Managing short term rentals is a growing revenue stream, and one of the most common forms of rental property management. Much of the business is focused on short term rentals. Therefore, it is very important to know how to effectively organize and manage guest bookings to ensure long-term business performance.
Why is it important to manage short-term rental guest reservations the right way?
There is a clear dominance of short term stays over medium and long term stays. This is why it is so important to ensure effective management of your properties and guest bookings with a focus on short stays. In this way, you will achieve a higher yield and an increase in your income.
Moreover, thanks to a simpler and faster administration and better organization of your guests’ bookings, you will be able to save time and effort to invest in other tasks, while improving your customers’ experience and their level of satisfaction.
5 tips for managing short term rentals like a pro
Adopting the right strategies and maintaining an efficient organization is the basis to ensure that your business works. However, it is important to know which are the most appropriate strategies and the best way of organization. In this article we give you 5 tips for managing short terms like a pro.
1. Always be available and communicate effectively
Being available to attend to the needs or doubts that may arise to your guests, either before, during or after their stay is of vital importance. Make sure you are fully available and prepared in case this situation arises. This way you will be able to respond quickly and solve any problems or doubts that your guests may notify you about.
It is important that you maintain fluid communication with your guests. Make sure you let them know that they can contact you in case of any problem that may arise, either by phone, WhatsApp message, SMS, mail, etc.
You can use software to automate your communications, such as Hostify PMS, which, in addition to many other features, provides you with a unified inbox where you can find and manage all your guests’ messages from any platform in a single panel.
2. Make sure your properties are well-maintained
That your properties are well maintained and in perfect condition is basic. You must have a good maintenance and cleaning service to perform tasks such as property disinfection and property cleaning.
Invest in an efficient cleaning system and make sure that your properties are well maintained. Your guests will especially appreciate clean, well-kept and well-maintained accommodation, and it will prevent you from getting bad reviews about the condition of your properties.
3. Invest in security
It is crucial to keep your vacation rentals safe with smart and efficient technologies, especially in those periods of time when the property remains empty. Install automated security systems, such as motion-sensor surveillance cameras and burglar alarms, that you can connect to your electronic devices and manage from there.
Also, most of the time you will probably not meet your guests in person, so before accepting reservations, get information about them and select the ones you consider to avoid problematic stays.
4. Optimize your workflow
Managing short term rentals effectively requires that you have the right organization and know how to coordinate all your processes and communications. This is the only way to avoid mistakes such as backlogs and overflowing bookings. In addition, you will see how this has a positive impact on your guests, their experience, and their opinion of you.
To do this, you can resort to using management software to help you keep your calendar up to date; create a cleaning checklist; design custom templates for guest communications, as well as predefined ones for answers to common questions and your frequent emails; etc.
Hostify’s software puts all these tools at your disposal with its Smart Automations, the Multi Calendar, Owners Portal, and much more functionalities.
5. Use a property management software
All this can be easily implemented with property management software. This will allow you to automate most of your processes, allowing you to save time and effort that you can invest in other aspects of your business.
Software like Hostify will help you, thanks to the automations, to avoid those common mistakes derived from manual management, as well as having to manage your communications and reservations from each platform. You will have everything centralized and unified in a single control panel!
Some common mistakes to avoid managing reservations
When managing your vacation rental bookings it is also common to make some mistakes. Among the most typical ones that you should make sure to avoid are: trying to handle many tasks individually and manually; accepting your guests directly without making a previous selection; not adapting to the rules and conditions of the current regulation; charging the wrong price; not getting reviews; etc.
These are all typical mistakes of manual and individual management of properties and short-term bookings, which could be easily avoided by implementing a software that automates your tasks and facilitates the management of your vacation rental processes.
Are you ready to scale your business? Book a Demo with our Customer success team and start managing short term rentals like a pro.
