You might see successful property managers and think they owe their success to their own individual skills, and that’s not totally wrong. As a successful vacation rental manager, you need to be both resourceful and able to handle different tasks at the same time. But, as you start to develop your short term rental business and decide to expand your portfolio, just being a good property manager is not enough.
You’re the glue that sticks the whole company together, but there are points you need to bear in mind in order to be able to improve your property management company. If you want to do research, there are a whole bunch of tips you need to know. But, we’ve tried to put together a thorough list of the main aspects of your business you should pay special attention to if you aim at improving your property management company.
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The Importance of Using a Sufficient Channel Manager
The main goal of any vacation rental management company is to fill their short term rentals and eliminate those empty dates as much as possible. So, using channels is inevitable if you’re looking for your company’s prosperity.
Unfortunately, even though channel managers bring your properties more visibility, they implicate some challenges, including but not limited to manually updating availability calendars and rates on the many different channels, overbookings and incorrect rate parity because of human errors.
Here’s where channel managers come to your rescue. The main function of a channel manager is to keep your inventory and rates and availability up-to-date. More importantly, they automatically synchronise your calendars and manage your bookings from one central hub.
On the other hand, choosing the best channel manager that is tailored to your property management company’s needs is not a piece of cake as there are several channel managers in the market all claiming to be the best. But, what you need to do is choose the one that is BEST for your business. If you want to know more about the factors you need to look out for while picking the best channel manager, here’s the ultimate guide to the best channel manager software that you may find useful.
Choosing the Best Property Management System
Channels come very handy when you want to boost your short term rentals’ exposure. However, after some time, any successful property manager would like to reorient their policies to get more direct bookings instead of paying commissions to OTAs and booking channels. So, in addition to a powerful channel manager, you’ll need other tools such as a booking engine for direct bookings.
If you come to think of it, there’s no way you can manage your business without an efficient PMS (Property Management Software) that’ll help you automate the major parts of your vacation rental business. Therefore, it is best to choose a PMS that is a perfect fit for your business and exactly addresses and resolves your pain points.
Moreover, successful companies usually manage vacation rentals in more than one location. They even often expand their horizons beyond their country’s borders and take the responsibility of managing short term rentals overseas. Even though this is a good strategy to reduce the risk of lack of revenue in off seasons, it comes with its own challenges.
But nothing can stop you from achieving your goals if you’re determined to achieve success in your management strategies. You just need the right tools that enable you to set your goals and reach them step by step in an organised way. At this point, you might need to choose a multi-location PMS that has some specific features based on the needs of companies that manage properties in more than one location.
Remember, the challenging part of working with a PMS is mostly the step when you have to choose the one that is best for your business. So, we suggest that you take your time and do your research if you want to pick the one that’ll automate your business and free up your time.
Diversify Your Target Market
While one successful marketing strategy is to diversify your portfolio, there’s another one that suggests targeting different market segments. For instance, business travellers are a tempting target for vacation rental owners and serviced apartment operators. Especially, at this time of crisis when people tend to avoid unnecessary travels, contractors and corporate travellers who are obligated to go on some business trips are still a group of guests that can bring you revenue and save your business from drowning.
In addition, they’re repeat guests which means if they’re satisfied with the experience you provide them with, they’ll come back to you over and over again in their future work trips. If you haven’t started to work on strategies that’ll help you get more bookings from corporations, and you don’t know how to begin, you can get some help from this article as it lists the specific needs business travellers have and how you can optimise your listing to be appealing for them.
Having a Content Strategy to Improve Your Property Management Company
Short term rentals have become a tempting source of revenue for a lot of people over the course of the last few years, and there are more and more companies joining the competition every day.
Moreover, guests tend to use search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Ask.com much more than before. So, every property management company seeks for ways to outrival their competitors by ranking higher in the search engines result pages as most people click on the first links they see, and almost no one goes through the first page.
If you want to win the competition and keep your reputation and success, you need to pay attention to have an organised SEO strategy and constantly optimise the content on your direct booking website or your listing on other platforms such as channels and GMB (Google My Business). We suggest that if you’re not a professional in this field, hire some experts for your company. Take content creation seriously as we’re living in the digital/information era.
Bottom Line to improve Your Property management Company
Establishing and developing a short term rental management business is no easy task, especially with the competition getting tighter day by day. As a successful manager, it is vital to always look for more technologies that’ll come to your help and pave your way. And last but not least, keep yourself updated on the latest news in the business if you want to make sure you’re on the way to improving your property management company.
