Apps for Your Short-Term Rental Life

As you start making progress on your short-term rental adventure, you’ll begin to handle more and more small details. You may have only started with one property, but because you’ve seen the huge potential in this market, you might invest in another property. An additional property comes with more responsibilities, which in turn consumes more time and mental burden!

When you realize that there are other platforms besides Airbnb, you may have decided to expand your online presence to other platforms like Vrbo, Booking, and the like. Because you’ve utilized another platform, you now have to be aware of what’s going on between platforms across all your properties! And if short-term rentals are only your side hu

With all the small things you have to carry out and manage, it can get really stressful REALLY FAST. Trust us on that. With that said, there are solutions out there for you. Whenever you observe problems as these exist, it always pays dividends to check if somebody else has been through the same thing and has found solutions to make their lives easier. In a world where people are connected through technology, there’s bound to be something in store for you!

And since you’re here, we’ll kickstart your research by providing you with several apps and services that you can utilize to turn your business into an automatic money generator! (“Automatic money generator” is an overstatement, but you get the idea.)

Management Apps and Services – Your Porter App, iGMS, SmartBNB

These are probably the first few apps that your Google search would bring up. And that’s because they’re one of the best in the game! They already give you everything. Well, ALMOST everything.

From channel management, website building, messaging, and app integration, they’ve got all for you! Here are some of the things they offer that we think could significantly improve your process in managing your property:

• A calendar that has all your reservations on it.
• An inbox that contains all your messages from various platforms like Airbnb, HomeAway, Booking, etc. (make sure to check if your platform is in their list)
• Automated inquiry responses.
• Automated creating and sending of door codes.
• Automated reviewing process (see the value of reviews here).
• Manage financial reports in one place and even use various accounting software.
• Integration with services like Stripe, Pricelabs, and many others.
• And many more!

Many of these apps can also help you boost your ranking in Airbnb search results. You could set it up so that your listing gets updated regularly with “invisible changes” and reverts them back to show Airbnb your listing is active. These features aren’t particularly useful for other platforms, but since Airbnb’s a huge player now (compared to other platforms), these companies (just like us) want to play with them.

If they all do the same thing, why are there so many? (And yes, there are a lot more than these three). First, they all don’t do the same thing. For example, while all these services can automate messages, some offer to send messages on a specific day of the week! Others have integrations with various platforms and services that aren’t available with a competitor. It’s up to you to mix and match which one works best for you. If you’re unsure which one to go for, don’t worry! Most of them offer a trial period which usually lasts 14 days.

Dynamic Pricing Services – Pricelabs, BeyondPricing, Wheelhouse

Ever wonder how your pricing could affect your revenue? We’ve talked a lot about getting guests to click on your listing, but we’ve yet to tackle this topic since a few sentences aren’t enough to address its complexities! But what if you could have somebody else (or, in this case, a whole company) do it for you?

Enter dynamic pricing tools! They’re services that regularly analyze millions (to even billions) of data points, market performance, and trends. Some of them can even identify local events (that you might not be aware of), which can drastically affect pricing patterns in your area! They’ll be using this information and update your prices accordingly so you can stay on top of the competition without you fumbling around on your phone or computer. You can set it up to leave it to run on its own or optimize it based on your preferences. After all, it’s still YOU that has to dictate how much you should earn, right? There’s only so much that automation and software can do.

A Property Manager

This one’s a bit of a cheat code (human beings are not apps)! But hey, if you’re going to be thinking about all these services anyways, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having to make your life easy? That’s a bit of a stretch, but I see where that’s coming from. Why not just hire ONE person to do ALL of it for you?

Do you love the short-term rental experience? Why not get another property with us? Florida’s been exploding with opportunities as of late. Try seeing what you can do with Shorefront Investments! We’re Florida-based real estate investors looking to buy and sell properties fast. You could be one of our buyers by joining our buyers’ list! Are you thinking of doing things the other way around? Trying to sell your property instead? You can also give us a call at (850) 713-4866, send us an email, or fill a form on our front page!