Over the past decade, the PropTech industry has prioritized Airbnb automation tools to keep pace with the rapid growth of the short-term rental market and the influx of new hosts. But what exactly is Airbnb automation, how does it work, and why does it matter?
This guide breaks it all down. You'll learn what Airbnb automation is, explore its key benefits, and understand how it simplifies hosting. We'll also highlight the best software tools to help both individual hosts and professional property managers save time and boost efficiency.
Ready to take full control of your short-term rental business? Check out SummerOS, the ultimate platform for streamlining operations and transforming your vacation rental management from reactive to proactive.
Can you fully automate your Airbnb?
The short answer is: Yes, you can fully automate your Airbnb business with the help of the right Airbnb management software.
But what do we mean by automating your Airbnb?
Whether you're a beginner Airbnb host or a national Airbnb property manager, there are dozens of day-to-day activities and tasks that go into managing your portfolio. From continuously optimizing listings and communicating with guests, to housekeeping and keeping finances in order, a DIY host spends an average of 20-40 hours per month on vacation rental management duties. As you can imagine, the commitment is significantly larger for managers with portfolios with dozens or hundreds of properties.
Due to the effort-intense nature of Airbnb management, individual hosts find it hard to grow their investment portfolio to more than a single property without turning into full-time STR operators, while Airbnb management companies meet major obstacles on the path to sustainable business growth.
This is where Airbnb automation comes into play. Automating your short-term rental business refers to putting the vast majority of tedious and time-consuming tasks on autopilot with the help of various tech-based tools and apps, to be listed shortly.
This means no longer wasting your precious time on responding to repetitive guest questions, coordinating your team, assigning tasks, making sure the property has been properly cleaned and restocked before guest arrivals, and having to personally welcome and send off guests to provide them with keys. It means using software to take care of monotonous activities so that you can use your brain power and time to strategize on how to grow your portfolio and business.
Because of the endless benefits that it brings, automation is becoming increasingly popular and important in the vacation rental management business to remain competitive and outperform competitors. But let's take a look at the advantages that Airbnb automation offers STR operators.
Why is Airbnb automation important?
In brief, Airbnb automation is important because it allows you to optimize the performance of your short-term rental property while spending less time and effort on actually managing it. In other words, it helps you improve efficiency.
Airbnb statistics clearly show the major benefits that automating a vacation rental business can lead to. According to Hospitable, automation can help you save up to 90% of your time on routine STR management operations. Beyond estimates that introducing automated dynamic pricing can push annual revenue by up to 40%, and iGMS reports that automation can lead to an 80% increase in occupancy. These are some major quantitative gains that mean you will not only need to spend less time on managing your properties but you'll also make more money from them.
The major benefits of Airbnb automation for both small and large hosts and property managers include:
- Data-driven decisions based on automated market research and competition analysis
- Optimized daily rates via dynamic pricing
- Faster and easier guest communication
- More bookings on Airbnb as a result of increased exposure, better prices, and more efficient communication
- Higher Airbnb occupancy rate
- Enhanced guest experiences
- More 5-star reviews due to happier guests and review management automation
- Higher ranking on Airbnb SEO
- Eliminating double-bookings, oversights, and other problems that might lead to cancellations and bad reviews
- More revenue
- Lower operating expenses due to time savings and reduced headcount
- Higher profit along with a more passive approach that leaves you with time to work on expanding your business
- Ability to take on new clients and onboard new properties
- Automated lead generation and onboarding
All in all, introducing automation to your Airbnb business means that you can manage more properties, make more money, and run a higher profit margin while spending less time on all this.
How does Airbnb automation work?
Airbnb automation is achieved by introducing one or more vacation rental management software tools that streamline workflows and put tasks on autopilot. Some tools focus on automating and optimizing a single aspect of property management. For instance, Wheelhouse helps with dynamic pricing and revenue management, while Turno focuses on STR cleaning.
At the same time, there are other tools that take a more comprehensive approach by helping with many different aspects of managing a vacation rental. These tools can help with everything from listing distribution and channel management, all the way to guest support and team management. Some popular examples include Guesty, Hostaway, and–of course–SummerOS.
