Vacation rental operations management is key to delivering five-star service to your guests. However, property managers who rent out several properties remotely across various locations find it overwhelming and time-consuming to stay on top of their operational tasks. As a result, vacation rental managers are turning their course to automate their operations management to remain competitive, free up their time, reduce the amount of workload and stress, and get time to grow their hospitality business.
Vacation rental managers can entrust automation with the following 4 areas of vacation rental operations management.
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1. Housekeeping
Housekeeping is key to gaining 5-star guest experience and becoming a prosperous host; nevertheless, managing several properties across various locations from a distance is not an easy job. Guests expect your rental to be spotlessly clean, and if the state of your property cleanliness is not satisfactory, they will leave you negative reviews, and you will lose your competitive edge in this highly saturated industry.
Keeping your property sparkling clean and meeting the high expectations of your guests, handling emergency property cleanings, additional and last-minute requirements and dealing with schedule conflicts need a great amount of time and effort. So, vacation rental managers need to get help from software which enables them to create cleaning tasks and assign them to specific housekeepers occasionally or on an ongoing basis. Staff members, including the housekeepers or maintenance personnel, will receive check-in and check-out notifications via a text message, email or in app notifications, and then they can report back when their tasks are marked as completed, and the property is ready to welcome new guests.
Automating the housekeeping workflow will prevent many likely headaches such as forgetting to send out the check-in instructions to the guests and sending the information of the wrong property or to the wrong staff member and keeps the housekeepers updated about any changes such as check-in/check-out time changes due to flight delays, heavy traffic and bad weather, or cancelled reservations.
2. Maintenance
Guests want to stay in properties which are kept in their best condition. So, maintenance is one of the top challenges of property managers. Obviously, a rental with a broken air conditioning system, leaking faucets, and not working electric appliances cannot provide a pleasant stay for its guests and is less likely to receive positive reviews. Vacation rental managers need an application to help them:
- make sure their property is in its ideal shape by scheduling preventive repairs or maintenance work on a regular basis (before the stay);
- take care of any amenity problems right away (during the stay);
- ensure everything is working properly in their rental and conduct inspections for the missing items and the possible damages made to their property by the guests;
- enable the housekeepers to report issues and let them know if anything has been damaged or taken away, and there is a need to reach out to the guests and charge them with the help of their booking channels or the pre-authorised security deposits.
3. Guest Vetting
Check in/Check out
A well-handled check-in can enhance your guest experience and lead to more positive reviews. It is really nice to meet and greet your guests in person, give them a tour of your property, and explain the house rules, and local guides and recommendations to make them feel at home. Nevertheless, welcoming guests in person is almost impossible for the hosts who manage multiple properties in different locations, so they can assign this responsibility to an individual or a concierge provider company. Moreover, vacation rental managers can opt for automation tools and reduce operating costs and increase the efficiency of their business.
Vacation rental software providers enable hosts to have automated self-check-ins. These software provide guests with all sorts of information they need before their arrival, including booking confirmations, payment reminders, check-in instructions, house manuals, and check-out information. Besides, thanks to the technology of automatic locks which provide keyless entry codes, vacation rental managers can both settle the trouble of handing over the keys and keep their properties secure.
Guest Communication
Answering your guest enquiries in no time and making your guests sure of the ways they can contact you must be among your top priorities. Hosts can make use of automated personalised templates and triggered messages for instant communication with their guests during their stay.
4. Security
Keeping your property secure and giving your guests peace of mind should be one of your main concerns as a vacation rental manager. Your vacation rental must be equipped with proper door locks, safes, alarms, smoke detectors, and first aid kits to ensure the safety of your guests, as well as the security of your property. But on top of all of these, you need to keep your property secure against troublesome guests, fraud, chargebacks and damages to the property by the guests. As a result, you need to use automated software which supports e-signatures, secure automated payments, automated accounting and reporting, and capable of integrating with apps for contactless check-ins.
Zeevou’s Automation Solutions for Vacation rental Operations Management
Zeevou offers a high level of automation in almost all fields of vacation rental management, particularly vacation rental operations management. It enables you to take over your routine tasks, make automated workflows and remove human errors, and hence saves you tons of time to focus on the expansion of your short term rental business.
Zeevou is a multiple location property management system which can help you in terms of managing properties all around the world from a single login, so you can view your properties’ vacancies and occupancies all in one unified calendar without the need to switch between different accounts.
Zeevou’s advanced housekeeping solution allows you to create automated cleaning schedules and keep track of the real-time progress of work performance. You can easily communicate necessary information such as the arrival and departure dates and times, a number of guests staying, the beds setup instructions, and any special guest requests after each booking is made with your operation staff, including the housekeepers and the maintenance personnel. In addition, your staff members can have limited access to the booking calendar through Zeevou’s web app, or android or iOS mobile app.
Plus, check-out and mid-stay housekeeping tasks are automatically generated by the system and assigned to the housekeepers. They can also send their daily operations, and inspection reports and maintenance issues accompanied by photos directly to the app. Vacation rental managers can view the maintenance issues reports in Zeevou Fix along with the information of the reporter, the level of urgency, and related images or videos.
The housekeepers can request leaves through the mobile app and their availability gets updated as the hosts approve or reject their request. It also provides the cleaning staff with the information of the tasks assigned to them, including the status, the timing, and any notes the hosts may have left for them. when they clock in, the system captures their start time, location, and the time they are done with the task. This way their managers can keep track of the progress of the housekeeping tasks in real time.
Zeevou’s 5-step online check-in process enables you to manage your self check-ins remotely by asking guests to complete all the steps you require for a booking confirmation including the payments, security deposits, digital signing of the terms and conditions, collection of ID and verification of the guests before sending out self check-in instructions. Besides that, Zeevou’s online check-in form collects guests’ contact details and GDPR-compliant marketing consent.
Learn more about Zeevou’s Staff Management and Supplier Management solutions.
