The Ultimate Guide to Vacation Rental Software 2024

At its core, vacation rental software is any software that helps short-term rental property managers carry out, simplify, or optimize their day-to-day operations.

A vacation rental host or manager may use software to help them with tasks such as:

And much, much more! One key component of many vacation rental software tools is automation. By automating elements of the above tasks (and more), you save time, reduce human error, and can focus on growing your accommodation business — rather than being weighed down by tedious manual processes.

Whether you’re just starting your vacation rental business or looking to grow your existing portfolio, software is available to help you achieve your goals.

If you have one or two vacation rental units, you may feel able to handle all your reservations manually at first. But as you succeed and start growing your business, you’ll want to spend less time on daily admin tasks. And this is where vacation rental software enters the picture!

Vacation rental software provides invaluable help to smaller operations, automating tasks and integrating data so that your operations run smoothly. As a result, you save precious money, effort and time that you can spend with your guests.

Speaking of: guests want to be reassured that their host is available for them even when they’re based remotely. So aim to prioritize Airbnb software for property owners that enables you to be a ‘Superhost’, wherever you are. Even if you’re hosting at your home for now, you want software that sets you up for growth!

If you’re managing a vacation rental portfolio, you likely already understand the need for software! You have a lot of moving parts to juggle. There are simply more units, bookings, listings, guests, staff, and cleaning and maintenance tasks to coordinate across properties. 

For these reasons, you are likely to rely on vacation rental property management software (PMS) that helps you integrate, simplify and automate across your portfolio.

Whichever property management model best describes your business, there are clear benefits to using vacation rental software:

1. Save time & create efficiencies

By centralizing and automating multiple tasks with your software, you streamline your day-to-day operations without sacrificing quality. Gone are error-prone paper processes and constant manual updates. Everything just runs more smoothly.

2. Improve the guest experience

Using vacation rental software to automate and streamline processes gives you more time to address guests’ needs in the moment. There are also features of certain software systems that are specifically designed to help with your guest engagement and management.

3. Stay competitive

Free up time to focus on strategy, growth or acquisitions! Good vacation rental software can keep you ahead of your competitors by helping you increase bookings and revenue, streamline your operations, and gain insights into your business’s performance.

4. Grow your business

Using cloud-based software allows you to scale your business with confidence. If you’re eager to expand your portfolio, your software should offer features that help you stay on top of multiple properties and stakeholders with ease. If you’re looking to identify growth opportunities, the right software gives you useful insights through automated reports and analytics.

Vacation rental software tools can be broken down into two broad categories: all-in-one systems and specialized software. 

When people say “vacation rental software”, they usually mean a single software system that integrates and simplifies several elements of vacation rental management. This is often referred to as an ‘all-in-one’ PMS solution or platform.

The all-in-one platform is the preferred option for many vacation rental managers because it offers specific benefits:

There are also software solutions on the market that specialize in individual aspects of vacation rental property management. For example, there are channel manager products that focus solely on helping you manage your connections to OTAs. Similarly, other solutions focus specifically on certain aspects of your business, like enabling contactless check-in, or enhancing your guest management capabilities.

Thankfully, there’s no need to choose between an all-in-one platform and your preferred specialized solutions. A strong all-in-one PMS should integrate with a wide range of partner tools and technologies, connecting your guest and booking data to these solutions in ways that make your life easier. We’ll look in more detail at some of the integrations available later in this article.

What you need from your vacation rental software depends on your business. However, there are certain core features that we recommended to help you run your vacation rental business’s daily operations more efficiently.

You need to keep track of all your online bookings, whatever their source. A centralized booking calendar gives you the ability to view and modify all direct and OTA bookings in one place. As a result, you have more control and visibility over your bookings.

We recommend using multiple channels to build your online presence as part of your vacation rental business plan. A channel manager synchronizes your rates and availability across all channels to prevent overbookings. The best channel managers also keep other elements synchronized across your channels automatically, including your policies, content and photos, saving countless hours you’d otherwise spend making manual updates to OTA extranets.

Most vacation rental hosts and managers want the ability to take commission-free direct bookings through their own website. Some software providers offer customizable ‘instant’ website templates along with a booking engine that allow you to start accepting online bookings & collect payments fast.

Your vacation rental software should give you the ability to automate a wide range of tasks, so that you streamline your operations, create efficiencies, and reduce human error. Learn more about the vacation rental automation tools available to short-term rental owners and operators.

Security is essential to you and your guests. If your PMS allows you to automate payment collection, make sure it does so with full native Level 1 PCI compliance for total peace of mind.

Being able to manage your vacation rental properties on the go is a must! This is especially true if you manage your properties remotely. For this reason, some suppliers offer a mobile PMS app that puts the features of your vacation rental software in the palm of your hand.

