Hostaway vs OwnerRez
This article examines Hostaway vs OwnerRez by concentrating on the main features that a hospitality management software should offer. The data has been collected from Hostaway’s and OwnerRez’s websites and help articles. We also checked their reviews at Capterra to find the aspects that the actual users are emphasising.
Guest Review
In Capterra, Hostaway has a rating of 4.7, with the highest score for Customer Service.
Trustpilot introduces Hostaway as an Excellent tool with a 4.7 TrustScore.
In Capterra, OwnerRez has a rating of 4.9, with the highest score for Customer Service, Features, and Value for Money.
Trustpilot introduces OwnerRez as an Average tool with a 2.8 TrustScore.
Hostaway sends out automated messages called “Native Messages” to the guests based on the reservation event. These auto-messages will be sent to channels like Airbnb, and the guests receive them on Airbnb. You can set messages in Hostaway and send them out for Expedia, HomeAway, TripAdvisor, and Booking.com.
Regarding payments, if the channels do not process them, they will pass you the card details, and you can charge the cards to proceed with the payment through your Stripe account.
While working with OwnerRez, you do not need to worry about the bookings that come from OTAs to which you have an API connection, as everything will automatically be visible in your account.
You can enable push notifications through the OwnerRez’s Web App to receive alerts, such as a new booking notification, on all your devices.
However, you may face some difficulties if your booking is direct. Then, everything should be done manually. Here are the steps:
- Create the booking and enter guest details.
- Activate payment collection and enter their card information.
- Schedule the security deposit.
- Reach out to guests for further information, such as photo ID and signing of the terms and conditions (through the Renter Agreements feature).
After taking these steps, the booking will be created, and it will resemble one created automatically.
Hostaway offers integration with top channels such as Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, HomeAway/Vrbo, 9flats.com, and Innclusive (which provides a commission-free listing for the owners). Hostaway also offers iCal integration with other channels such as OwnersDirect, Tripping.com, Widmu, Perfect Places, and OneFineStay.
Hostaway:
- Pushes rates and availability in real time and makes sure that those are up to date across all channels.
- Enables you to export your listings (calendar and content) from Hostaway into HomeAway/Vrbo if you have five or more active listings, and they are listed on HomeAway/Vrbo.
- Offers a manual iCal synchronisation when you have fewer than five listings for TripAdvisor and Flipkey. If you have five or more listings, Hostaway offers a 1-way API integration.
- Lets you export your listings to Booking.com if you have more than five listings. However, you can only export one listing per address.
- Sets channel mark-ups.
- Sets a “booking window” at channel level.
- Notifies you if there is a “modified reservation” by using the “Airbnb Pro” connection. You can also manage “Special Offers” in your Hostaway account.
The full API integration is only available for Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com. In addition, you will have full access to all API integrations if you have five or more properties.
When you open the window for each channel synchronisation, you can see the list of your listings with Sync Status, Listing Status, the last time a booking was made for each property, and the last time the information changed or synced again.
Hostaway gets help from cleaning services through integrations with Properly and Doinn. You can export your listings into these platforms.
- In Hostaway, you can set up cleaning tasks before arrival and after check-out.
- The housekeepers have access to the tasks on both the dashboard and their mobile app, where they can attach photos and leave comments.
OwnerRez offers several ways to keep the cleaners posted about the latest housekeeping tasks:
- Custom Cleaner iCals
Using iCal integration, you can create a custom calendar for your property, export all your bookings there, and share the link with your cleaners.
- Portal Access
With login details, your cleaners can access your calendar, notes, and guest details based on the levels of access you define.
(This feature is available only if you use the Property Management Premium Feature.)
- Custom Trigger Emails
You can create a trigger email in OwnerRez to be sent out after each departure so that the cleaner knows about the latest check-outs.
- Third-Party Alerts
If you turn on Third-Party Alerts for each property and put in the cleaner’s name/email address, the system will email the assignee automatically each time a booking hits, gets cancelled, or changed.
- Stay Report
The stay report shows you who is arriving, departing, and staying. This report can be printed and sent to your cleaners as a schedule.
Hostaway integrates with Operto. Operto sends the access codes to the guests after you set a message in Hostaway to allow it to send those codes.
OwnerRez is integrated with eRentalLock and a couple of other door lock companies for self check-ins. It can automatically generate codes for your many different door locks, including numeric sequence locks and Wi-Fi locks – each time a booking is created. However, you still need to inform the guest about the code.
For that, you can create an email template within the system with your preferred trigger rule. Based on that, OwnerRez will automatically send an email to your guests to enter the property without your presence.
