With the world economy in slow recovery across the markets and international tourism back on the rise, companies are in search of ways to create an efficient and productive workforce to ensure company longevity. This is ever visible within the vacation rental industry which was heavily impacted by the global financial crisis. There is an unprecedented level of competition for quality properties is driving the industry to rethink how its employees work and how tasks are completed to save time and resources in their businesses.
The 2008 global financial crisis of the US and European countries brought declines in consumer wealth estimated in trillions of US dollars, and significantly lowered the GDP across many European countries, which as yet, have not recovered. This crisis came as a shock to many companies who were not prepared for the significant changes that a drop in the markets brought. Numbers of travelers reduced, demanded higher cost/value options and became significantly more tech savvy to search for better deals.
In the vacation rental industry, other influences played a part in creating change. The digitalisation of the industry meant that potential customers had new options available to them. The influx of disruptive companies like Airbnb bringing home sharing to compete with traditional rentals and meta-searches like Holidu creating new ways of searching for properties shifted how the vacation rental industry works. To stay ahead of the competition, increase profits and meet the changing needs of the market, vacation rental agencies need to review their business processes and make significant adjustments. One of these changes is the incorporation of automation tools for vacation rentals in the property managment software.
How does automation tools for vacation rentals help agencies?
The idea behind automation is to reduce the time and resources required to undertake repetitive tasks. This can be integrated within the vacation rental management system used or be an additional feature, but the goal is to save your agency time and money through increased profitability, improved communications to free resources in the business to focus on adding value to potential guests.
Research shows how task automation is largely being incorporated into the ways of working to stay ahead. A study conducted by TechRepublic investigated the effects of automation in IT.
The research shows how 71% of respondents were either automating tasks or planned to in the next 6 months to either ‘maintain a consistent environment’ and ‘offload work and free up staff’. This is a significant change in business processes across many industries, and valuable to understand how business management is changing.
How can automation tools for vacation rentals increase productivity?
The vacation rental industry has many tasks which are repetitive and can be facilitated with the right automation tools for vacation rentals. These tasks largely involve the entire sales and management processes and have a high impact on a vacation rental agency which is managing a significant number of properties. These tasks can be broken into the following areas:
Task Automation – Pre Sales
- Communications with potential guests
- Displaying vacation properties on portals
- Marketing to potential guests through Mailchimp
- Requesting unmade payments and confirming paid amounts
Task Automation – Post Sales
- Communications with external suppliers
- Communications with property owners
- Communications to guests before arrival
- Management of guest check-in
- Organization of properties including offers and discounts
- Organization of online bookings through booking calendar
- Management of guest reviews
Avantio software is designed exclusively to increase efficiency and productivity: do more with less resources and do more with the same. It’s this dedication to providing automated solutions which will help agencies save money and time and remain competitive in the market. We are certain that with carefully structured automation tools, agencies can grow and have the tools in place to overcome the global financial crisis and be prepared for future industry changes.
For more information on any aspect of the new features that we offer through the Avantio Vacation Rental Software and integrated Channel Manager, please don’t hesitate to contact us by email or phone us on +1 206 4200946 or +44 2038 688 098.
