In the always-growing Airbnb industry, property management companies need to have access to the best vacation rental management software in order to streamline processes, automate operations, remain competitive, and grow their business. With hundreds of options out there, it's difficult for Airbnb managers to choose the right tech platforms that allow them to exceed both owner and guest expectations without the need to hire additional team members.
In this article, we define what vacation rental software refers to and explain why it's important for short-term rental management companies. Then, we discuss the top tools in a number of different categories that are of indispensable importance to professionals in the STR industry.
These are our top picks for the best vacation rental management software:
- Best overall vacation rental management software: SummerOS
- Property management system: Guesty
- Booking and dynamic pricing software: Wheelhouse
- Vacation rental channel manager: Lodgify
- Vacation rental accounting software: QuickBooks Online
- Vacation rental marketing platforms: Airbnb
- Vacation rental cleaning software: Turno
If you're a professional property manager who wants to bring their operations under a single roof, optimize the performance of their portfolio, and expand their business effortlessly, check out Summer Forecast and SummerOS.
What is vacation rental management software?
Vacation rental management software, also referred to as Airbnb management software, is any tech-based platform that helps professionals improve their short-term rental operations by automating and optimizing time-consuming processes. Some software tools focus on a specific aspect of vacation rental management, while others have a wider scope, helping streamline all of your operations.
The most widely-used and available types of STR software include:
- Property management systems for organizing and automating business operations
- Booking and dynamic pricing software for managing reservations and optimizing daily rates
- Channel managers for having uniform listings across multiple vacation rental platforms
- Vacation rental accounting software for facilitating financial and accounting processes
- Vacation rental marketing platforms for listing properties and distributing them to the right guests
- Vacation rental cleaning software for improving cleaning processes for guest satisfaction
Why is vacation rental software important?
The vacation rental industry has evolved significantly since the establishment of the Airbnb platform in 2008. The number of professional vacation rental property managers and management companies has grown exponentially, as well.
The number of U.S. listings managed by operators with 20-100 properties increased from 8% in 2019 to 11% in 2023, while the share of U.S. listings managed by operators with fewer than 20 properties declined from 79% to 73% over the same time period. Based on Key Data Dashboard analysis, the average size of the portfolio of U.S. property managers with 1,000+ properties grew by 27% between April 2022 and April 2023. Currently, companies such as Vacasa and Evolve manage thousands of vacation rentals across the U.S. as well as in international markets.
Amid this massive growth and general move towards professional management, both small and large Airbnb management companies need vacation rental software technology to be able to manage their properties and compete with the biggest names in the industry. That's why there has been a major expansion in the number of tech-based products that help vacation rental managers address the different parts of the management process.
The most important benefits of vacation rental management software include:
- Easier portfolio growth
- Limited needs for staffing
- Facilitated operations
- Ability to communicate with more potential guests
- Automated guest and owner communication
- Increased listing revenue and property management fees
- Increased income and revenue
- Enhanced team collaboration
- Improved guest and owner satisfaction
- More 5-star guest reviews and better overall listing ratings
- More efficient performance tracking
- Ability to identify opportunities for improvement
Vacation rental software helps property managers grow their portfolio faster, cut down costs and efforts, and grow their business more efficiently.
What to look for in vacation rental software
Not all products on the market are created equal. Indeed, there are major differences between their functionalities, reliability, and quality of services. And, some tools are a better fit for different types of users.
When selecting the best vacation rental management software, we focused on the following criteria:
- Tools and features: We looked for software that offers a comprehensive suite of robust and powerful features.
- Automation capabilities: We prioritized software platforms with built-in functions to automate main processes in order to save time and effort.
- Data sources: For software that relies on data, such as dynamic pricing tools, we chose platforms that get their data directly from Airbnb, Vrbo, and other reliable sources.
- Third-party integrations: We looked for tools that integrate with many must-have third-party software platforms.
- Intuitive design and user-friendly interface: To avoid steep learning curves and frustrations, we looked for vacation rental management software that prioritizes easy-to-use navigation and functionalities.
- Scalability: Tools that are capable of growing along with your portfolio can help you avoid the need to switch between platforms.
- Market coverage: Make sure selected software is operational in the locations of your vacation rentals.
- Customer support: We checked that our short-listed software options provide 24/7 customer support.
- Pricing: We chose vacation rental software with tiered subscription options and competitive pricing structures so it could scale with your business.
- Value for money: Ultimately, the best vacation rental software offers the optimal ratio between access to features and subscription cost.
Based on these criteria, these are the best vacation rental management software platforms by category.
What is the best vacation rental management software?