The most frequently automated Airbnb management tasks are:
- Listing distribution
- Channel management
- Dynamic pricing and revenue management
- Guest communication and support
- Team and task management
- Cleaning, housekeeping, and maintenance
- Smart lock management
- Accounting
- Reporting and analysis
Next, let's take a look at the best tools for Airbnb AI automation for each group of tasks.
Best Airbnb automation software
The absolute best software platform for Airbnb automation is SummerOS, the all-in-one platform designed by property managers for property managers. From centralized Airbnb data to advanced property management features, SummerOS brings all your tools into one unified dashboard so that you can manage smarter, grow faster, and stay ahead of the curve with proactive strategies.
The Summer Airbnb automation platform streamlines every aspect of portfolio management, from generating new leads and onboarding new properties to driving more positive results and maintaining long-term relations with owners.
The most important SummerOS features include:
- Centralized Airbnb metrics and operations
- Property and portfolio performance tracking with real-time analytics
- Vacation rental property management lead generation
- Alert and task automation
- Report and dashboard generation for reporting to owners
- Client retention with automated updates and custom insights
- Advanced underwriting and pro forma tools
In other words, SummerOS unites all Airbnb automation tools that you need under a single platform to operate more efficiently and grow faster than ever before.
Meanwhile, hosts and property managers who are interested in automating just one or two aspects of property management instead of putting the entire process on autopilot can take a look at the following top Airbnb automation software tools for specific tasks.
How to automate Airbnb market research
Profitable Airbnb investment and management decisions are based on solid, detailed data from reliable sources. Since the short-term rental market is as diverse as it gets, access to trustworthy, intuitive data is equal to success in the industry. Meanwhile, conducting elaborate vacation rental market research and analysis requires tons of time and effort that investors and property managers simply don't have if they want to grow efficiently and take opportunities before they get snatched by competitors.
The way to tackle this challenge is by using Airbnb market research automation tools that can help you speed up data collection and analysis to make the right investment and management decisions.
1. Forecast in SummerOS
Summer Forecast is your go-to platform for building and managing a high-performing Airbnb portfolio. The intuitive data and powerful forecasting tools help you analyze market trends, find the best short-term rental markets, compare properties for sale, and generate revenue projections.
The institutional-quality STR data and actionable insights on daily rates, occupancy, revenue, market trends, and comps empower you to underwrite properties, evaluate new investment opportunities, and make smart decisions to stay ahead in the competitive Airbnb market. Importantly, Forecast is a seamless add-on with SummerOS to boost your property management with real-time analytics.
Make smarter vacation rental investment and management decisions with the ultimate market research automation platform.
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2. Mashvisor
The Mashvisor platform is also capable of automating short-term rental market analysis. The Mashvisor Market Finder helps investors find cities and neighborhoods that align with their budget and aspirations. The heatmap allows you to zoom in on potential areas and access more detailed analysis. The Mashvisor Airbnb calculator offers short-term rental property analysis for locating profitable options in any U.S. market.
While the Mashvisor app has been designed to benefit investors, the available market research tools can be used during management too to ensure that your property performs as expected and in line with market averages.
How to automate Airbnb pricing
Unlike long-term rentals, short-term rental properties need to be priced dynamically to be competitive and attract bookings. What this means is that daily rates need to be aligned with seasonality trends in supply and demand and adjusted accordingly. Setting up a successful Airbnb pricing strategy is a combination of science and art as you have to hit the right rates that will bring in reservations without lowering them too much to the point where you'd be leaving money on the table.
The good news is that Airbnb pricing tools can help you automate dynamic pricing in a way that eliminates the need to be constantly conducting competition research and analysis and that strikes the right balance between prices and occupancy. With Airbnb dynamic pricing automation, you can put this aspect on autopilot while benefiting from enhanced revenue and profit.
1. Airbnb Smart Pricing
It's important to note that the Airbnb website itself offers a tool that automates dynamic pricing–Airbnb Smart Pricing. The use of this built-in tool is optional as hosts can choose whether to switch it on (for automatic pricing) or off (for retaining full control over their pricing strategy) and free of charge (as the cost is already included in the Airbnb host fees). With Smart Pricing, hosts can still control the base rate, the minimum rate, and the maximum rate based on their own research and understanding of the local market.
