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How To Manage Vacation Rental Property

How To Manage Vacation Rental Property

How to manage your vacation rental property properly can pose to be a challenge, especially in the covid era. Despite it being 2022 and the worst parts of the pandemic being over, there are still some challenges in property management that linger on.

This article talks about the various, foul-proof ways you can manage your vacation rental property for maximum increase in patronage, online presence, and revenue.

What Is a Vacation Rental Business And How Do You Start One

For context, it is important to cover some of the basics of a vacation rental business. Although this is not a step-by-step guide to start a vacation rental business, let’s highlight some of the most important basics to know.

What Is a Vacation Rental Business?

By definition, Vacation rentals refer to private properties that are rented out to travelers on a short-term basis. A vacation rental defers from a hotel in the sense that they generally offer more facilities like kitchens where a guest can cook, exclusive privacy, and access to local culture.

A vacation rental business entails all the processes involved in acquiring, maintaining, marketing, and renting out these vacation rental properties to travelers.

You can check out this thorough vacation rental startup checklist to serve as a concise guide as you embark on your vacation rental business journey.

What You Need to Know About Vacation Rental Management?

Whether you plan to manage your property yourself, or you’re looking to hire a property manager, there are a few things to keep in mind when you’re getting started as a vacation rental business.

Know Your Market

The first thing is to know your market or as some might say know your audience. Determining your market is important as it will influence other decisions involved in starting and managing your business.

Some of these decisions include finding the best location for your target audience, what people visiting that area looking for in a vacation rental property, and, what regulations you would have to take into consideration.

Make Your Guests Top Priority

You’re going to find multiple guides online on how to manage your vacation rental property. There are going to be tons of integrations, companies, apps, and tools offering their management services and promising you glowing outcomes.

At the end of the day, successful property management has to put the guest first when making any of the moves to make management easier.

You have to evaluate what amenities do your guests request for most, what steps can you take to make checking in and checking out smoother for them, and more.

Once you put the needs of your guests first; whatever they might be - you will find it easier to focus on the management strategies that are most suitable for them.

The good news is, the more satisfied your guests are, the better for your business. As long as the guest is your top priority, your vacation rental property will prosper.

Essential Tips to Managing Your Vacation Rental Property

2020 had many vacation homeowners wondering how to manage their vacation rental property remotely. Even if you live around the area of your property, these are a couple of essential tips tried and tested by experts that are guaranteed to help your vacation rental business.

List Your Properties And Keep Them Updated

Just like in the case of hotels, to ensure that you are generating the most reservations you should be listed on all the major OTAs and metasearch engines - or at least create a strategy that adds channels incrementally.

The more the channels, the larger the audience and the potential increase in revenue. Managing all of these channels can become challenging, especially as your business grows.

It’s important to keep property listing photos current and respond to customer reviews. These tasks can get tedious and time-consuming.

It’s also crucial to know how much your home is worth and where to list it online. Home rental rates vary dramatically throughout the year—and even throughout the week—so your home’s rate should change daily to match the market rate, which can get pretty tedious.

Properly setting those initial prices should be based on several factors like input from each owner, characteristics of the home, comparable home prices in the area, and guidance from the local team property management.

Make sure you keep your website and listing photos current and reply to all your guest messages and reviews. These tasks may be time-consuming without the use of all-in-one vacation rental software.

Find Reliable Local Home Service Providers

Finding reliable vendors such as housekeepers and security can be frustrating because it can be difficult knowing which ones to choose and no one wants to find vendors through trial and error.

The safest method is to keep a list of recommended, local housekeepers that will help you avoid getting stuck in an unfortunate situation where you need service urgently.

Do some research in the area in which your rental is located and make contacts with local maintenance: a plumber, electrician, or handyman.

Another method is to partner with a top property management company that will handle these for you. They should be able to easily find the cleaners, schedule them, and makes sure that your guests are completely satisfied with the outcome.

Put yourself in the shoes of your guests and break down the day-to-day events or activities that may come up and what extra services might be required.