The guest experience is increasingly seen as the key differentiator for today’s vacation rentals. Specific vacation rental software features allow you to keep guests satisfied by making your service seamless at every touchpoint:

To streamline your communications, look for a software provider that gives you access to all these guest management features in one system.

To make the right decisions for your business, you want to stay fully aware of how it’s doing. So consider software that gives you instant insights into your vacation rental business’s performance.

Some vacation rental software collates data around your KPIs, including insights on revenue (like RevPAR and ADR), occupancy, average length of stay, booking sources, and more. The best systems then transform that data into easy-to-understand snapshots and informative reports.

To get more tailored insights into your business, look for software that allows you to design custom reports from scratch effortlessly by extracting and organising the exact data you need: from room, property and guest information, to data on financials, payments, OTA payouts, and your extra products and services.

A dynamic pricing strategy involves using time-sensitive information and key metrics to update your room rates at short notice. Your vacation rental software may allow you to automate your dynamic pricing strategy and adjust rates instantly according to your pre-defined rules. This helps you to keep your revenue and/or occupancy optimized over time without lifting a finger.

As your portfolio grows, you want access to reliable, cloud-based vacation rental software that’s able to scale with your business. It should also come equipped with specific features that help you meet the unique challenges of managing multiple properties, including:

You don’t want to waste precious time struggling to find different properties or making constant manual updates as your portfolio expands. Look for software that allows you to:

If you manage multiple vacation rental properties on behalf of their owners, look out for owner management features that allow you to:

A multi-property website allows you to showcase your entire vacation rental portfolio. If you find the prospect of developing and maintaining a website yourself daunting, have no fear! Simply choose a PMS that allows you to select from multi-property design templates. It’s a reliable, ready-made solution for showing your properties at their best to the world.

Scheduling cleaning and maintenance tasks can get complicated when you’re doing it for multiple properties! However, an interactive cleaning dashboard lets you organize and automate housekeeping and maintenance rotas across your portfolio, simplifying the process considerably.

Make sure your cleaning dashboard is mobile-friendly and provides secure multi-user access, so that managers and cleaning or maintenance teams can stay in communication, wherever they are. Discover more steps to take if you want to ensure smooth vacation rental changeovers.

Learn more about what multi-property managers need to succeed with our guide to effective property portfolio management.

Although an all-in-one PMS should provide many of the tools you need to succeed, there may be times where you want to add other software solutions to your operations. For this reason, it’s a good idea to choose a PMS that can be seamlessly integrated with a wide range of tools. These integrations allow you to truly harness the power of additional software by connecting it to your all-in-one system, so there’s more control, less confusion, and smoother automation.

Here are some of the solutions you may wish to integrate with your PMS.

Adjusting your room rates dynamically is a key way to maximize the revenue from your vacation rental properties. Specialized dynamic pricing software typically analyzes your existing rates and availability via your PMS, then recommends the optimal pricing strategies. These strategies are then seamlessly flowed back to your PMS and updated across your own website and your connected OTAs.

Examples: Key Data Dashboard, Pricelabs, Pricepoint, RoomPriceGenie

Vacation rentals don’t typically have a staffed front desk, so enabling self check-in for guests is a good idea. However you facilitate self check-in (smart locks, lockboxes or physical key collection points), keep things simple by connecting your PMS guest and booking data to your check-in tools. This allows you to do some or all of the following:

And if you use physical keys for guest entry? Consider automatically sending key collection details to guests by connecting your PMS to the right key management provider. 

Examples: Chekin, Duve, The Keys, KeyNest, NUKI, Operto, Vikey

Some tools integrate with your PMS to help you enhance your guest engagement and keep visitors satisfied. For example, some solutions enable you to view and respond to guests’ communications via SMS and live chat. Others allow you to provide personalized digital welcome guides for each group of guests. Your PMS can also share direct booking reviews automatically with platforms that use powerful analytics to help identify any causes of dissatisfaction (e.g., a particular room or room type). 

Examples: Duve, GuestRevu, GuestTalk, Yaago, YourWelcome

An integration with your PMS enables you to transfer your booking and transactional data direct to your vacation rental accounting software. This saves you hours of copying and pasting accounting entries as well as your invoices.

Examples: Intuit Quickbooks, Xero

Vacation rentals see many visitors come and go, so you want peace of mind whatever happens on the premises. Allowing your PMS bookings to be fully synchronized to your insurance provider software helps by ensuring that insurance is automatically attached to every reservation. Learn more about vacation rental insurance.

Example: Safely

Ideally, your PMS comes with a solution to coordinate cleaning and maintenance tasks within the platform. However, existing tools automate the scheduling of these tasks. Your PMS typically updates these platforms with your booking and guest data. This enables cleaning jobs to be scheduled and resourced automatically for each booking, as soon as it’s received.

