Lessons From Top Vacation Rental Brands
No vacation rental is complete without a handy channel manager and we’re here to tell you why. If you’re new to the business or even a vacation rental veteran, you’re going to want to get a short-term rental channel manager immediately.
By using a channel manager that connects you to all the top online travel agents, you’ll find that your vacation rental business will become a whole lot more manageable. If increasing bookings and saving time isn’t enough of a reason, we’re here to give you a complete list of benefits that will convince you to add this tool to your business.
What is a short-term rental channel manager?
If you’re renting out a tourist accommodation, then a short-term rental channel manager is a must. Running a vacation rental business, even if it’s just one property, is no easy task. Between guests, marketing, and the house itself, this side hustle quickly becomes a full-time job.
A short-term rental channel manager like Lodgify links all your external listings to one unified platform. Instead of checking each calendar, reservation, and change individually, this advanced tool compiles all that information into one space.
If you select a channel manager with two-way synchronization, each calendar will be updated when there is a change on any listed sites. It’s just that simple!
5 Benefits Of A Vacation Rental Channel Manager
1. No More Double Bookings
When you have your property listed with all the key players like Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com, you run the risk of having your vacation home double booked. Without a channel manager syncing your external calendars, guests can book for the same days on multiple sites, which most likely will cause more than one headache (not to mention the overbooking issues).
To avoid negative reviews, you must keep the guest experience at the top of your priority list. Remember that guest experience starts from the very moment a potential client comes across your listing. Don’t leave them disappointed by having to cancel right after making a reservation. To avoid this mishap, use a short-term rental channel manager.
This tool synchronizes all your calendars, so if someone books your property on one page, the occupancy is noted on the others too. Double bookings are a quick way to agitate a customer and harm a business. As peak season approaches, be sure to eliminate this problem by implementing a channel manager for your short-term rental business.
2. Save Time By Not Updating Different OTAs & Channels Manually
Manually updating your property’s occupancy is both headache-inducing and time-consuming. Let’s go back to that lovely scenario in the first point. Let’s say that someone books your property for one week during your hottest season.
To avoid double booking, you quickly have to update this change on all the platforms that your property appears on. Of course, to get more visibility, you decided to list it on all the major online travel agencies. After logging in, finding the calendar app, and filling out the new availability, you’ve spent at least 5 minutes and you’ve only finished the first site!
If that situation sounds nightmarish, it’s time for a channel manager. The amount of energy and effort starts to add up when you have to manually input availability for each listing site. Get your time back by implementing a channel management system that automatically does all the tedious work for you.
3. Gain Insights About Your Bookings
When you consolidate all your bookings onto one easy-to-use platform, you gain valuable knowledge about your reservations. Instead of crunching the numbers yourself, you’ll be able to see where the majority of your bookings are coming from and where they’re lacking.
When you have a clear overview of your bookings, you can start to assess what that means for your business. If you see in your main calendar that you’re getting very few bookings from one particular site, you can start to figure out how to change that listing to increase your bookings. Having a channel manager that lets you visualize where your bookings come from helps you increase revenue by perfecting your rental listings.
This tool is great for getting a surface-level understanding of your bookings. Some software suites offer both channel management and analytics tools to give you deeper insights into the performance of your property. Having a general feeling for how your property is performing is a great perk that comes with channel management, but take it a step further with a complete vacation rental property management software.
4. Increase Brand Awareness
If you maintain numerous properties and four or five different calendars for each vacation home, you’re looking at hours of work. Without a channel manager, you might stick to just posting your property on one or two sites to make it more manageable. Unfortunately, that trade-off means limited brand visibility.
When you have a short-term rental channel manager, you don’t have to worry about the upkeep of multiple sites, meaning that you can list your property anywhere and everywhere! The more sites you list on, the more brand visibility you’ll achieve, thus helping your profits.
Also, with a channel manager like Lodgify, you also get the ability to launch your own easy-to-use custom branded direct bookings site.
This way, combined with a tool like StayFi, you can generate repeat, direct bookings from all the guests that stay with and have enjoyed your property – no matter what OTA they originally booked on.
5. Have More Time To Focus On Your Business
There are many moving parts to a vacation rental business and, for most single-unit property owners, this is just a part-time effort. Your time is valuable and shouldn’t be wasted on menial tasks like updating property availability three times over on different websites.
Current times have shifted the travel landscape. People are booking last-minute vacations, canceling and rescheduling. All of those things take away your precious time when you have to account for changes manually. Your energy could be much better invested in growing your business when you implement a channel manager.
You can better invest your time in other areas of your business, like marketing your property on social media, renovating the exterior, or strategizing for the slow season. Now more than ever, customers seek out top-quality service and if you’re spending your time manually updating your calendars, you’re not going to have enough time to give to your guests.
Key Takeaways
When it comes to your vacation rental business, it’s always better to work smarter rather than harder. Without a channel manager, you’ll be stuck spending time, money, and energy on a task that can easily be automated.
We’ve given you five great reasons why your business needs a short-term rental channel manager, but there’s still plenty of others (just think of all the perks you get with a little more free time!). In a time where you have to be more strategic about your business decisions, consider all the benefits that this advanced tool offers.
The ultimate goal is to work less and earn more. Many property owners let this side business become a full-time project because of time-consuming tasks like manually updating calendars, but it doesn’t have to be. Let a channel manager take the effort out of managing and owning a vacation rental.
