What To Look For In A Vacation Rental Channel Manager
Channel managers were originally built for hotels to be able to sell rooms on multiple booking sites at the same time. But as the vacation rental industry has exploded, theres now an increasing number of companies offering channel managers for vacation rentals to meet the demand.
A vacation rental channel manager is software that will automatically distribute your property listings across multiple booking channels. Depending on the software, this means you can sync calendar availability, rates, and other property details.
There are dozens of vacation rental channel managers you could choose from, and more popping up all the time. It can be a bit overwhelming, really.
But not to worry. Weve done the research for you, as part of our ongoing effort to be able to make the best, most informed software recommendations to our clients. Before we get into our reviews of the best channel managers for vacation rentals, here are a few things to keep in mind while deciding.
With these in mind, lets get into our reviews and comparisons of the best vacation rental channel managers on the market today.
Best For Advanced Features: Appfolio
AppFolio
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Has a minimum monthly fee
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Not fit for a small number of properties
Besides supporting all types of units, AppFolio has developed à la carte features a landlord would need to operate and grow their business remotely, earning our top vote for best for advanced features.
Because it doesnt have tiered pricing, but rather an onboarding fee and then a monthly fee based on the number of units, AppFolio is best for those that have multiple properties. Although each advanced feature is pay-as-you-go, there is a minimum monthly fee of $280, which means smaller property managers would have to pay a higher cost per unit if they manage fewer than 166 commercial units or 200 residential rentals.
To set up an AppFolio account, you would need to pay a at minimum $400 onboarding fee, after which the cost of each property is as follows:
- Residential: $1.40 per unit monthly
- Commercial: $1.50 per unit monthly
- HOAs: $0.80 per unit monthly
- Student Housing: $1.40 per unit monthly
AppFolio supports multiple property types, including residential properties, commercial buildings, student housing, and community associations. Each of the features is designed for the specific property type youre using, so AppFolio has everything a landlord would needaccounting software, rent collection features, maintenance requests, marketing tools for multiple platforms, utility billing, and customizable online leases.
Sabeeapps Vacation Rental Management Guide
Managing a vacation rental property can be a demanding task. Even on the best days, it has many challenges. Maintenance, cleaning, bookings, cancellations, special requests, complaints… And the list goes on.
Vacation property management comes with many challenges but theres no reason to despair. Todays hotelier has a wide variety of tactics and tools. In order to help you handle your rental properties, weve put together a short guide below. Its been designed to familiarize you with some of the best practices for vacation rental management.
With our vacation rental management guide well try our best to help you with the ins and outs of managing vacation rentals. In addition, well discuss the time, money, and energy you can save by using a vacation rental management software.
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Airdna Revenue Management & Market Research
Pricing: $20-100 / market
Airdna has the best market data in the industry and the best data visualization. Among the unmatched tools that Airdna offers paid users is the Rentalizer Airbnb Financial Calculator. Airdna is the preferred tool of Lifty Life for market research and homeowner reports. Airdnas weakness in its revenue management software which is less built out than competitors and lacks PMS integrations. However what it lacks in revenue management capabilities it makes up for it in solid market data, dashboards, and reporting tools. Lifty Life uses Airdna in conjunction with an integrated revenue manager.
Synchronization Of Your Calendars From Multiple Platforms
If youre looking for multi-platform synchronization, a good idea is to opt for a cloud-based tool with integrations to a variety of vacation rental platforms. The tool with such functionality will allow you to keep calendar dates or prices in sync across different vacation rental platforms online. Avoid dreaded double-bookings and the hassles, and negative reviews associated with them.
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Best Vacation Rental Management Software 2021
Vacation rental management software solutions are designed to streamline the process of owning and managing a rental property. There are solutions with more basic features, which are designed for those who manage just a handful of properties. More advanced tools will include nuanced automation features, which will better serve those who manage many units and properties.
Features found in vacation rental management software include a guest messaging portal, property management features, review management features, and a channel manager to connect with travel agencies like Airbnb and Booking.com. These tools provide immense value by allowing properties to be listed across many different channels while simultaneously being managed from one interface. Whether you’re an individual managing one property or a management company with 200 units, you’ll want a VRMS to simplify your business.
