Vacation Rental Booking Software
Choosing a company that will provide you with the knowledge, tools, and support you need to run your property management company is daunting. There are increasing numbers of software companies, all claiming to provide the best vacation rental booking software. This article guides you through features that are essential in a software provider.
What to look for in a vacation rental booking software supplier?
When looking for a booking software supplier, there are several angles to consider. First, let’s take a look at their commitment to forward thinking.
Forward-thinking
Some indicators that a booking software supplier is forward-thinking are:
They are looking at what is coming next: The vacation rental industry is in a period of great change, making it an exciting time to be involved. A software provider needs to listen to its clients, industry influencers, be aware of market trends, consumer needs, and legal and technical changes to improve the quality of the industry’s reputation by developing software that meets your customer’s ever-changing needs and demands.
They have the tools for the job: Managing vacation rental properties is a complex procedure of customer, guest, and owner communications, online synchronized calendars, owners intranets, accounting management, authority and legal exportations, external provider management, and channel management, amongst others. Each company will provide different features of differing quality levels. You need to understand what tools your company needs and wants now, and in the future.
They will bring customers to you: For customers to come to you, your software provider should incorporate specialized vacation rental websites into the vacation rental software. These need to be designed entirely for the holiday rental industry with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a foundation to drive traffic to you. All features should be designed to maximize the number of sales you make through easy conversion processes.
They will stand by your side: The best industry software providers know that a software solution is not just the product but a dedicated service. Experienced, multilingual technical and support teams need to be available to provide not just initial but also ongoing training in a way that suits you through online guides, skype training sessions, or live training presentations. They need to be on hand to give guidance with new features and find swift resolutions to any hiccups when they happen.
Technical integrity
Another indicator of a great vacation rental booking software company, is the strength of their tech:
Security is core to their business: It’s no surprise to hear that cybercrime has increased, hand in hand with the market demands to have more processes instantaneously and online, such as credit card payments and online booking. The best vacation rental management system providers know this and build security features into their designs to combat unauthorized hands reaching into your pocket, data records or damaging your hard-earned reputation.
They will lift the weight from your back: Running a business takes increasing hours of repetitive tasks. As the market develops and customer expectations and legal requirements increase, this will continue to grow. The best software companies implement business intelligence features (learn more about task automation) and focus on opportunities to reduce the management time of tasks and activities required to run your business.
They will take you to your customers: Your customers are out there, and they will either come to you or you have to go to them. Going to them means having a channel manager with connections to both global, and local specialized portals. The best software providers will have designed smooth processes for connecting and managing easily to the portals that best reach your market with no hidden charges and will have carefully developed preferred partnerships with the best portals to benefit your business.
How to choose the right vacation rental booking software supplier?
Consider the key points discussed in this post and identify the essential topics for your business. Ask yourself which area of the business do you want to save time on? Different software offers various time-saving tasks. When selecting the right software for your business, prioritize where you want to automate and time-save in your daily schedule. Also, look for software that features a channel manager and which channels they include. Ensure they have your primary channels to help improve your day-to-day management. And finally, consider website services offered through the same software supplier. Some property management software companies provide website design and marketing services to integrate with the software for a sleek and high-performance website.
Check out the range of services we offer through our property management software and how we can help grow your vacation rental business. Contact us today to speak to one of the team.
We also have another post with more information about the best vacation rental management software.
