Benefits of Using a Property Management System for your Airbnb

Managing an Airbnb can be a lot of work, especially if hosts are dealing with guest bookings, picking the right pricing, and juggling multiple vacation rental platforms and listings. A property management system or Airbnb management service can give hosts a serious 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.

1. Automate Responses for Better Communication

Communication is vital when it comes to hosting an Airbnb, and property management systems give 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, letting 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 might have after they’ve checked in. 

2. Easily Manage Multiple Vacation Rental Platforms and Listings

For vacation rental hosts looking to maximise their bookings, listing their home on multiple platforms like Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com is a must, but managing bookings across more than one platform can result in a lot of busywork. Just about every property management system comes equipped with a master calendar, allowing hosts to easily see the various bookings of their vacation rental across any sites 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 multiple properties the master calendar feature is even more helpful, giving them the ability to see 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’s desired property is unavailable, since they’ll be able to see all of their properties and bookings at a glance. 

3. 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’s overpriced they’ll struggle to secure enough bookings in order 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 structure. 

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 upsell perks and features like mid-stay cleaning and other additional amenities to ensure every possible guest request 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 complete control on their vacation rental’s pricing and booking opportunities. 

4. Easily Manage Team Members and Payments 

For property managers and vacation rental hosts who have a team that helps 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 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 to the next task that needs doing. 

While dealing with payments can often cause headaches, a property management system makes it easy to request 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 out the hassle of managing payment transfers and information.
 

5. Listing Analytics and Performance Reports

A huge part of property management is adjusting pricing or listings based on past performance to ensure a listing is always performing to its highest 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 needs 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 need to make and update spreadsheets, and can spend their time ensuring guests have the best possible experience.

Which Property Management System is Best?

Since it’s clear that a property management system has tangible benefits when it comes to organising your Airbnb hosting, you’re probably wondering which system you should start using. While many of the top vacation rental management systems share a lot of the same features, there’s a few that stand out with some unique offerings. We’ve written up a post breaking down the five best property management systems for Airbnb hosts which looks at the special features which set each one apart.

If you’re simply looking for a property management system which is integrated with Keycafe to automate and easily manage your key exchanges, look no further! Keycafe recently integrated with Guesty, and we’re allowing Keycafe and Guesty users to freely try out the integration which is currently in beta testing.