Hostaway Property & Channel Management Software
Pricing: $20-50 / listing
Hostaway is among the most robust and complete systems in the vacation rental software industry. Hostaway has preferred, premier, and partner status with Airbnb, VRBO, Booking, Expedia, and TripAdvisor. Along with stellar support, superior features Hostaway is the top choice of Lifty Life. Hostaway is ideal for large scale or scaling STR property managers. The list of ever-expanding integrations, plus their Zapier connection, open API, and custom fields makes it one of the most flexible and customizable property management systems.
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Brainstorming Features In Vacation Rental Management Business App
Hopefully, you have understood the need for a rental property app for your business. Lets plan further and decide the ultimate features in your rental property management business app:
Arrange Cleaning Schedules And Team Management
If you invest in vacation management software, you wont have to spend your time contacting your cleaning team every time a guest checks out. Top-notch automation tools are capable of creating and sending cleaning tasks automatically.
Technology will certainly help you to manage your team more efficiently. Automation allows your staff to see their assigned duties and enables you to be able to monitor task performance.
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Best For Single Family Homes: Propertyware
Propertyware
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Some customer support complaints
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Fit only for large portfolios
Focused on single family home property management, Propertyware is fairly simple to use, without complicated features commercial management software can have, making it the best choice for single family home management, whether you have few or many. Youll benefit from Propertywares management features whether you are starting out with your first few single family homes or growing into a portfolio of more than 250 of them. It has everything a landlord needs including online rent collection, accounting, maintenance requests, vacant property marketing with leasing agents, marketing with listing syndication, tenant screening services, lead tracking and follow-up, and a portal for vendors.
Propertyware currently has three pricing tiers: Basic, Plus, and Premium, with costs starting at $1 per unit, 1.50 per unit, and $2 per unit, respectively. With the Basic plan, you can run reports advertise your vacancies manage the properties with owner and tenant portals and streamline maintenance work orders, accounting, tenant screening, and rent payments. The Plus plan adds conveniences like two-way text messaging, eSignatures, and inspections. At the Premium level, you can manage your maintenance projects and add portals for your vendors. Each respective tier has a minimum monthly fee of $250, $350, and $450, so to optimize your unit costs, this program is best for managers of at least 250 homes.
Property Management & Channel Management
The backbone of a short term property management business is your property management system in conjunction with your channel management software . These two systems work in tandem to distribute your listings to major online travel agencies , communicate with guests, manage cleaners, and gain a holistic dashboard view of your vacation rental business.
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Best Vacation Rental Software 2021
If you are planning to start renting your vacation property then as a property owner, it seems a great idea to start your own renting vacation homes online to get an additional source of income. However, it can be difficult because if you have never run a business before. Also, the endless list of tasks creates hassle in managing the vacation property.
Although you do not need to be afraid, there are several tools and resources available which will make your job easier. This is the reason why vacation property management software comes in the play. It is specially designed for vacation rentals, which simplify the booking and management process of one or more properties.
Additionally, vacation rental software provides complete online solutions you need to run your business at your fingertips. After all, managing vacations should not be like work. Now, you can say goodbye to multiple systems, bills, support teams, and needless integration issues. Precisely, you can manage online bookings, build unlimited views of listings, reservations, etc. and share them with owners and your team.
Best Vacation Rental Software
Vacation rental software is designed to support vacation rental companies with customer management, bookings management, and facility maintenance management. This type of software helps vacation rental companies manage a customers satisfaction during their vacation. It is used by managers and supervisors to track daily activities such as cleaning and maintenance or guest traffic by sales and marketing for promotion and by staff members to plan and schedule rentals.
This type of software usually integrates with online booking websites where vacation rental companies can share their offerings. Even though most solutions provide basic facility management functionality, it is commonplace that vacation rental software also offers integration with facility management software.
To qualify for inclusion in the Vacation Rental category, a product must:
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Syncbnb Best For Short
- Starts at $15
Syncbnb is designed specifically for landlords and property managers with short-term vacation rentals.
This isnt really an all-in-one solution for managing properties. Instead, this platform synchronizes your listing calendar across multiple booking sites.
Syncbnb updates your calendars in real-time across every site to avoid double bookings. In fact, the software offers a zero double booking guarantee.
The concept is simple. Lets say someone books your vacation unit on Expedia. The listings on HomeAway and Booking.com will automatically block out those dates. It syncs with 200+ booking channels.
You can use this software to manage multiple listings as well. It allows you to stay organized for all of your short-term rental properties.
Pricing starts at $15 per month per rental unit with an annual contract. The month-to-month rate is $19.
