Vacation rentals are a booming sector in the industry at the moment. Whether you are new to property management and renting out a single room or a seasoned expert running multiple holiday rentals, there are a number of essential vacation rental management tools that you will want to take advantage of to transform your business.
Among the biggest challenges that we hear about from vacation rental managers are:
- Lack of time to manage everything that goes with running a vacation rental business
- Inconsistent occupancy levels
- Over-saturated market
As with all businesses in the tourism and hospitality industry, it can seem like you need to be a master of everything when it comes to short term holiday rentals. How do you make sure that you avoid long periods of low occupancy? How do you make sure that people can easily find your property when searching online? And how can you avoid spending too much time managing all of these things?
The 3 Best Vacation Rental Management Tools
The short answer: technology! There are countless great vacation rental software tools available to use. And the great news is that if you choose wisely, you should save yourself time, increase your online visibility and grow your occupancy levels and profitability. We’ll highlight the top 3 that we believe will help transform your holiday rental business.
Channel Management Software
A great channel manager developed specifically with vacation rental management in mind, will almost certainly revamp your property’s business!
So what’s the best channel manager for vacation rentals?
The key things you need to be looking for from your channel management system are:
- Great connectivity across multiple platforms
- Real-time availability
- Two-way integration with other systems such as your property management software (PMS)
- Great customer support
Great Website
It might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised by how many holiday rental owners don’t invest in a modern and functional website. If you want to be successful in vacation rental management, a great website is a necessity. You don’t have to spend a fortune to achieve this. In fact, it is relatively easy and cost-effective to get a great, easy to use website with its own direct booking engine up and running in no time!
Make sure you choose website designers who work in the industry and understand the style of website that will deliver the highest rates of booking conversion. Some of the other key features you should look for include:
- Responsive design; so that your website can be viewed and navigated easily on any device
- Google-friendly; using the latest design techniques to ensure it is easy for Google to index
- Fully editable without having to engage a web developer to make minor changes for you.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is such a great tool and when used to best effect it can certainly transform your vacation rental management business. Creating a social media profile on relevant platforms where your potential customers hang out such as Facebook and Instagram, gives you the opportunity to:
- Showcase great photos of your holiday home
- Allow guests to leave reviews for your property
- Engage directly with your guests, answering questions about the location and local amenities
If you don’t have time or the confidence to manage your social media presence, work with a trusted partner to ensure your vacation rental marketing is the best it can be.
Whether you rent out a single room, a couple of holiday homes, run a bed and breakfast or maybe a caravan park, HiRUM’s Property Management Software has been designed to accommodate property managers just like you. Let us help you simplify your business. Give the team a call now on 07 5574 4990 or fill in the form below for a free demonstration of our software.
Complete the form below to enquire about HiRUM’s Vacation Rental Software & Services
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