A holiday rental business is a golden opportunity for many New Zealanders who have a house or apartment in a good location. Airbnb, VRBO, and HomeAway are the leading industry platforms offering short-term vacation rental services. By providing professional holiday rental management software, these platforms have connected homeowners and guests from all over the world.
Vacation rental management software can help you make this task easier, and in some cases, eliminate it entirely. Vacation rentals have become a very popular type of accommodation. In fact, transaction volume for this type of accommodation has been steadily increasing over the last several years. The vacation rental management software used by your property can help you improve your online presence and work more efficiently to improve conversion rates – which will directly impact your bottom line!
Vacation rental business is an efficient way to make extra money. More and more people prefer to spend vacations in rented accommodations. A comfortable and cozy apartment is much better than a crowded hotel room. Increasing number of visitors coming to your website is a concrete indicator of the fact that you should consider renting apartments or rooms to travelers. Of course, you shouldn’t forget about the profit maximization. That is possible only with professional help and reliable tools.
Today’s article is dedicated to the best vacation rental management software which can help you organize your business, communicate with tenants and minimize the risk of loss.
What is Vacation Rental Software?
Vacation rental software better known as Property management software (PMS) is packed with features that help vacation rental owners and managers accomplish crucial business operations seamlessly, including managing the business from anywhere, anytime, across multiple properties. As well as,
- tracking reservations in real-time with integrated channel management
- creating detailed guest profiles for targeted marketing
- collecting and analyzing data for detailed owner accounting and reporting.
In short, a property management system centralizes the reservations and operational tasks for your vacation rentals business. Rather than logging into multiple OTA platforms such as Airbnb, Vrbo, separately to manage reservations and communicate with guests, a property management system lets you do it all in one place.
Stessa
Stessa is a digital platform for property investors to manage, monitor, and communicate the performance of real estate assets. Created by real estate investors, Stessa allows users to easily keep track of property performance, finances, and the paper trail that comes with real estate investing—in one central place.
Stessa will track income, expenses, and provide investors with dozens of critical investing metrics and tax-ready documentation.
Beyond the fact that it’s free, Stessa also offers a number of innovative solutions for landlords who want a tool that moves beyond simple accounting inputs and outputs. For instance, Stessa recently added real-time receipt scanning with automatic tax-ready real estate categorization to the Stessa mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Simplify your rental property reporting
All receipts and invoices that are scanned with the Stessa app are also available on the online platform and vice-versa, so you always have a complete picture of your property expenses. Stessa’s machine learning and OCR technologies parse all the details and then organizes the information. All transaction details are stored in the cloud with the industry’s best security, so everything is always accessible and available during tax time or for audit purposes.
Further, Stessa has a document storage feature that allows landlords and investors to capture all of their critical financial and accounting documents in one centralized database.
Other cool features from the Stessa accounting software app includes rental reports and a mortgage portal for those looking to explore their financing options.
Quickbooks
Quickbooks is accounting software used by businesses in all industries. It is a powerful accounting tool designed for businesses of all types to track and manage income and expenses.
As such, many landlords have turned to this platform to manage their rentals. Quickbooks can easily allow you to receive and track rent payments, pay contractors and property managers, and track fees and track property maintenance.
That said, because Quickbooks is a more general accounting software suite, it lacks many of the industry-specific features that landlords may require like investing metrics.
Appfolio
Appfolio, and Buildium below, are both full suite property management software. Appfolio is therefore a powerful tool for landlords and property managers to keep track of tenants, properties, payments, word orders, and more.
Appfolio does have accounting features, such as deposits, online payments, automated late fees, and more.
Buildium
Buildium is similar to Appfolio, in that it is more of a full-fledged property management platform than one specifically designed for accounting. Buildium does offer some accounting features such as company financials, payment tracking, accounts payable, and more. And, you get all these accounting tools with Buildium’s core membership, it’s not an upgrade.
Buildium also includes some in-app calculators and an e-filing tool when it comes to tax time. To compare both Appfolio and Buildium, here is a comprehensive analysis of both software suites.
Landlord Studio
Landlord Studio is a property management software that offers both a desktop and convenient iOS and Android app versions.
Unique features include a clean and modern UI as well as solid accounting features.
However, beyond its accounting features, Landlord Studio can feel a bit lacking compared to other tools on this list.
Landlord Studio features
- Robust accounting features such as rent and expense tracking and reporting
- Tenant screening
- Clean UI
Landlord Studio pricing
Landlord Studio uses a monthly pricing model with an additional cost per unit. Their Start plan is $5.99 per month for 1 unit, with each additional unit after the first being $1 per unit per month.
Their premium Scale plan starts at $19.99 per month when paid annually for 1 unit, with the same $1 per unit per month added after the first unit.
Beds24
Beds24 offers all of the standard property management functionality (multi-calendar, channel manager), plus a booking engine and integrations with several ancillary services. It’s best for property managers who want to take full control of their operations and don’t need much guidance from support representatives, since Beds24 does not offer phone support.
Unique features: Beds24 allows for a lot of customization – you can add essentially any restriction, pricing rule, fee, and policy you want, and the system makes it easy for you to set up channel connections on your own without the assistance of a support representative.