- Hostaway allows you to choose the subdomain’s name for your direct booking website, select the listings you would like to be published on the website, and add titles, content, background images, and social media contact information.
- Your Stripe account will be connected to your website.
- You can use the WordPress plugin to connect your website to Hostaway’s website.
- Hostaway’s Open API option enables you to integrate your Hostaway software with any other website.
OwnerRez offers hosted websites for its customers for an extra charge.
If you have one property, the fee for having a hosted website would be $10.00 per month, which may differ based on the number of your listings.
The website includes:
- A page per property
- A booking engine
- An availability calendar
- Your different rate plans for the season
- Images and videos
- Reviews
- Amenities
- Property location
- Google Vacation Rental Structured Data
- Hostaway allows you to set weekly and monthly rates and push them to the channels.
- You can set rates for all the connected channels by editing them on the calendar.
- You also have the option to import rates from your Airbnb account into Hostaway and send them to other channels.
OwnerRez does not include an extended stay option. It means you cannot define different monthly and/or weekly rates.
Extending your guest stay for your direct bookings can be done manually by changing the dates, the charges, and payment collection.
If a booking is coming from an OTA and the guests stay longer in your properties, the change should be made on the OTA webpage directly, even if you use API integration.
- Hostaway facilitates guest experience through integration with YourWelcome and Wishbox.
- Through Hostaway, you can send messages automatically, thanking the guests for reservations, welcome messages, and post-check-out messages and trigger them according to the channel, listing, or event type.
- You can choose templates from the system and set this automation for all channels or all listings, one listing, or one specific channel.
- You can set triggers and send the message based on the reservation status, arrival/departure, enquiry, and pending reservation. You can pause, cancel, or edit these “scheduled messages” and send them manually.
- The “Native Messaging” feature enables you to send the message to Airbnb and Booking.com, and these channels will send the email to the guest.
- The “Guest Reviews” feature of Hostaway allows you to receive reviews from the guest from the top channels, and you would be able to reply to the reviews that come from Airbnb and Booking.com.
OwnerRez has an option in their check-out process called renter agreement. A signing link can also follow this agreement, which is highly recommended for bookings that come from different OTAs.
There is a suggested renter agreement, but you can create as many agreements as you want and customise them as a host.
After the signature link is used, you can ask your guests or a particular group of them to verify their contact information for you. This way, you will restore your guests’ details even when the booking comes from a listing site.
OwnerRez’s integration with Besty AI automates guest messaging and interactions.
N/A
OwnerRez creates a profile for each of your guests regardless of the sources or channels they come from.
To have an organised CRM, you have the option to merge your contacts or team them up.
OwnerRez’s guest CRM shows you the guests’ history, including the number of their previous bookings with a summary, payments, contact information, and some tags.
By creating different tags, you can highlight some characteristics or ideas about the guests, such as great, never again, breakfast, extra bed, and rental boats. The reason for having tags on the CRM level and booking level is to help the owner. The owner will keep in mind the key points that may seem minor but have a considerable impact on their hosting quality to turn the guests into loyal ones or prevent an annoying person from returning to the property again.
Hostaway:
- Connects to Properly and Doinn, so if you have an account on these platforms, you can outsource your maintenance operations.
- Allows assigning tasks to the user, supervisor, and teams, which can be managed from both the system and the mobile app.
- Lets the cleaners attach photos or leave comments so that you will be informed about an issue.
OwnerRez does not seem to have a particular feature dedicated to your maintenance issues. You can create manual tasks if needed.
Hostaway’s app is useful for hosts and staff members.
- The team members can see the tasks that they have been assigned to. They can also check all the tasks related to their team and “accept” the task to complete it.
- Using the filter options, the staff member can search the tasks in their app and choose the one that applies to their role.
- The cleaners can upload photos as attachments on their mobile app.
OwnerRez supports mobile phones and tablets. Their web version is mobile responsive, meaning that you can work with the system the same way you do from your PC. It can also be installed as an app on your mobile devices.
- Hostaway offers a tagging system that allows you to add tags to the listing to make filtering easier.
- In each listing, you can create a “Custom Field” and configure detailed information about the units.
- For manually creating a listing, you can add rooms and beds. The bed-type export feature is available for HomeAway and Booking.com.
- Some settings (content) in Hostaway can be exported to Airbnb such as discounts, minimum and maximum stay restrictions, check-in & check-out time, cleaning fee, extra guest fee, etc.
- The system allows you to cross-list the properties, and you will be able to set bookable properties as separate units and together as a whole.
