10 Best Apps for Running a Vacation Rental Business

Last updated on May 6th, 2024 at 04:21 am

The tourism industry has grown exponentially and vacation rentals play a crucial role in the growing travel ecosystem. Rental apps have proved that real estate can be monetized efficiently by creating a whole new market by offering vacation homes on a short-term basis. Initially, it started as a niche solution for family reunions or group vacations. However, the paradigm of such rentals has turned mainstream with booking sites like Vrbo, Booking.com, and Airbnb offering millions of properties across the globe.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, vacation rentals have fared better than hotels as travelers were opting for rental stays keeping in mind privacy and safety. The vacation rental is estimated to reach over $20 billion with a rough 10% year-over-year market growth.

Top apps for managing vacation rentals

The adaptation of key trends and various applications are the key trends in the vacation rental markets. Such measures or promotional strategies aid in expanding the vending customer base and help deliver a pleasant stay to the guests.

Whether you are managing a single short-term vacation rental with few units or acting as a professional host with various listings and accounts, it is vital to have an easy-to-use and feature-loaded application to run it successfully. Such trending mobile applications for startups and vacation rental solutions save a tremendous amount of time and aid in syncing all your accounts and properties into one single centralized system. Let us walk you through some specifics that you might want to consider.

1. Vert S

Vert s is one of the most crucial apps required for running vacation rentals businesses. It is an alternate version of the critically acclaimed Vert-unit and currency converter. Vert S helps convert any unit or currency your guests want to pay. For instance, if a potential guest from the United Kingdom wants to know how much your place costs per night in euros, Vert can tell you in seconds. It supports over 168 currencies and 800 units circulated across the globe. Along with that, if a potential guest from Florida wants to know how big your Parisian-style apartment is in feet, Vert S can tell you within minutes.

2. Handy

The biggest challenge a vacation rental owner faces is the cleaning and maintaining their stays consistently. It is hard to find cleaners or house help especially if your vacation rental property is located in a remote area. Handy helps take care of these hassles by helping you tap into a wide network of handymen. It allows booking and managing cleaners’ appointments at an upfront task. Moreover, the Handy app comes along with free furniture delivery and professional installation services that can be a huge help in keeping your vacation rental organized.

3. Touch stay

When it comes to short-term vacation rentals, keeping a guidebook with complete information about your rental for your guests is vital. It allows your guests to know more about you and your vacation rental prices, limitations, features and much more. Touch stay is one such app that offers rental owners a range of functionalities to share key information with their guests easily. Moreover, you can share other essential details about your rental with your guests such as check-in procedures, wifi codes, driving instructions, house rules and contact information. You can integrate some useful tips such as the location of local amenities, shops, guides, local attractions and much more in your digital guidebook.

4. Party squasher

Party squasher is an app specially curated keeping in mind rental managers who want to be alerted about any suspiciously large gathering at their property. It is the first occupancy monitoring service for rentals and it works by continuously monitoring the number of guests at the property. It is designed for smart vacation rental owners looking for a safe way to measure the number of people in a home in real time. Party squasher works by setting an occupancy limit and it sends you a text message or an email when the occupancy exceeds your decided limit.

5. Cabin Key

Cabin key is a complete vacation rental service that helps businesses manage the complications of the rental property. It makes guest management and online bookings for rentals straightforward and smooth. It cuts the hassle of traditional booking with robust tools such as calendar management, accommodation booking, customer support, online payment and much more. The best part about Cabin key is that it is a cloud-based solution instilled with rental channel management and a booking engine that makes your business processes hassle-free. Such user-friendly service applications improve your day-to-day chores and aids in simplifying your bookings.

6. Snapseed

In the process of selling your property to potential guests and attracting them, pictures are worth more than a thousand words. Nowadays guest, choose vacation rental properties based on the quality and authenticity of the pictures alone. As a rental owner, you need to have an app in the store that enhances photos and makes your place more attractive and aesthetic for your potential guest. Snapseed is an all-in-one professional photo editor developed by Google. This application makes sure that each and every picture of your rental property is professional and of optimum quality. It is an application available on iOS as well as Android. Snapseed is one of the most used editing solutions for mobile photography and is very easy to use.

7. YourWelcome

YourWelcome allows rental owners to create a user-friendly digital welcome book. It is an app and tablet-based platform that gives check-in, keyless entry and guest communication services. Guests can check into their rental property with the help of a referral code sent to them via the app. In addition to that, the host can communicate with guests and also lend them information about the rental and local area. Your Welcome app comes along with features that allow guests to book additional services like cleaning and laundry. It also aids in managing bookings and sends real-time updates to hosts on their properties.

8. Houzz

Houz is one of the most popular home design and renovation apps that allows users to browse and save photos or ideas for home decorating, remodeling and much more. This app can help rental owners looking for inspiring exterior and interior design ideas to make their property more attractive to guests. It has a wide variety of images and information on home design, including interior and exterior photos, floor plans and product recommendations. Moreover, it includes a marketplace where users can purchase furniture and decor or other products featured in the app. Users can even contact local architects, designers and home decorating professionals.

9. Guesty

When running an end-to-end vacation rental property, it is difficult to keep track of bookings, new messages and much more. It gets gruesome to manage listings across multiple channels. However, a property management application like Guesty allows you to supervise various listings on different booking channels from a single platform. It works by creating manual reservations received from your listed booking channels. Moreover, it aids in creating automated messages, responses, payments and push notifications. Such apps are vital to staying in the loop on all moving parts of your growing rental business.

10. Avantio

Vacation rental business goes through phases of ups and downs as the vacation season changes. In such ever-evolving scenarios, it is a task to diversify your distributions and increase revenue, all of it while managing a workforce. Avantio is a software that makes scaling a breeze and maximizes the profitability of your vacation rental property. It is a cloud-based vacation rental business app that allows field staff to be more organized and do higher-quality work. This all-in-one software drives predictive tasks, syncs reservations and boosts operation automation.

Conclusion

With more and more people opting for vacation rentals over traditional hotels, the growth of dynamically priced properties is inevitable. The massive growth of vacation rental app development and rental app like Airbnb have prompted people from all over the world to try their hand at investing in real estate and becoming hosts on various market platforms. With hopes of higher returns, rental business owners and professional hosts are investing in multiple applications and software to simplify the day-to-day hassle of managing and delivering the best accommodation services.