Three Aspects of Vacation Rental Business Transformed by Automation

igmsBusinesses are continuously searching for new tools that will help them to work more efficiently and increase the productivity of their employees.

Vacation rental businesses, in particular, are re-assessing how they’re going about completing their daily tasks like key exchange, guest communication, cleaning, etc. As a result, many are turning to automation software in order to remain competitive.

This shift toward automation is influenced by the short-term rental market becoming supersaturated. Now, more than ever, it’s imperative that a vacation rental business finds ways to improve the overall guest experience if it wants to survive. Moreover, the vacation rental industry has also become more digitalized. You don’t need to look further than the success of Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com etc. and the big role that digital marketing plays to realize that the way the vacation rental industry operates has forever changed.

How has vacation rental software changed the industry?

Vacation rental software has introduced significant changes to how a vacation rental business operates. Now owners can rent out multiple properties on various listing sites effortlessly. The main issue with listing on multiple sites is that it becomes more complex to stay on top of your calendars, cleaning schedule and guest communication.

Though with the right automation software, calendars can be synchronized in real-time, guest communication can be instant and cleaning tasks can be automated. It also empowers a vacation rental business to track its rentals via one dashboard. Thus, now that there are reliable tools to prevent double-bookings, there’s no reason why a vacation rental owner or property management company can’t list on multiple sites. Let’s look at the three aspects of short-term rental business drastically transformed by automation.

Guest communication

A vacation rental business can’t afford to miss an inquiry or take too long to reply. In fact, if host replies within the hour (preferably in just a couple of minutes), it’s also not good enough. Also, one of the best ways to prevent complaints that can ruin your vacation rental business is to make sure that you respond promptly to inquiries during the guests’ stay.

Nowadays software solutions offer personalized templates and triggered messaging that can make it possible to communicate with guests instantly helping to build customer retention.

Team management

Automation software can also help to optimize your cleaning and team management and make it less daunting. For example, you can use software to create a cleaning task and assign it to a specific cleaner and he/she will receive your request via a text message and/or email. The cleaner can then report back via an app when the task has been completed and the property is ready for the guests.

Tracking reservations and tasks

Several automation software solutions boast a multi-calendar dashboard feature which makes it easier to keep track of reservations. This feature eliminates the need to switch between accounts which can become really time-consuming, especially when you’re managing for vacation rental investors. All your listings from different platforms (Airbnb, Vrbo, etc.) will be managed from one place. You can see everything at one glance which makes it much easier to plan all the important tasks linked to every booking. All in all, a single interface saves valuable time which can be spent on growing your business instead.

A channel manager can help with controlling the availability of the property on different platforms and updating reservations across multiple platforms, but vacation rental software just boasts more functionality. The advanced automation software such as iGMS will combine all these features (and more) so that you can complete routine tasks more cost-effectively and free manpower and other resources that you can use to provide more value to your guests. Ultimately this means that growing your business has just become a whole lot easier!

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