Managing one short-term rental property on more than one booking site is time consuming and error prone. Managing a scaling short-term rental businesses on multiple booking sites without software is impossible.

As soon as you're managing multiple short-term rental properties on numerous listings sites, you need Airbnb management software to make this easier.

Once you've got multiple properties, with dozens of guests every week, plus third-party suppliers, managing various properties and their listings soon gets challenging. Before long, the time and effort that goes into managing listings across multiple channels gets too much for property owners.

Airbnb hosts now face new challenges, following the devastating impact of Covid-19. Airbnb property owners and managers already faced multiple challenges, which is why channel manager software is so useful. Especially if you are new to this. But now fewer people are traveling, and whether people are traveling for business or pleasure, they're more cautious.

Short-term and vacation rentals during Covid-19

Hosts are getting more questions before bookings. Cleanliness is now an even more critical concern. Hence the move Airbnb made to encourage hosts to clean properties thoroughly — or have cleaning providers do that — and leave a 24-hour vacancy period between guests.

Although this isn't mandatory, Airbnb displays which hosts are cleaning properties thoroughly and allowing for gaps between each booking. According to Airbnb, they are taking this approach is based on: "the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published standards; leading experts such as Dr. Vivek Murthy, former Surgeon General of the United States; and companies in the hospitality and medical hygiene sector, such as Ecolab."

Hosts that survive and thrive during Covid-19 are likely to be those that make guests feel safe. Despite the loss of income, leaving that 24-hour gap will encourage more guests to book, ensuring properties are cleaned thoroughly between bookings.

Why do property owners need Airbnb management software?

Once you've got a portfolio of properties, managing them can become a headache. As a property owner, you want to maximise bookings (with multiple listings and even promotional activity), look after guests, keep the properties clean, and handle any maintenance issues.

Manually managing all of this takes time. As your portfolio increases, the number of bookings grows, and providers you work with to look after the properties, so do your management headaches. It can soon become a cost <> time equation where you are on the wrong side of it. Far from this being a passive income, you could be spending hours and hours every day looking after things.

Hence one of the many advantages of channel management software. With the right (all-in-one) software, you can manage listings (on multiple platforms), bookings, guest questions, cleaning, any issues that come up, and maintenance, quickly and easily on one solution.

Growth is impossible without increasing overheads — unless, of course, you use technology to scale the resources you already have. Channel management software is one of the most effective ways to grow while also managing multiple listings and service providers.

Uplisting is the most reliable channel manager and short-term rental platform on the market.

Hosts love it, especially as they avoid problems such as double-booking (which is common in the industry), and owners can rely on accurate, reliable information about their properties.

Benefits of Uplisting for Airbnb hosts

#1: Reliable

One of the main challenges of using Airbnb channel management software is finding one that's reliable. Other solutions don't focus on this critical and fundamental challenge.

Often this leads to frustrated and unhappy guests, especially when there are double-booking situations. Guests can leave negative reviews. Many won't come back in those scenarios, and as a host, you need to fix the mess and often compensate them.

Whereas, with reliable software, you can be confident everything will run smoothly. Fewer headaches for you, and less stress; this is the very least you need from Airbnb channel management software.

Our north star has always been reliability. There's a lot of unreliable software out there (plenty of good ones too!). Reliability, or lack thereof, accounts for a significant portion of members migrating from another provider to Uplisting.

Without reliability none of our other features matter. We spend a lot of time ensuring Uplisting is as reliable as possible.

#2: Avoid the risk of double-bookings

One of the significant problems with other platforms and apps is the prevalence of double-bookings.

Imagine the nightmare of having to re-book a guest elsewhere, or issue a refund because software booked a guest in for the same night or set of nights? You risk negative reviews putting off other potential guests, alongside the financial cost of compensation. You need software that's going to give you peace of mind.

We hear from customers all the time, that's why they love Uplisting. Sleep easier knowing you aren't going to wake up to a double-booking headache.

#3: Features to support Airbnb

Straight out of the box, Uplisting comes with features that are designed specifically for Airbnb. It's one of the reasons it's so reliable, compared with other channel management software. These features include the following:

  • Smart Rates: Calculate what you want to make automatically, based on Airbnb fees and any other costs, so you've always got a healthy margin.
  • Automated Guest Reviews: When you provide guest reviews quickly, it helps your rankings on Airbnb, which in turn boosts impressions and improves a positive influx of new bookings. Equally, this should encourage guests to leave reviews, which further increases impressions and bookings.
  • Rapid and automated response to questions: When guests or potential guests have a question, you need to respond quickly and effectively. Not only does this improve their experience, but it also enhances your Airbnb rankings.

#4: Predictable costs, no booking commission

Now more than ever, it helps to keep costs low. Instead of Uplisting taking commission on every booking, we charge a flat fee. So it doesn't cost you more when you charge guests more, or as you increase your property portfolio. In comparison, other hosting software providers charge a commission, such as Guesty and Kigo.

We help you keep revenue moving in the right direction while staying cost-effective. Helping your short-term rental and vacation business grow.

#5: Uplisting is an official Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo partner

Choose an official software partner

One of the most important questions to ask yourself when choosing channel management software, is "Is this software an official partner with Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo?". You may be surprised to learn that not all are.

How can I tell if software is official or not?

  1. You never need to enter your Airbnb (or Booking.com or Vrbo) password when connecting to official software.
  2. All official software partners are listed on the the booking site partner page

Why is this important?

One of the biggest threats to your business are unofficial integrations. Unofficial integrations are in the dark. They are working blind without access to the documentation required to ensure the integration is built correctly and meets the booking site standards.

Unofficial software providers aren't made aware of any changes to integrations (which happen all the time) and so, need to fight fires when all of a sudden something stops working, for example you can't update availability anymore.

Imagine how messed up your properties would be if you did all the internal plumbing yourself? Connecting pipes and fittings you don't fully understand. You can probably hack it together, but it's never going to be as reliable as a trained expert with access to all the user manuals etc.

Worse still, unofficial partners can be kicked off without any warning. Your account, your business, all the operations you have in place could just stop working. At any time.

Uplisting is an official partner of Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo. Another advantage of our official partnership with Vrbo is you save an  5% on VRBO commission, whereas with other software, you would have to pay the full fee (10%).

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