Hospitable is a short term rental property management platform that aims to facilitate the day-to-day operations of owners and managers. It aims to help both DIY hosts and professional property managers streamline processes, save money, cut down costs, and improve performance. But is Hospitable worth it? And how does it compare to other tools available on the market?
This Hospitable review provides the information that investors and Airbnb managers need to decide if this is the right fit for their needs, including the product features, integrations, pricing, pros and cons, alternatives, and more.
What Hospitable Airbnb Management Software Is
Hospitable, formerly Smartbnb, is a vacation rental software that strives to help short term rental operators save time on hosting by automating 90% of guest messages, syncing calendars across platforms, streamlining cleaning team reminders, and others.
The Hospitable team believes that short term and vacation rental hosts deserve to get more reservations and earn additional income without sacrificing all their time.
Pierre-Camille Hamana founded Hospitable in 2016, and the company currently has its headquarters in San Francisco, CA. Hospitable was started out of the Founder’s need to rent out one spare bedroom in Brussels, Belgium, which grew into a tool that is now used for renting out more than 300,000 listings worldwide.
The company mission is to make Airbnb hosting easy through state-of-the-art technology. The platform aims to help streamline short term rental management by automating the most important, yet time-consuming tasks. The company continuously updates existing features and develops new ones to enhance user experience.
Hospitable Vacation Rental Software Pricing
Hospitable runs a subscription-based pricing model, which is very clear and understandable. There are two subscription plans (Host and Professional), with a third one (Mogul) under development. The plans differ by the included features, the available add-ons, and the intended number of properties.
Hospitable pricing plans include:
- Host: This plan is ideal for hosts with up to 2 properties, allows a maximum of 2 secondary users, and provides access to the basic short term rental management features. The cost is $29/month for 1 property plus $10/month for an additional property with check-ins.
- Professional: This plan is designed for property managers with an unlimited number of properties, permits an unlimited number of secondary users, and gives access to advanced Hospitable features. The price is $59/month for 2 properties plus $15/month for an extra active property.
- Mogul (coming soon): This plan is designed for operators with an unrestricted number of properties, allows an unrestricted number of secondary users, and offers access to even more sophisticated tools and features. The pricing is $99/month for 3 properties plus $30/month for each additional active property.
Hospitable does not charge onboarding fees. There are a lot of available add-ons, the pricing of which is not specified on the website. Moreover, additional properties, extra smart devices and locks, and direct bookings via vacation rental websites are subject to additional fees, which quickly inflate the monthly cost of using the software.
A detailed Hospitable review shows that the pricing of the platform is competitive for a small number of properties, but the cost becomes high for portfolios with multiple properties. There is no mention of custom pricing for property managers with hundreds or thousands of properties under management.
Who Is Hospitable Best For?
The Hospitable vacation rental management platform has been designed in a way that allows it to serve the needs of both individual property owners and professional property managers equally well. The available short term rental automation helps both groups of users put many aspects of their Airbnb business on autopilot.
The Hospitable features and the flexible pricing model make the software a good fit for those who manage a single vacation rental and for those who have dozens of properties in their portfolios. However, the latter might need to pay a steep price.
Having said that, Hospitable cannot serve Airbnb investors who are looking for passive income from their property. Even with the use of the PMS, hosts need to remain personally involved in the management of their rental. Owners aiming at passive investments should hire one of the best short term rental agencies, like Summer, instead of subscribing to a software solution.
How Hospitable Works
As an all-in-one vacation rental software, Hospitable offers multiple features to cover all operations of short term rentals managers, from listing and marketing, to communication and task organization.
The Hospitable tools and features include:
- Channel Manager: The Hospitable Airbnb channel manager allows you to connect listings on Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com to efficiently manage them from a single platform. All reservations are available in one calendar that shows booked nights and daily rates. This prevents double-bookings which are a major source of concern in the hospitality industry.
- Direct Booking Websites: Airbnb hosts and managers can build a vacation rental website using Hospitable’s professional, customizable website templates that are optimized for desktop and mobile devices or use a widget to connect their existing website to drive direct bookings, for which they don’t have to pay Airbnb fees.
- Manual Reservations: Manual reservations from direct bookings can be added to the Hospitable vacation rental management system to enjoy the same benefits as bookings coming from listing channels.