The Airbnb Smart Pricing tool uses listing details, search activity, and bookings to recommend nightly prices that help boost bookings. While this can help grow your occupancy rate, many users report that the suggested rates are unreasonably low in an attempt to enhance reservations but not overall income.
2. Wheelhouse
Wheelhouse is a leader among third-party Airbnb automation tools focusing on dynamic pricing and revenue management. This is the only software that allows STR operators to choose between a data-driven, rule-based, and hybrid pricing strategy. With the last, property managers can get the best of both worlds by simultaneously leveraging data and applying rules that are proven to work in their business.
Unlike Airbnb Smart Pricing, Wheelhouse aims to maximize revenue rather than occupancy. As a result, users are able to boost income by up to 20% via accurate pricing based on data, rules, and automations.
3. PriceLabs
PriceLabs offers software that automates dynamic pricing and revenue management for small and large STR portfolios. PriceLabs unique value proposition is the Hyper Local Pulse (HLP), an algorithm that uses hyper local data and analytics to provide optimal daily rate recommendations. Incorporated hyper local trends include seasonality, days of the week, events and holidays, pacing, and lead time. Meanwhile, users can control parameters such as the base price, minimum price, maximum price, minimum length of stay, orphan day rules, stay restrictions, and others.
Similar to Wheelhouse, PriceLabs focuses on optimizing overall rental income. However, the dashboard might be a bit complex at first, especially for beginner hosts.
How to automate an Airbnb check-in
Check-ins and check-outs used to be some of the hardest to coordinate processes associated with managing a vacation rental. Traditionally, you used to make sure that you or one of your team members were physically present at the property to welcome guests and provide them with a key during check-in. Similarly, you needed to arrange for the key pick-up as part of the check-out procedures to guarantee the safety of the property and future guests.
Airbnb automation has totally eliminated this hassle. Airbnb smart locks allow hosts to set up keyless entry for guests and to change entry codes between guests to secure both the property and guests. Meanwhile, integrations between PMS software and smart locks allow tools to send automated messages to upcoming guests that contain check-in time and instructions and their unique entry code. Now, guests can check in and check out at any time of the day without bothering you.
1. Hospitable
Hospitable facilitates guest check-in by automatically creating and sending unique door codes to guests. In this way, you can welcome guests remotely, even in case of last-minute reservations. Hospitable integrates with the most popular smart locks, such as August, Schlage, and Yale.
Hospitable ensures that your guests are always able to access the rental, no matter when they book and when they arrive. Meanwhile, it keeps all unwanted people out of your home.
2. Hostaway
Hostaway provides the Hostaway Smart Locks add-on that supplies contactless check-in for busy and remote hosts and property managers. All you need to do is to connect the app, configure your smart lock, and start managing access. The tool connects with the biggest names in the smart lock industry, like August, Yale, Schlage, Kwikset, and Wyze.
To ensure automation, Hostaway has the capacity to generate and send codes to guests for smooth check-ins with zero intervention on behalf of the host. This helps improve guest experience and save time for the manager.
3. Lodgify
The Lodgify platform also enables check-in automation. The automated messaging system helps you send a pre-check in form where guests can mark their arrival time and any specific requirements. Then, you can share a unique entry code for easy access. Lodgify integrates with Chekin, Jervis, Vickey, and other keyless entry solutions.
In this way, Lodgify helps you streamline the guest check-in process, one of the most important aspects of Airbnb automation.
How to automate Airbnb responses
One of the main responsibilities of Airbnb hosts and property managers is to communicate efficiently with guests before, during, and after stays. This includes both reactive communication which means responding to all guest questions and inquiries in a timely manner and proactive communication which entails providing guests with sufficient information about the property, the area, the house rules, and the check-in and check-out instructions as well as asking for a review after they leave.
As a rule of thumb, you should respond to all questions within 24 hours, but it's best if you can do that within a few hours to provide superior guest service. Guest communication can easily take many hours a day in addition to requiring 24/7 presence to handle emergency situations. With the help of Airbnb AI automation tools, you can put most communication on autopilot and focus your efforts on the matters that really require your personal intervention. In this way, you can save tons of time without compromising the guest experience.
