Vacation rental software FAQ

Vacation rental management software is a tool that allows individuals, agencies, or property management companies to post holiday home listings on a range of leading sites, such as Airbnb, Booking.com, and Expedia, from a single, centralised location. From within the software, it possible to manage a single, live booking calendar, take payments, contact guests, arrange and automate check-in and departure procedures, and perform analysis and optimisation.

No. As a centralised service, you only need the software, which automatically pulls the data from every platform to a single location. What’s more, with the mobile application, you won’t need to log in to your software account either, as the apps allow for live updates.

You receive the payments that guests make, with different providers offering different integrations with payment platforms such as PayPal and Stripe. The fees that providers charge are typically fixed prices on a per-property basis and such subscriptions are set up separately to any payments you take from guests.

This is up to you. The majority of providers offer automation for every stage of the process, including contact. This means you can create a predetermined checklist or list of instructions and set specific times for these to be sent to guests. Alternatively, you can still contact them directly as the software records booking details in a similar way to the listing platforms.

Vacation rental management software doesn’t typically require exclusivity, so you are free to list directly on platforms, or use more than one type of software if you wish.

Yes. The software typically uses an integrated, live calendar service such as iCal, to ensure that double bookings cannot be taken. Of course, this can’t be 100% failsafe, however, as there is the slim chance that two bookings occur at exactly the same time. For questions regarding how priority works in this situation, speak directly to the software provider.