- Double-Booking Protection: Hospitable provides a centralized, synchronized calendar with a clear overview of bookings from all channels including direct bookings, known as a multi-calendar. This eliminates the risk of double-bookings which lead to cancellations, refunds, and bad reviews from guests.
- Pricing Sync: Hospitable integrates with third-party short term rental data providers, such as PriceLabs and Beyond, to automatically apply and publish dynamic pricing and sync daily rates across all channels.
- Unified Inbox: Hospitable pulls messages from Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com and brings them into a single, centralized inbox with reservation details and AI-powered guest summary available in the sidebar. Hosts and Airbnb managers can rest assured that they won’t miss guest questions and provide suboptimal service as communication is key in the hospitality industry.
- Guest Communication: Short term rental property owners and managers can use pre-built templates or create their own and automate messages based on milestones or days of the week to provide guests with all the information they need before, during, and after their stay and optimize guest satisfaction for 5-star reviews.
- Task Management: Hospitable allows vacation rental operators to automatically assign tasks based on events, such as check-in and check-out, and send out notifications to task assignees, like cleaning staff, housekeeping team, or maintenance personnel, via email or SMS.
- Team Collaboration: Those in charge can add team members, assign them roles, such as Owner, Manager, Concierge, Cleaning, Laundry, and Maintenance, give them access to the information they need, and ensure that everyone is aware of their responsibilities for a seamless Airbnb business.
- Smart Lock Integration: Hospitable integrates with some of the best Airbnb smart locks, like Schlage, August, and Yale, so that hosts and managers can manage all locks, schedules, and other smart devices from the Smart Device Dashboard. This allows for the automated creation and communication of codes based on check-in and check-out dates without the need for human intervention.
- Review Management: Hospitable helps you get positive reviews by sending automatic review requests, offering personalized review templates, and providing AI-powered replies for reviews. The tool also helps avoid negative reviews by allowing you to send negative guest reviews at the end of the possible response window.
- Analytics and Reporting: Via the Metrics Dashboard, property owners and managers can check out the performance of their rentals in real time and get insights based on property, dates, guests, team members, and other filters.
Hospitable Integrations
In order to be a one-in-all hub for the management of short term rentals, Hospitable integrates with various third-party tools that are frequently used in the hospitality industry.
In specific, Hospital integrations include:
- Accounting: Clearing, VRPlatform, Ownercenter, and Hostkit
- Amenities: The Host Co.
- Channels: Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and Google
- Data: Key Data
- Direct Booking: CraftedStays
- Dynamic Pricing: PriceLabs, Wheelhouse, Beyond, Rankbreeze, DPGO, Buoy, and Rategenie
- Guest Portal: ChargeAutomation, SuiteOp, and Dack
- Guest Verification: Autohost and Superhog
- Guidebooks: Touch Stay
- Home Automation: Schlage, Yale, RemoteLock, August, SmartThings, igloohome, Nuki, and Jervis Systems
- Marketing: Intuit Mailchimp and StayFi
- Monitoring: Minut and Alertify
- Operations: Turno, Breezeway, Cleanster.com, and ResortCleaning.com
- Professional Services: TechTape
It’s important to note that Hospitable integrates with significantly fewer third-party tools than other top short term rental software solutions. In particular, the platform works with only four major booking channels and with no niche short term rental websites, which might limit exposure and negatively affect reservations. Nevertheless, integrations cover the most needed categories of tools for managing vacation rentals.
Hospitable Pros and Cons
A thorough Hospitable review reveals significant advantages and disadvantages that the platform has compared to other popular Airbnb management software options.
The main benefits of using Hospitable include:
- All-in-one short term rental management software platform
- Potential to improve performance based on vacation rental data and analytics
- Integrations with major third-party short term rental management tools
- Integrations with the most popular booking channels
- Affordable pricing for a small number of managed properties
- Very positive customer reviews
The most important drawbacks of Hospitable are:
- Relatively limited third-party integrations
- Very few booking channel options with no niche websites
- Need to add direct bookings manually to the calendar for sync
- Expensive pricing for large portfolios
Hospitable Reviews
When deciding if a certain short term rental property management software is the right choice for the needs of your business, it’s a good idea to check out what those who have used it think about the product. This is done the easiest with online reviews.