Syncbnb is not a full-service property management solution. Youll need to collect payments and manage bookings through other platforms. But its a great add-on to avoid double bookings and manual labor, especially for those of you who are managing multiple vacation properties and listing them on multiple websites.
Try Syncbnb free for 30 days.
Benefits Of Vacation Rental Software
Vacation rental software aids vacation rental owners and vacation rental managers from beginning to end. These highly customizable systems help publish listings, make booking easier, centralize communications, boost traffic, automate charges and payments, manage teams, create schedules, generate legal forms, and more.
All of these tools increase revenue, reduce costs, raise customer satisfaction, and help vacation rental businesses grow.
Easily Publish Listings Across the Most Popular Sites
Vacation rental software use channel management systems to automatically publish all of your vacation rental properties across all major booking sites from a single source. These software systems maximize exposure for your listings with minimal effort and resources.
Help guests find your listings on Expedia, Airbnb, Booking.com, Homeaway, Hotels.com, and any others. Channel managers eliminate publishing and updating listings for each individual property on each individual site. And they help remove the hassle of guests having to find and book through your own vacation rental website.
Instead, get direct bookings from these popular travel sites. Once guests do that, all necessary data will automatically upload onto your vacation rental system.
Boost Search Rankings
Vacation rental software has tools to raise your listings on booking sites through automated SEO tools. Get tips on things like property descriptions, meta tags, header tags, and more.
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What To Look For In The Best Vacation Rental Software
When managing a single bed and breakfast, there really isnt much to do. You only need to:
- Communicate with the potential guests and let them know when a vacancy is available.
- Find a way to make it possible for these guests to pay you.
- Schedule daily tasks such as cleaning, repairs, and other necessary aspects of running an attractive bed and breakfast.
While this can be simple enough when you have only one property, things get very complicated when you run more than one in a different location. Say, for example you have another house in France and you would like to have that listed on Airbnb.
If you are based in Hawaii and you realize that running a house in France, one in England, another in Kenya, and maybe just a few more in exotic places like the Bahamas makes more financial sense than just running one home. You will need a way to keep all these locations organized. Bear in mind that you wont be on the ground.
The right vacation rental software allows you to do several things:
What you are basically looking for in the right vacation rental software is a tool that will make the management of all your properties as seamless and as efficient as possible from one central location.
Vacation Rental Software Buyer’s Guide
Vacation rentals offer more flexibility with lodging when compared to hotels. There are more rooms available at an average in the apartments, houses, and villas worldwide than there are in hotels. This creates a big market opportunity for vacation rentals. However, vacation rental becomes difficult when it comes to booking availabilities, which you can do easily with the vacation rental software.
» What is Vacation Rental Software?
Vacation Rental software enables you to start your online website or app for online accommodation booking. You can customize the software for other businesses including home rental, apartment rental, hotels, villas, and lodges. The software helps property owners, bed and breakfast owners, vacation rental managers for automated booking, availability management, and increase their revenue.
» What are the Features of Vacation Rental Software?
Vacation rental software enables your vacation rental business to run and automate with ease. It allows property owners to create their marketplace for online room booking and reservations. The software eliminates the uneasiness of your routine vacation rental business life, with its built-in feature-rich tools.
Whether you are a startup or an established entrepreneur, you can take full advantage of the vacation rental property management software. However, you need to keep an eye out of key essential features of the software.
Channel Manager
Centralized Calendar
Unified Inbox Tools
Automation Tools
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Best Free Vacation Rental Management Software
Vacation rental management software solutions help property managers streamline the property management process with features like channel managers, centralized calendars, direct booking websites, guest messaging tools, and more. Whether youre an individual owner looking to manage a couple properties or a management company with a large property portfolio, VRMS solutions are designed to make the process easier.
Tools like this can get pricey, especially enterprise-level software tools designed for management companies with hundreds or thousands of units. Many companies, however, offer free plans or free trials that offer basic functionality. Well provide you with a brief list of these solutions below.
All of our recommendations are based on research, product demos with the software companies, and dozens of hours spent hand-testing the vacation rental management tools. More details regarding our research process can be found on our vacation rental management category page.
Check Out These Free Trials
Some vacation rental management software tools offer a free plan. Some others offer free trials of advanced plans, which is a great way to test whether or not the tools will support your business. These trials generally range from seven to 14 days and offer more features than are found in basic plans. Companies weve reviewed that either dont offer a free plan or have a lackluster free plan are briefly described below.
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