Examples: PropertyCare, Turno,

Many of the above integrations enable vacation rental managers to automate more tasks across their business. But if you want to take your automation to the next level, then make sure your vacation rental PMS integrates with Zapier. This allows you to connect with over 6,000 apps and save countless hours by setting up custom automated workflows. Explore just a few examples on our Zapier page.

Choosing vacation rental software is a big decision for your business. For this reason, you want to make sure you’re asking the right questions upfront. Get answers to the below questions, as well as any others that are unique to your needs.

As we mentioned earlier, the term ‘vacation rental software’ now largely refers to an integrated all-in-one solution. However, it’s crucial you find out what is integrated in the specific platform you’re interested in. Some PMS systems do not have channel managers; others specialize in specific areas such as channel management and offer limited additional features. Identify the features that are must-haves for your business, then see if what you’re being offered matches them.

You want your software to connect to your most popular sources of online bookings. If you don’t have that information, research the most popular channels for your vacation rental type and/or area.

Remember also that the best channel managers update more than rates and availability. They should allow you to keep photos, content, policies and more in sync across channels. This reduces the manual input needed from you while maximizing your control over the connections.

Identify the support that’s available from the software provider. Is there customer training available on top of live customer support? Look for indicators of strong service like a high rating on Trustpilot or other relevant review platforms.

Of course the software should be at the heart of a strong provider’s offering, but it shouldn’t be all they offer! We recommend finding out what else you get from the software provider.

This may include educational resources like ‘how to’ product guides or industry-trend webinars, as well as exclusive programs for customers. For example, eviivo Collective helps to garner free press coverage for eviivo customers with unique and notable properties, including exciting vacation rentals.

This is a crucial question to ask before you make a purchasing decision! It’s very important that you get to view the platform and see its features in action during a live demonstration.

Vacation rental software pricing often gets complex, so you’ll want to know the pricing models and options that are available to you upfront. Many PMS providers offer a subscription service to their product. Work out in advance whether you’d prefer to pay monthly or annually, then find out what the provider offers you. 

You should also factor in the ongoing cost of any additional charges you will be paying. Aim to get a full picture of all charges, including card transaction and booking processing fees, so you can compare the real cost of different providers’ systems.

Whether you’re managing a couple units or a vast portfolio, your job means juggling multiple demands every day. So naturally, you need vacation rental software that helps you streamline as much as possible in one platform. Find out whether the software you’re considering is:

So you’ve selected your vacation rental software, and you can’t wait to start enjoying the extra efficiencies and seamless integration! Now it’s time to get a few things in order to ensure your set-up goes as smoothly as possible.

For the smoothest start with your new software, make sure all the key information for your accommodation is in one place. This includes:

If you’re switching from an existing software provider, you should be able to download all this property info from your current platform.

Stunning, high-resolution photography is always going to help entice guests to your vacation rentals. Organize your existing images by categorizing them according to room type or feature (‘Double room’, ‘Premium Suite’, ‘Exterior’, etc.). Ideally, you’ll be able to upload your photos with 1 click across all your chosen OTAs once you’re set up on your new PMS.

Speaking of OTAs, deciding which booking channels you’re going to list on plays a huge part in getting your vacation rentals seen by your target audience. Use our quick OTA options infographic to identify which OTAs may be best for your business.

There’s never a bad time to think about your room rates. Before you get set up on your new vacation rental software, consider the pricing strategies you want to implement. Effective strategies help you to maximize occupancy, profit and revenue at different times. Although dynamic pricing tools are available to enhance your pricing automatically, you first want a good foundational knowledge of how to set your rates — and keep them optimized. Download our pricing white paper for a step-by-step guide to setting an effective pricing strategy.

Getting started with vacation rental software may seem overwhelming if you’ve never used a PMS before or are facing an unfamiliar platform. That’s why eviivo offers free onboarding and 1-1 private consultations at your request, so you’re able to make the most of everything our software has to offer.

Choosing the right vacation rental software is an important decision for your business. With the many options available, it’s crucial to consider your business size, goals, property types, budget, and the specific features you need. 

Do your research, explore your options, and don’t feel rushed. Once you’ve made the right choice, your software will open the doors to streamlined operations, more revenue, and the continued success of your vacation rental business.

eviivo Suite stands out as an ideal all-in-one vacation rental PMS for hosts and property management companies of all sizes. Our software integrates a comprehensive range of features in an easy-to-use platform that makes it simple to manage your bookings, guests, teams and travel agencies. Perhaps that’s why eviivo Suite has been named the ‘Best Vacation Rental Software 2024’ by the HotelTechAwards, based on verified reviews from existing customers. 

By choosing eviivo Suite, you’re not only investing in a powerful PMS but also gaining a partner committed to your success. Discover the difference eviivo Suite can make for your business — start your journey with a commitment-free trial today and see how it can transform your vacation rental management.