You can use OwnerRez internationally. They allow for multiple currencies, which can be set per property. You can have multiple different credit card processors to accept different currencies, as well.
- Hostaway allows you to create general tasks and reservation-based tasks and assign them to the team members. The assignee will get notified via email. As the manager, you will be provided with an overview of all tasks in some categories such as “to do,” “accepted,” “in progress,” and “done,” and you can see them on the calendar (tasks that are linked to reservations).
- The system allows you to put the staff into groups and assign a supervisor. The tasks can be allocated to the listing, channels, or both.
- The tasks are based on the listings and events, and you can create them both manually and automatically. The manual task option is handy for not recurring tasks, and you can use the available options in the software to set them. The assignee can start and end the task from both the platform and mobile app. The system also allows you to set recurring tasks.
- There is a Time Report option that tells you how much time was spent on the task.
- You can add the following options to your tasks: a checklist, costs, resolution notes (giving and leaving feedback), and attachments (cleaners can upload images before and after cleaning)
- You can give permissions to the users to “view, modify, delete, and edit” the tasks. If the modification is done through the mobile app, any reservation changes will not be applied to the task.
OwnerRez can help you manage your housekeeping to some extent, but it needs manual interference and supervision (it will not be done automatically).
However, it is clear that some more extensive operations with more complex scheduling involved, including housekeeping, maintenance, and other support staff, need an advanced solution. To meet this, OwnerRez has partnered with ResortCleaning and VRScheduler.
In Hostaway, you can give owners access to the system by setting an email address and password and defining the properties they are allowed to see. The system enables you to let the owner see the listings, reservations, calendar, or all of them. You can allow them to modify, create, or delete listings and reservations, as well.
OwnerRez’s PM (Property Management) area gives you a wide variety of options, provided that you use the Premium plan. You can configure owners and assign the properties that you manage for those owners, including some settings like your commission.
You can grant portal access to owners to see your calendar. You can also generate monthly owner statements so that owners can see their booking earnings and the expenses you have charged them. In addition, your grand total for the month will be calculated.
Hostaway’s payment partners are Stripe and Braintree (Braintree does not pre-authorise the deposit).
- You can specify whether you process the payment by credit card or send an invoice to the guests with the payment instructions manually.
- When the invoice is created, you can charge your guests directly from the invoice; their credit card will be charged, and the amount will be managed on your Stripe account.
- You can set automatic invoices for new reservations and decide whether they will be created for all channels or only for a specific one. You can also link the invoices to some or all listings. You can set up auto-charge and split charge by scheduling the triggers (based on reservation, check-in, and check-out). You have the ability to pause or edit a charge at any time.
- Pre-authorisation only works for auto-charge and auto-invoices.
- You should manually mark the invoice as fully or partially paid.
- You can directly collect payments. You can configure payment methods in the financial settings to accept credit cards, cheques, or PayPal.
- You have integration with Quickbooks for your accounting. All the invoices will get generated automatically using Quickbooks’s integration with all the data needed, such as taxes, add-ons, etc.
- You can generate partial payment links, meaning the system generates two invoices for you. It is also possible to set reminders for the guests, which will be sent to them via email.
- Regarding security deposits, OwnerRez offers its optional Damage Protection programme with an insurer called RentalGuardian. The other possible ways are either to hold a security deposit or to have a Refundable Damage Deposit or “RDD.” These can be created manually in the system.
- They offer API integrations with Payeezy, Authorize.net, Bambora, Lynnbrook, Stripe, and more payment processors for payment collection. You can check them out on their website.
Hostaway provides you with reports that you can view based on listing level and channel level.
Through these graphics, you can see:
- Rental revenue per channel.
- Booking nights per channel.
- Rental revenue per reservation per channel.
- Daily reservation received per channel.
- Reservation per channel.
You can use the sample formula included in the system or create your calculations by selecting some values related to taxes like city tax, sales tax, and other values related to reservations like Damage Deposit and Additional Cleaning Cancelation Fee. After creating this, you will be able to check the Financial Report.
The Occupancy Report gives you information about days available, days booked, total check-in, revenue, revenue/days booked, revenue/days available, cancellations, etc.
- OwnerRez offers various reports which can be exported to Excel/CSV files.
- The booking summary report helps you compare your booking percentage over different periods. You can also compare property by property.
- You can apply other filters like Airbnb or channel bookings only.
- You can also have a Line Item Pivot report where you have the list of all your bookings on a list with all the information you may want to check.
Hostaway has integration with Pricelabs, Beyond, and Wheelhouse.