Integrations: Beds24 offers direct connections to Airbnb, Agoda, Booking.com, Expedia, Vrbo, and Tripadvisor. Several other regional channels are also available, as is iCal import and export functionality. Beds24 also integrates with PriceLabs, Wishbox, Mailchimp, several keyless entry solutions (igloohome, RemoteLock), and several payment processors (PayPal, Stripe).
Pricing: After a 14-day free trial, a Beds24 subscription starts at about $10 per month for one property. Additional properties/units and links to channels cost about $1 each. If you have 5 properties listed on 3 channels each, your monthly fee will be about $20. If you have 50 properties on 3 channels each, the monthly fee is about $70.
Disadvantages: Unlike some other systems on this list that have invested heavily in user experience and building a sleek, beautiful interface, Beds24 is a bit clunky. But while it’s not the most fashionable system, it’s certainly functional.
Bottom Line: Beds24 packs a lot of features into a very small price. If you’re comfortable with a less user-friendly experience, this system is an excellent value.
iGMS
Since its launch in 2015, iGMS has grown to support over 100,000 listings with its property management system. You may know the company by its old name, AirGMS. In addition to a multi-calendar, automated messaging, and booking management, the system offers special functionality for automating cleaning team operations and notifications.
Unique features: Some systems only let you set up a direct Airbnb or Vrbo connection to one Airbnb or Vrbo account, but iGMS allows you to configure direct connections with multiple Airbnb accounts, which is a nice option for property managers who list different properties under different profiles. The cleaning management features also help to streamline cleaning operations at scale.
Integrations: Direct integrations are available with Airbnb and Vrbo (for rates, availability, and reservation); all other sites use a simple iCal connection. iGMS doesn’t offer much in terms of third-party software integration.
Pricing: After a 14-day free trial, iGMS offers two plans: a pay-per-booking plan with a fixed cost (around $1) per booking, or a monthly or yearly subscription with no fees per booking. The “Pro” plan costs $100 per month for 5 properties and includes 24/7 email and phone support. Under the same plan, 20 listings cost $360 per month with an annual subscription.
Disadvantages: iGMS does not offer a direct connection with Booking.com or Expedia, making it a less strategic system for property managers or hosts who want to distribute listings on sites beyond Airbnb and Vrbo. As of today, iGMS also does not offer a website builder.
Bottom Line: Professional property managers, rather than individual owners or part-time hosts, may get the most benefit from iGMS, especially if your business is focused on Airbnb and Vrbo and not Expedia, Booking.com, or direct bookings.
OwnerRez
Catering to the traditional vacation home market, OwnerRez brands itself as “built by owners, for owners.” The company believes in simplicity and transparency, but that doesn’t mean the system lacks functionality. In fact, OwnerRez offers a vast array of features, from a multi-calendar to a guest database to automated message templates and responders. OwnerRez is known for its clean, user-friendly interface and hands-on customer service. The company is open to suggestions and encourages users to let them know about any features they’re missing.
Unique features: OwnerRez offers their own damage protection and travel insurance products. The system also allows you to collect and analyze your guest reviews from a variety of different sites.
Integrations: OwnerRez offers integrations with dynamic pricing software (PriceLabs, Beyond Pricing, Perfect Price), several keyless entry systems (RemoteLock, among others), guest communication tools (Wishbox), and QuickBooks (extra fee applies). You can also add an OwnerRez widget to your website via WordPress, Weebly, SquareSpace, and WIX.
Pricing: After a 14-day free trial, OwnerRez charges a monthly fee dependent on the number of listings and a choice of add-on features. With no add-ons, the monthly fee for 5 listings is $28.99 (as of June 2020) and $131.99 for 50 listings. The plans include unlimited bookings. Add-ons include website hosting, channel management, and QuickBooks integration for a few more dollars per month.
Disadvantages: iCal imports and exports are included in the monthly fee, but for property managers who want to use the channel management functionality to sync rates, availability, restrictions, content, and policies to sites like Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, and Tripadvisor, you’ll need to pay extra. OwnerRez does not have an integration with Expedia (yet).
Bottom Line: OwnerRez is a great choice for cost-conscious property managers who want a lot of features, integrations, and input into the company’s development pipeline.
What are the Benefits of Vacation Rental Software?
Let’s have a closer look at – what you can expect from a vacation rental software system and help you pick a system that works well for your business. With a system in place, you can enhance your productivity, at the same time take advantage of marketing opportunities, new listing channels, and exciting integrations with ancillary services.
Obtaining the correct vacation rental software can do the heavy lifting and help your vacation rental business run more smoothly. But what exactly can these systems offer you? And which vacation rental property management systems are the best?
Conclusion
Owning a vacation rental not only requires you to fulfill the guest’s requests, but also to ensure that there are no damages at the end of their stay. It is the park owner best interest to screen your tenants and verify their documents are valid. This can be a time-consuming and tedious task, but with a good vacation rental management software, this task can be handled much easier.
With pressure from both clients and owners, the need for vacation rental software solutions continues to grow. The purpose of this post is to present you several of the best solutions available on today’s market. Most of these solutions also work as a vacation rental manager which allows you to manage your bookings, guests, customer support and maintenance. As most of them are cloud-based solutions so they can be used from any location.