookings, and set up security deposits or specific rules for taxes. For vacation rental hosts who are managing properties for a homeowner, property management systems also simplify distributing payments to owners, taking the hassle of managing payment transfers and information.

Listing Analytics and Performance Reports

A massive part of property management is adjusting pricing or listings based on past performance to make sure a listing is always performing to its potential.

A property management service creates and continuously updates financial and performance reports so vacation rental managers always have an overview of how things are going and what has to be adjusted. Hosts will be able to see occupancy rates for their various properties, active and assigned leads, and the conversion rates of your team’s various members.

For hosts managing a homeowner’s property, these reports are easy to export and send to owners so they can know how business is progressing. Having access to transaction histories for all vacation rental properties, a property management system can easily create financial reports so property managers don’t have to make and update spreadsheets, and can spend their time ensuring guests have the best possible experience.