Choosing the Right Vacation Rental Management Firm
A note to vacation rental owners:
Selecting, maintaining, and managing a vacation rental property requires time, experience, and resources. At the same time, short-term hosting can multiply the returns of the arguably less demanding long-term leasing. However, to obtain this, a rental must be managed strategically and with dedication. A great vacational stay is created by optimizing your property in countless aspects. To name a few, pricing, design, functionality, marketing, amenities, and on-site services; communication, but there are many more. Successfully managing a short-term rental is, in other words, a full-time job.
It is not to say that a good rental experience can’t be provided by owners on their own. However, the right vacation rental property management firm can and should offer five-star worthy stays for guests and a hands-off hosting experience for owners simultaneously, leaving you plenty of room to explore other jobs, activities or hobbies, as you reap the rewards of making your vacation home a short-term rental.
This is an investment and return need to always be top of mind. You need a partner that understand the business side and is looking out for your best interest. As agents, our goal is for high performance and in turn, purchases of more properties by our clients.
Choosing the right vacation rental management firm is as important as the process of managing a vacation rental. If you are an owner of a vacation rental home or thinking about becoming one, here is a list of property management firm must-haves that we offer at Host and Keep, and that every great vacation rental property management firm should absolutely have:
Guest and Calendar Visibility
The vacation rental firm that you work with should provide you easy access and visibility to everything that is going on with your property, from guest information, to booking calendar, to maintenance and housekeeping. At Host and Keep, we take hospitality seriously and we invest into technology that makes us more efficient in reaching revenue goals for our clients and investors. One of our priorities is to be innovative and ever-improving in all the services we provide, including guest and calendar visibility. All of our clients can log in to their owner portal to better see their properties, calendars and guest information. The software we use not only syndicates to over 6 booking platforms, but also enables transparent operations, displaying the management and booking schedule of all properties under management.
Price and Booking Optimizations
You need a team that will conduct market research, determining optimal rates by taking into account seasonality, location, guest profiles, and more. The company must also have a hyperfocus on maximizing occupancy throughout the year. In order to take advantage of the high returns that short-term rentals offer, properties must be constantly booked. The right vacation management company should aim to keep a constant stream of guests in your property, hoping to match the occupancy of a twelfth-month lease and surpass it’s returns by 3X. Our team dives deep into the data to ensure your occupancy and profit rates are fully optimized, boosting prices on weekends and holidays with our management. We prepare ahead of time, generating and sharing with you financial projections of your property based on the data we have gathered and its booking/pricing potential.
Storytelling: Marketing on Multiple Platforms
A great vacation management company should tell the stories that your potential guests want to hear. Whether it is a family looking for a big barbecue backyard or a working-from-home couple needing a ton of workspace, your property should be marketed according to your customers’ needs, and on multiple platforms. Our owners’ properties are marketed to meet guest interests in diverse guest touchpoints. We list properties on several online vacation rental marketplaces, like Vrbo, AirBnB, and Booking.com. Each listing is carefully crafted to make your property stand out and updated as needed to include the most relevant information; this includes home functionality, maximum occupancy, amenities, location information, house manual, standard house rules for guests, etc. We also understand that photography can tell a great story and this is why we send professional real estate photographers to capture your home from its best angle. Photos that make your home stand out are then included on all your listings and shared on all of our social media platforms.
Communications/Guest Management
Vacation rental firms should put both owners’ and guests’ minds at ease, ensuring that guests feel safe and supported and that owners are comfortable with every guest that walks into their home. To support guests, we provide on-site support throughout their stay, making sure the home is safe and that guests are looked after day-to-day. We answer questions as they come up, appeasing concerns pre, during and post the vacation. For greater guest comfort, we provide a seamless check-in process, with self check-ins with convenient keyless entry. To make sure owners feel comfortable entrusting us with their homes, we conduct guest vetting. Each guest must have a rating and review history before being approved for booking and we must know the reason for their visit with full contact information for all guests staying at the property.
Maintenance and Housekeeping
When picking the right short-term rental management firm, make sure they can take care of your home in between stays. Maintenance and housekeeping should be part of the hands-off host experience, where owners can sit back while rental managers deal with the time and resource demanding work that a short-term rental requires. Host and Keep takes care of handyman tasks and will be on call throughout your guest’s stay. Our detail orientedness ensures that owners don’t have to worry about the small things - plumbing, paint, light fixtures, etc. We got it! Setting and maintaining high housekeeping standards is at the center of vacation rental management. Our team of housekeepers, for example, will keep an impeccably clean place, adding hotel grade linens and towels, and replacing toiletries each turnover. All this: work that owners are saving themselves and five stay reviews by guests.
This list can guide you while choosing the right firm for your property. However, there is no set formula for what makes up a great firm in this business. Vacation rental property management firms should work to improve and innovate their services as customer and host needs evolve, which is our priority at Host and Keep.
This is a low barrier to entry vertical and with our professionalism, business etiquette, and high standards we hope to have the opportunity to win your trust and business. Contact us for a consultation and we’d be happy to help.
