The Best Vacation Rental Software for 2019

Renting out your vacation property can seem daunting, especially if you’ve just started out in the real estate rental business or you’re a host of multiple listings. But fear not! Thanks to recent advances in technology, property investors and rental property hosts now have access to plenty of tools and vacation rental software that make it easier to run a short-term rental business. In fact, the increasing competition makes such tools essential and beneficial in terms of organizing tasks, saving time, getting bookings, and increasing your profit! So, what is the best vacation rental software to make use of in 2019? Here are our top 6 picks.

Mashvisor

If you want to grow your short-term rental business by buying a property to rent out on Airbnb, Mashvisor is the best software for you. Mashvisor helps real estate investors find the best investment properties (both traditional and Airbnb) in any city or neighborhood across the US housing market. So, while it’s not a vacation rental software explicitly, it could definitely help you as an investor in short-term rental properties. With Mashvisor, you can:

Use multiple tools to find the best places to invest in short-term rentals including the Heat Map, Property Finder, and Rental Property Calculator
Get access to real estate data including the Airbnb rental income, cash on cash return, cap rate, and Airbnb occupancy rate (both on the neighborhood level and property level)
Perform your own investment property analysis to determine whether or not a certain property will make a profit as an Airbnb vacation rental
Access rental comps to compare similar rental properties in an area and determine which one is more suitable for your rental strategy

To start your 14-day free trial with Mashvisor and subscribe to our services with a 20% discount after, click here.

iGMS

This vacation rental software is designed to manage your vacation rental business using smart, innovative tools. With the help of these tools, you’ll have the ability to automate your Airbnb day-to-day activities such as bookings, guest communication, and more. iGMS is especially useful for hosts owning multiple short-term rental properties listed on different platforms besides Airbnb like Booking.com, TripAdvisor, and HomeAway. Oh, and the best thing about this vacation rental software is that it offers FREE pricing plan for up to 4 listings! Meaning, when you connect 1-4 active Airbnb listings, you’re eligible to use this serevice free of charge. The main features of iGMS include:

All-in-one Airbnb Management: Synchronize your calendars from all platforms, manage multiple Airbnb accounts, and create financial reports in minutes.
Smart Airbnb Messaging: Use a single inbox for all Airbnb messages and accounts, automate communication with guests, organize your common Airbnb responses, and use predefined elements to create Airbnb messages templates.
Team Management: Invite team members, create operational tasks, schedule cleanings and tasks, and control level of access.
Airbnb Automation Tools: Change prices right via the system, automate Airbnb guest reviews, receive pop-up notifications, and use parent and child management to avoid double-bookings.

FantasticStay

FantasticStay aims to help individual Airbnb hosts or owners of vacation rental properties and property managers through a user-friendly management and distribution software. The platform automates all aspects of your rental property operations to free your time, maximize your revenue, and grow your real estate rental business. Thus, this vacation rental software is perfect for property investors or hosts with multiple Airbnb accounts who advertise on different booking channels (like Airbnb, Booking.com or HomeAway). With FantasticStay, you can keep track of your:

Listings: Store and manage all of your listings across major vacation rentals platforms, including your own website.
Calendars: Manage your calendars, pricing, and availability across all vacation rental platforms and channels.
Reservations: Manage and automate all aspects of your reservations and operations. You’ll never miss anything again as all reservations are under one roof!
Unified Inbox: Take your communication with guests to the next level with automated messages and saved replies.
Channel management: Advertise and market your vacation property everywhere and manage it all through one platform to grow your bookings.

Your Porter App

The next vacation rental software is for professional Airbnb hosts with multiple listings who want to automate their real estate rental business and manage everything from their smartphone. With Your Porter App, your listings and accounts on different platforms are managed through iOS, Android as well as tablets and desktop computers. In addition, with this software, vacation rental property owners and investors can:

Create customizable templates and schedule a specific time to deliver messages to bookings as native Airbnb chat, email or SMS messages.
Sync availability and rates between Airbnb and Booking.com in real-time
If you work with a team, you can send task lists to your teammates to schedule cleanings and check-ins.
Check your daily check-ins and check-outs, follow the tasks, and coordinate your teammates easily.
Manage everything and use email or SMS reminders and get notifications on your smartphone.
Your Porter App adds all of your guests’ phone numbers to your contact list – meaning no more unknown calls or texts on your phone.
The app also automatically marks guests who significantly had better experiences and specifically encourages them to leave a 5-star review.

As you can see, this vacation rental software resolves a lot of headaches for the professional Airbnb host and adapts to the host’s everyday needs.

Lodgable

Lodgable aims to help homeowners and professional real estate rental property hosts and managers (of all sizes) make more money today than they did yesterday with short-term rentals. The vacation rental software does so by allowing them to list their rental properties on hundreds of booking and travel sites from a single platform. Lodgable is user-friendly, simple, and an effective platform to get more bookings. It also provides users with their own free booking site, which allows you to generate direct bookings! Furthermore, other services that Lodgable offers include:

Simplifying Listings: As a short-term rental host or property investor, all you need to do is simply add your property listings once and Lodgable will publish them on the top travel sites.
Preventing Double Bookings: You can say goodbye to double bookings with this vacation rental software. With real-time API integrations, Airbnb hosts keep their calendars current and conflict-free.
Easily Accepting Guest Payments: Some channels (like Booking.com) require hosts to charge their guests. Lodgable will load the virtual cards into the platform so you can accept payments directly from its back office.

Properly

The final vacation rental software on our list is Properly, a web/mobile housekeeping and maintenance management tool for short-term rental hosts and managers. If you don’t have the time for Airbnb property management, cleaning, and other home services, Properly provides you with quality cleaners and other service providers to do the job! Not only that but with Properly you can also:

Organize and schedule cleanings directly from your Airbnb or HomeAway booking calendar.
Create and send visual, interactive checklists with the Airbnb listing photo.
Receive photos of finished work, problem reports, and updates on the jobs from cleaners.
Find the best cleaners used by other vacation rental hosts.
Sync bookings’ calendar from your own website or integrate with third-party listings and property management platforms.
Manage and oversee housekeeping and maintenance from the ease of a computer or your phone.
Properly will notify you when you have a new reservation so you can schedule cleanings as soon as possible.

The Bottom Line

Owning a vacation rental investment can be a great way to make money in real estate. However, managing such an investment becomes daunting for property investors looking to grow their short-term rental business or those with multiple Airbnb listings. For these individuals, we recommend the above vacation rental software. These tools and resources are game-changers in the real estate investing business; they’ll save your time and energy, allow you to manage your investment efficiently, and get more bookings for maximum return on investment!

What other vacation rental software would you recommend for 2019?

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