Using OwnerRez, you can define seasonal rates and spot rates. You can have the rates applied to only random days in a month, certain days repeatedly, or the entire month. The rate plans from one property can also be batch copied to a destination property.
Under rate rules, you can create last-minute discounts.
OwnerRez also offers integration with Beyond and PriceLabs for dynamic pricing.
Hostaway facilitates being in touch with the support team and receiving assistance for most of the updates and configurations. They hold webinars when there is an update, and guides for setting up the system are available.
There is a fixed charge for the setup.
Once you sign up, the OwnerRez’s support team will reach out to schedule a free 1-hour 1:1 call.
OwnerRez has a ProConnect (Concierge) Setup apart from support documents and asking for help.
The OwnerRez team will go through your account’s onboarding process entirely by themselves based on the information you provide for them. At some points, like the part for website setup, your presence will be needed.
There would be a charge for this service based on the number of your properties. The service will only be available for your existing listings, not the ones you add later on. It is also good to know that Concierge Setup is not an express service, and it might take 3 to 6 weeks to complete.
In Hostaway, if you want to integrate with your accounting system, you can use an Open API.
OwnerRez offers a Line Item Pivot where you have the list of all your bookings on a list with all the information you may want to check. You can see your booking data, rent price, cleaning, surcharges and discounts, taxes, host fees, charge totals, transaction totals, and PM totals. You can export these to Excel, as well.
Remember that this information will be generated for each booking, not for your organisation, like the monthly profit report in total.
However, OwnerRez can generate monthly owner statements to see their booking earnings and the expenses you have charged them. In addition, the total of the month will be calculated.
OwnerRez integrates with Quickbooks for your bookkeeping tasks.
Having PM services (calculating commissions, generating owner statements and recording expenses) and integrating QuickBooks require an extra fee to be paid to OwnerRez on your base plan.
Hosaway’s unified inbox offers two views, which are the inbox and the guest conversation.
The inbox can be filtered by all listings, all channels, recent activity, and reservation status.
In the conversation page, you can find information such as the guest name, channel name (Airbnb only), check-in and check-out, name of the property, and the number of the guests.
Some options link you to the calendar, booking page, and guest portal.
The guest portal contains the reservation details, photos, and Google Maps, and you can share its URL with your guests. The guests can also access the invoice, and they can leave a note for you.
OwnerRez does not have a Unified Inbox beyond Airbnb messaging. However, you can have your Airbnb and Vrbo messages sent to OwnerRez automatically, and you can answer them back from your OwnerRez account directly.
You can have your enquiries forwarded into OwnerRez from Vrbo or TripAdvisor, but your replies will be sent out as a traditional email to the guest.
Some pre-set email templates can be sent out to guests automatically using the triggers. They can be turned off for the bookings that you may choose from your list. You can also create your email templates based on your needs.
Pricing
Hostaway offers different pricing options. To get an accurate quote, you should contact them for your customised pricing plan. Hostaway charges 367.80 GBP ($500) as the setup fee. Typically, the price starts from 25.75 GBP ($35) per listing, but it drops down as the number of units increases.
There are two options for paying Hostaway subscriptions:
- Commission-based (2% of monthly revenue)
- Flat rate
Based on a rough calculation for a business operating around 200 units, Hostaway pricing would be about 14.71 GBP ($20) per listing. Another estimation for four units with a different combination of features would be 11.03 GBP ($15) each and 183.90 GBP ($250) of setup fee.
OwnerRez pricing starts from $40 (31 GBP) per month. The more properties you have, the less you will pay. However, the default plan only includes Channel Management and Digital Signatures. If you want to have the Property Management feature (to calculate commissions, generate owner statements, and record expenses), QuickBooks integration, hosted website, and SMS messaging, you need to include them in your base plan and pay extra for each. OwnerRez does not have a free version, but they offer a 14-day free trial.
Hostaway vs OwnerRez: Which Property Management System to Choose?
Hostaway enables the user to advertise and list their properties on top channels easily. The company is looking to improve by adding new features. Hostaway communicates with its clients and develops what the users need or suggest. If you aim to concentrate on some channels, especially Airbnb, Hostaway provides you with a smooth synchronisation. However, Hostaway does not offer many tools to improve your direct bookings.
OwnerRez will help you manage your properties as there are lots of features available for each aspect of managing a short-rental business. There are also so many integrations that can be used. However, you need to keep in mind that, to have some of the features, you need to pay an extra amount per property to have them activated. OwnerRez can be an excellent solution for small and large multi-location companies and those who work with Vrbo, Booking.com, and Airbnb.
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