Every year millions of people across the globe travel to different locations for vacations. Irrespective of when and where they go, they will always need a place to stay during their visit to a particular location. 

Vacation rental properties are the best option for a variety of reasons. They are an affordable and convenient option for travelers as they plan their stay in a short rental property. The demand that is generated from these short-term stays has inspired many of the property owners to consider renting out their property to travelers. 

However, managing a short rental business is not that simple. Investing in properties of your own or managing properties on behalf of property owners consumes a lot of time and effort. One of the key strategies in maximizing your profits from the short-term business rental is to automate the dreadfully cumbersome tasks that you need to perform on a regular basis. You can take the support of different short rental business software that are readily available in the market.

Top 5 Software That Your Vacation Rental Business Needs in 2021 

The advantage of vacation rental business software is that they save a significant amount of time and effort that would otherwise be spent by vacation rental managers in managing lost bookings. These software help property owners or managers automate many of the manual tasks ranging from bookings to guest experiences. 

Before we delve deeper into the details of how else can you benefit from vacation rental software, let’s have a look at the top five software that will boost your vacation rental income in 2021. 

1. Lodgify

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Designed by short rental business professionals and built for vacation rental owners and property managers, this Airbnb property management software is your go-to tool for growing your bookings and revenue with your property. It comes with a host of features including:

1. Property Management Software: With this feature, you can now manage reservations on the go – check all your bookings in one place, assign tasks and manage teams, keep better control of your payments through the accounting module, and much more. 
2. Channel Manager: With this feature, you can now sync all your bookings via the API with all the top vacation listing channels in the rental industry. 
3. Website Builder: The visual appeal is important for a property rental business and the user-friendly website builder enables you to create rental websites with its SEO-friendly templates and without any prior design or technical knowledge. 
4. Booking System: The booking system can be integrated with the most popular external payment gateways, such as Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, etc. 
5. Templates: It offers you a wide range of templates to have your website ready in minutes and start accepting guest bookings without any hassle. 
6. Integrations: Third-party integrations are very important for any business. Now you can connect your Lodgify profile with all the applications you need to manage your rental business.

Pricing: 

With all the below-mentioned plans, you get a free 7-day trial without any set-up fees, credit card details, or other obligations. 

Starter: Available at $12 per month, this plan offers a host of features, such as a bookable website, property management system, reservation and payment system, mobile app, and many more.

Professional: This plan is available at $32 per month and includes all the features from the starter version and additional features like manual payments and damage pre-authorization.

Ultimate: Available at a price of $48 per month, this plan is packed with powerful features from the Starter and Professional version and also includes extra features, such as an expanded dashboard, guest app, priority customer support, and much more. 

2. Piktochart

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When you are running a vacation rental business, you will definitely need access to attractive visuals. PIktochart is a web-based software that helps you create captivating infographics that can quickly turn any text-heavy content into an engaging story that your audience will love.    

Another factor you need to consider in your property rental business is how your data is interpreted. The line graph maker can convert your boring property rental data into a compelling story. 

To make a line graph, perform the following steps:

1. Log in to your account
2. Select from any available template
3. Navigate to Tools and create a chart 
4. Copy and paste your data from your existing Excel or Google sheet
5. Adjust the data labels (which includes the graph title, X and Y-axis, background color) as per your preference
6. Download and share your graphic in any of the desired formats 

Pricing: 

Free: For those who are just starting out, this plan works the best. It comes free of cost and you can have up to five active projects and 100 MB of storage space. 

Pro: This is an ideal plan for professionals and is available @24.17 per month if billed yearly and $29/month if billed monthly. 

Team: This plan works best for a larger team. It is priced at $21.67/month if billed annually and $26 per month if billed monthly. 

3. Document360 

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There are several processes involved in managing a short rental business. You need to educate your employees and guests from time to time about various procedures to ensure an optimum experience at your property. Also known as the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), this documentation ensures that your business runs in a systematic and process-driven way and the knowledge about the daily routine tasks is stored safely for anyone to execute. This documentation comes in various formats, it could be a simple word or PDF document or a checklist. 

The Document 360 software is a preferred tool for creating effective SOPs for your business. There are various structures and templates available to define the structure of the SOP. Even though there are other tools like Google or Word files, using Document 360 has significant benefits. If you want to restrict your SOP to only a handful of people, you will be able to do that by using the tool’s category-level access. There are separate interfaces for Editors and Readers. 

Pricing: 

Startup: This version is available at $49/project/month. 

Business: This is available at $149 per project per month. An extra $7 will be charged per month per account. 

Enterprise: This plan is available for $299/project/month. It offers up to 15 team accounts and 150 GB of storage. 

Enterprise Plus: This plan offers up to 300GB storage and up to 12 knowledge base versions. You can contact the team for the best price. 

4. Instagram 

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The popularity of this photo-sharing platform on a global level is undeniable. The number of business that exists on this platform exceeds 25 million. This platform provides a great opportunity for short-term rental owners to reach out to travelers based across the globe. 

Here are a few ways in which you can use this platform:

1. Use it as a funnel to redirect visitors to your property rental booking website
2. Connect with guests who have already stayed at your property to grow relationships and increase the number of repeat guests 
3. Network with like-minded business or leisure travelers and know about their tastes and preferences and how your property can live up to their expectations 
4. Increase the trust of your potential customers with a verified account 

5. Pricelabs

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Do you always set the prices of your vacation rental properties manually? Then, it’s high time you start using a dynamic pricing and data solutions tool to save time and increase your overall income. This application will set dynamic prices for your property and push that to your Airbnb or any other vacation rental management software you’re currently using. 

This software provides various customization options that enable you to:

• Make last-minute adjustments to ensure the unbooked dates do not end up being vacant
• Apply orphan day prices, which usually involves offering discounts to fill up the smaller gaps in your calendar
• Tailor your rental rates according to the day of week pricing trends 
• Set varied minimum prices for weekend dates or for any high season dates in your calendar
• Adjust rates based on the performance of your property listing 

Pricing 

The pricing structure is fairly simple and you can scale it as per your business needs.  

• Portfolio Analytics: This comes free of cost and all you need to do is add your property listing. 
• Dynamic Pricing: It is available at $19.99 per month for one property listing. Here is how the dynamic pricing works: for example, you have three properties. The first property will be listed at $19.99/month and the remaining two properties will be listed at $14.99/month. The total invoices will cost you $19.99 + $14.99 + $14.99 = $49.7 per month. A 30-day free trial is available.
• Market dashboards: You will get access to the dashboard for one property listing at $9.99/month. This too comes with a 30-day free trial. 

Conclusion 

We hope that you will be able to make the most of your vacation rental business with the abovementioned software solutions. These applications not just help your business scale greater heights of success but offer an absolutely delightful experience for your guests. 

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Author bio

Atreyee Chowdhury works full-time as a Learning Experience Designer and is passionate about writing. She has helped many small and medium-scale businesses achieve their content marketing goals with her carefully crafted content that is both informative and engaging. She lives in Bangalore, India with her husband. She loves to read, experiment with different cuisines, travel, and explore the latest content marketing and L&D trends in her free time. You can reach her on Linkedin or write to her at atreyee.c@gmail.com