Our top picks for Airbnb guest response automation software include the following.
1. Airbnb Inbox
Many hosts are not aware of the fact that the inbox available on the Airbnb platform provides some opportunities for guest communication automation. Scheduled messages allow you to automatically send messages based on triggers, such as new reservations, check-ins, and check-outs. With quick replies, you can create templates to respond to popular questions. Suggested quick replies incorporate AI to help answer common questions based on available templates. Meanwhile, shortcodes allow you to easily personalize your messages to guests for a more personal approach.
The best thing about these Airbnb response automation tools is that they are free and are already available in your account. However, they offer less automation than some third-party apps.
2. iGMS
iGMS has some of the most sophisticated features to automate and optimize guest communication. While the unified inbox brings messages from all channels to a single inbox, the automated message templates allow you to convert your most common responses into templates. Automated trigger messaging helps send messages to guests based on frequent triggers like inquiry, confirmed reservation, check-in, check-out, cancellation, and alteration.
But what makes iGMS truly unique among Airbnb guest communication automation tools is PROtrack, a guest communication productivity tracking feature. This tool automatically assigns message threads to agents and monitors their productivity in real time.
3. Hostfully
Hostfully is yet another solution for automating guest responses and other communication. The guest messaging functionality allows hosts to automate 70% of messages to guests. You can set up templates and build flows of customized messages to be sent at the relevant stages of the booking process. Delivery methods include the booking channel, email, and SMS.
In addition, Hostfully Digital Guidebooks allow property managers to create customizable, professional guest books that provide guests with all the information they need about the property, the local area, and anything else that they usually ask about. This helps with proactive communication and prevents unnecessary back-and-forth between guests and hosts, limiting communication to the bare minimum.
How to automate Airbnb cleaning
As part of the hospitality industry, short-term rentals are subject to superior hygiene and cleanliness standards. One of the fastest ways to get negative reviews is to leave your property poorly maintained, obviously worn out, and apparently uncleaned when welcoming guests. Meanwhile, keeping your vacation rental in a top shape and cleaning thoroughly improves guest experiences and facilitates 5-star reviews.
While housekeeping requires assigning repetitive tasks to team members and coordinating the work of your cleaning team, the process can be fully automated with the help of the best Airbnb cleaning services. Once you set up the necessary workflow, you can rest assured that everything will go smoothly without your further intervention.
1. Turno
Turno is the leading vacation rental cleaning automation app available on the market. The platform provides a cleaner marketplace where hosts and property managers can choose the best fit for their property needs. Turno features allow you to automate cleaning scheduling, streamline payments, receive photo checklists, manage inventory, and report problems from a single app.
Turno facilitates effortless turnovers and brings down the turnover time for more frequent bookings. And all this without your ongoing input.
2. Tidy
Tidy automates both the cleaning and maintenance of short-term rental properties through a combination of software, AI, and actual humans. The main features include selecting cleaning and maintenance professionals, job scheduling, digital checklists, third-party in-person or remote inspections, managing service pros, and advanced payment options.
With Tidy, you can put the most time-consuming housekeeping tasks on autopilot while having your property ready up to industry standards and guest expectations.
3. Turnify
Turnify is yet another option for automating Airbnb cleaning processes. From the marketplace, you can choose the best cleaners for your short-term rental from a network of verified and trusted professionals. The app allows you to automate calendar sync, job scheduling, advanced checklists, staff management, secure payments, and problem reporting.
With Turnify Airbnb automation, you can ensure that your property is always well prepared to welcome your next guests without the need for this to turn into a managerial nightmare for you.
Where to get started with Airbnb automation
While Airbnb automation is not a new trend in the short-term rental industry, the strive to streamline processes and put them on autopilot is exponentially increasing as hosts and property managers alike aim to boost productivity, enhance results, and grow their business. The majority of tasks can be automated, but you have to choose carefully which tools you trust to truly maximize results.
For access to an all-in-one platform that unites all Airbnb automation software tools under a single roof, check out SummerOS. Whether you manage a few properties or an entire portfolio, SummerOS turns your daily tasks into effortless, automated processes that allow you to scale your business with confidence.