Online Hospitable reviews are available on:
- Trustpilot: 4.2/5 stars from 484 reviews
- G2: 4.9/5 stars from 201 reviews
- Capterra: 4.8/5 stars from 126 reviews
- GetApp: 4.8/5 stars from 126 reviews
- Software Advice: 4.8/5 stars from 126 reviews
- App Store: 3.2/5 stars from 46 reviews
- Real Reviews: 4.3/5 stars from 3 reviews
With over 1,000 online reviews on reliable, third-party websites, Hospitable has a strong online presence and a positive reputation. Average ratings are high.
Positive Hospitable reviews focus on the super user-friendly interface, the intuitive dashboards, the powerful features, the ability to solve real-life problems, the comprehensive channel management functionality, the truly automated communication, the affordable pricing model, and the amazing customer support team which provides personal responses and shows a positive attitude.
Negative reviews mention a weak calendar view, a learning curve, lack of calendar synchronization, technical glitches, issues with review management, major price increases, and lack of adequate customer support.
Hospitable Alternatives and Competitors
Hospitable might be a good fit for hosts and property managers with small portfolios, but the pricing becomes steep for those managing larger portfolios. Thus, vacation rental property owners and managers might look into the top Hospitable competitors for alternative options that might be better fit to meet their needs.
Guesty vs Hospitable
Guesty is one of the most popular alternatives to Hospitable. This is a property management system (PMS) that focuses on short term rentals. There is a general overlap between the features of the two platforms, with Guesty’s main tools including a channel manager, a multi-calendar, a unified inbox, dynamic pricing, automation features, task management, accounting, reporting, and analytics.
One additional feature that Guesty offers and which is missing from Hospitable is Guesty Capital, a form of short term rental financing for business growth and development.
The Guesty Airbnb property management system is intended to serve both small hosts and large property managers. It works for vacation rentals, urban rentals, aparthotels, guest houses, B&Bs, services apartments, outdoor stays, and hotels.
Guesty offers three different subscription plans with access to different features and for a different number of properties: Lite, Pro, and Enterprise. The cost of the Lite plan, intended for 1-3 properties, starts at $39/month per property when billed monthly compared to $29/month for 1 property for Hospitable.
It’s not possible to compare the pricing of the two tools for bigger portfolios as the Guesty cost is custom.
Lodgify vs Hospitable
Lodgify is a close Hospitable competitor that aims to help Airbnb business owners and managers grow bookings with vacation rental software.
The key features provided by Lodgify cover the basics of short term rental management automation, including a channel manager, dynamic pricing, reservation system, booking system, guest management, task management, unified inbox, website builder, reporting, and analytics. Third-party integrations are similar to those available with Hospitable.
Lodgify helps both DIY hosts and professional property managers with various portfolios. It works well with bed and breakfasts, cabins, cottages, camping and glamping sites, holiday lets, resorts, serviced apartments, small hotels, and villas.
Users can choose from three different Lodgify plans: Starter, Professional, and Ultimate. The price of the Starter plan is equivalent to $20/month plus 1.9% of booking fees for 1 property, when billed monthly. This makes Lodgify a significantly more expensive option than Hospitable for properties that generate strong revenue. The price of the Ultimate plan is $73/month for 1 property.
Hostaway vs Hospitable
Hostaway is another Hospitable alternative that operates as a vacation rental software and Airbnb management system.
The chief Hostaway features are similar to the Hospitable features and comprise a channel manager, direct booking website, reservations manager, dynamic pricing, multi-calendar, different automations, task management, reporting, and analytics.
What Hostaway offers additionally is Hostaway Capital which provides financing for renovating and expanding one’s short term rental business. In addition, Hostaway has more third-party integrations than Hospitable.
Unlike Hospitable, Hostaway is rather targeted at professional property managers and is not the best choice for individual hosts.
The company website does not offer any pricing information which is entirely customizable, and there is no free trial as onboarding requires 2-8 hours.
Bottom Line
Our Hospitable review shows that this is a reliable vacation rental management software that can benefit both individual hosts and professional property managers with relatively small portfolios. However, the platform gets rather expensive for the managers of large short term rental portfolios. The main limitation of this software solution that owners and managers need to take into consideration is the fewer third-party tool integrations and especially the small number of booking channels.