Leverage Useful Technology Trends

From digital smart locks to booking engines and automated home systems; the sky is the limit with the amount of technology available for property owners and managers.

You probably don’t need all of the technology but, you do need some of it. Here is some common technology that vacation rental managers leverage to optimize their property management.

Get Vacation Rental Management Software

With vacation rental software like Booking Ninjas, you’ll be able to monitor and manage your operations all in one place.

Getting a vacation rental management software with only some features can be a waste of time and money if you’re going to get the software. You want one with all the features you need already built in.

Some of these features include a booking engine, channel manager, accounting features, and housekeeping software.

Try out a demo of Booking Ninjas

Automated check-in and check-out

From WIFI door locks and lockbox to electronic locks, and smart locks; the benefit of automated check-in and check-out in vacation rentals is that your guests have a secure way to check-in or check-out themselves without you being physically present.

Digital smart locks, for instance, are a dependable and secure method to welcome guests to your home without actually being there to open the front door. Each guest has a code that is only valid during the time of their stay.

Everything can be synced back to your vacation rental property management software so that it is automatically updated once a guest checks in or out.

If you own only one vacation home and live around the area or have live-in staff on the premises, then this might not be a requirement for you but, it certainly is something you have to take into consideration as your business expands.

Home Automation Systems

Similar to automated check-ins, you can install home automation systems where you’ll be able to monitor and control the AC, smart thermostats, smart lighting, etc.

The benefit of this is that you don’t need to be physically present or even have a live-in manager because you can control everything from the comfort of your mobile phone. Your new guests will receive a pleasant welcome in an invitingly lit house that is already heated or air-conditioned.

Read more: Vacation Rental Guestbook Template

In addition, once your guests check out, you can reassure yourself that everything is switched off through your phone and conserve energy and avoid paying excessive electricity bills.

Home Security

Why hire a security agency to stay around your property when you can leverage technology to keep your guests secure and, relaxed just as they would be in their own homes.

Some key security systems include surveillance cameras, motion sensors, and burglar alarms. Be sure to inform your guests in advance of the systems in place.

Whatever home security system you have in place can be synced with your vacation rental property management software.

Be A Part of A Rental Home Network

Keeping your business isolated can be detrimental to your growth. It’s important to connect with fellow vacation rental homeowners especially those that have been in the business longer.

Find out if your vacation rentals location has its rental community and try to be a part of it. There are also Facebook groups for rental homeowners, such as the Austin Airbnb Hosts, that can provide more accurate information for the local industry.

Market your Property

Advertising your vacation rental goes beyond listing it on listing sites or OTAs. There are many ways to market your rental like having your website, listing on OTAs, writing a blog, email campaigns, and social media campaigns.

According to multiple surveys , half of the teens and young adults (54%) get news at least a few times a week from social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter and 50% get news from YouTube.

Always remember that constantly marketing your rental is an absolute must to secure a high occupancy rate all year round.

Communicate with your Guests

Communicate with your guests before, during, and after their stay. Right from the moment they’re making inquiries or making their reservation, you should start communicating with your guests.

You don’t have to worry about doing this manually and keeping track of every single guest. With management software, you can easily create email responses that will be customized with your guest's name and immediately sent out at the intervals you want.

Some vacation rental software also includes email management and customized flows as part of the communication services to ensure your guests always feel like they are getting the attention they deserve.

Vacation Rental Property Management Checklist

Having a checklist to guide you as you incorporate management strategies in your vacation rental business is crucial.

To provide you with an updated and detailed vacation rental property management checklist, we've put our experience with the hospitality industry into this free vacation rental property management checklist .

Software for Vacation Rental Management

Several of the things you need to do to manage your vacation rental business require software to hold it all together. Booking Ninjas is a unified system that enables automatic data collection, management, and execution of operations of your Vacation Rental Service.

Schedule an introductory call to find out more about how this software can be of use to your vacation rental business.