For vacation rentals & short-term stays
Vacation rental management guide
Maintenance, cleaning, bookings, cancellations, special requests, complaints. Managing a vacation rental is demanding on the best of days. This guide walks through the ways to manage rental properties, what each management model costs, and where software takes the work off your hands.
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The guide
SabeeApp's vacation rental management guide
Vacation property management comes with many challenges, but there's no reason to despair.
Managing a vacation rental property can be a demanding task. Even on the best days, it has many challenges. Maintenance, cleaning, bookings, cancellations, special requests, complaints, and the list goes on.
Today's hotelier has a wide variety of tactics and tools. To help you handle your rental properties, we've put together this short guide, designed to familiarise you with some of the best practices for vacation rental management, and with the time, money and energy you can save by using vacation rental management software.
Your options
Properties, management companies, and management fees
There are many ways to manage vacation rental properties. You can handle the properties yourself, or you can use vacation rental management software.
If you don't have the time or the desire for that, you can hire a property management firm to handle your rentals for you. Different firms offer different payment and fee structures, and each has its own advantages and drawbacks.
- Manage the property yourself
- Run it on vacation rental management software
- Hand it to a property management firm
Type of fees
Three ways management firms charge you
Read on to see which one might work best for you.
Commission model
Under a commission-based fee structure, you pay a percentage-based commission to the property manager each month, so the amount you pay is directly proportional to your rental income.
When you make less money, you pay less money, and a commission structure encourages your property manager to optimise your profits: when you make more, they make more. Before agreeing on a commission model, be clear on the exact rate the management company will charge.
Fixed-rate model
As its name implies, under a fixed-rate model you pay a property management firm a set fee each month. Rather than fluctuating with how much you've taken in, the flat fee stays consistent.
This means you might pay more than you'd like during slow months. At the same time, during months with especially high bookings you'll see much higher profits, as the property manager won't be receiving a bigger cut.
Guaranteed income model
Under this fee structure, you as the property owner are guaranteed a fixed monthly income from your rental. Whether the property received twenty bookings or two, every month you receive the same amount from the firm.
You'll never have to worry about losing money on your rental property, but you'll also miss the income spikes that come with a rise in bookings: anything above the fixed amount goes to the management firm.
The future is now
Vacation rental management software
One of the biggest tasks when managing a rental property is handling bookings. On your own, it's both tedious and difficult to juggle new bookings alongside current ones and last-minute cancellations.
Without the right tools it's far too easy to run into overbookings or double bookings, and if reservations arrive from multiple sources, managing all of it manually becomes a truly Herculean task. The right software makes hours of stress a thing of the past, and it's built to save you time, energy and, most importantly, money.
SabeeApp vacation rental management
All the tools you need for efficient vacation rental operations
Elevate your guest experience with the convenience of online check-in, continuous communication throughout the stay, and automated feedback collection and next-stay incentives, all seamlessly integrated with the SabeeApp Software Suite.
SabeeApp PMS
Manage and synchronise your daily admin tasks from one dashboard: reservations, invoices, guest communication, housekeeping and reporting.
Learn moreBooking Engine
Turn your website into your most successful sales channel and grow direct, commission-free reservations.
Learn moreChannel Manager
Keep rates, availability and restrictions up to date across all connected OTAs automatically. Overbooking and double data entry are a problem of the past.
Learn moreSabeePay
Fast, easy and secure transactions, with instant payouts and seamless integration with SabeeApp PMS.
Learn moreGuestAdvisor
Let guests complete online check-in, ID verification and smart-lock access before they arrive, easing the work of your team.
Learn moreAI Front Desk Agent
Guest messages from every channel arrive in one place. AI answers the simple, repetitive questions and flags the ones that need your team's attention.
Learn more
Manage smarter
Expertly designed software, no IT knowledge needed
For successful vacation rental property management, a good management system is a must. Today's top designers of vacation rental PMS systems, such as SabeeApp, have crafted software to fit all your property management needs.
With a user-friendly system and a dedicated technical support team, you won't need specialised IT knowledge to take your rental property to the next level.
SabeeApp for vacation rentals
Less admin. More revenue.
Bring bookings, channels, guests, operations and payments into a workflow your team can actually manage.