SummerOS is by far the best software for Airbnb property managers, whether they have a portfolio of a dozen or a few thousand properties. Summer was built by property managers for property managers, which makes it intuitive to use and designed to meet your needs. The platform prioritizes integrations with your current management tools, better data accuracy, and seamless user experiences.
Summer offers two tools that help property management companies grow their portfolios and boost performance at an unprecedented speed.
Summer Forecast
Summer Forecast is your go-to data platform for building a high-performing vacation rental portfolio. The institutional-quality Airbnb data and forecasting tools are designed to help property managers make smarter business decisions. Intuitive insights on revenue, Airbnb occupancy rate, market trends, and rental comps enable you to optimize your portfolio and stay ahead in the competitive short-term rental market.
Whether you're managing a few properties or a large portfolio, Summer Forecast simplifies the process by putting all your key data in one place.
The main benefits of Summer Forecast include:
- Best-in-class mapping features and user experience
- Deep market insights
- Agile comp tools
- Built-in cash flow modeling
- Customizable inventory and reports
- Features designed specifically for professionals including tools for underwriting, pro forma analysis, and generating term sheets
- Opportunity to easily research new markets and analyze potential properties
- Ability to understand how your markets and properties perform month-to-month
- Unmatched data accuracy
- Competitive pricing
Your Airbnb revenue forecast: Brighter days ahead
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SummerOS
SummerOS is your all-in-one vacation rental management software platform. The product is designed to simplify and elevate every aspect of your Airbnb management business including but not limited to sourcing property management leads, onboarding new clients, managing daily operations, and nurturing long-term owner relationships.
The most important benefits of SummerOS include:
- Comprehensive platform with all must-have features
- User-friendly design and interface
- Empowering tools and capabilities
- Access to tailored, actionable insights to increase revenue, occupancy, and profitability
- Performance and portfolio insights
- Effortless scalability
- Easy integrations with all other types of vacation software
- Affordable pricing
Get started with SummerOS to manage smarter and grow your business faster from a single powerful platform.
Best vacation rental management software for property managers
A property management system (PMS) is an online platform that allows you to streamline and improve the day-to-day operations of your short-term rental portfolio in order to offer top-notch guest services and experiences that result in 5-star reviews every time. Processes covered by PMS include reservation management, booking calendar management, guest communication, housekeeping tasks, and team collaboration, leading to increased revenue.
These are the top three vacation rental property management systems.
Guesty
Our Guesty review places it as our top pick for a PMS software. This software offers numerous tools including a channel manager, multi-calendar synching, direct reservations, manual reservations, unified inbox, payment solutions, task management, multi-unit management, analytics, reporting, and more. Add-on features include guest communication services, damage protection, website builder, and dynamic pricing. In other words, Guesty is a customizable PMS that has the potential to serve both small and large Airbnb managers.
The main advantages of Guesty are the multiple features, the level of customization, the important integrations, and the ability to scale. On the flip side, the platform might be overwhelming for new managers and pricing might be unaffordable for large portfolios that require access to all tools.
Hostaway
Our Hostaway review found that this is another top PMS software with a strong potential to streamline operations for managers with various portfolios. The most important tools provided by the platform include a channel manager, reservations manager, CRM and lead management, multi-calendar, multi-unit support, messaging automation, review automation, payment processing and automation, website builder, task management, revenue management, and others. Plus, the Hostaway Capital add-on offers access to vacation rental financing for growing your business.
The most considerable benefits of Hostaway are comprehensive tools, strong automation capabilities, integrations with major third-party software tools, and scalability. Some major drawbacks include a complicated dashboard with a steep learning curve, lengthy onboarding, and lack of pricing information.
Hospitable
Our Hospitable review positions this PMS platform as another potential solution for property management companies. Key Hospitable features include a channel manager, direct bookings website, manual reservations, pricing sync, unified inbox, guest communication, task management, team collaboration, review management, smart lock integration, reporting, and others.
Some advantages of the Hospitable platform to take into consideration are the multiple tools, diverse integrations, ability to improve performance based on analytics, and affordable pricing for small portfolios. Meanwhile, the main disadvantages include limited integrations with booking channels, need to add direct bookings manually to the calendar, and expensive pricing for larger property portfolios.
Best vacation rental booking and dynamic pricing software
Managing bookings and implementing a dynamic pricing strategy can largely be put on auto-pilot with the right tools. An efficient Airbnb pricing strategy is at the core of striking the right balance between daily rates and reservations for maximizing revenue. Nevertheless, setting up a dynamic pricing strategy for an entire portfolio is virtually impossible without access to the right technology.
These are our top picks.
Wheelhouse
Our Wheelhouse review found that it's one of the best dynamic pricing tools for professional property managers. It allows users to choose between data-driven, rule-based, and hybrid pricing models. In this way, Airbnb managers can supplement their knowledge of the local market to launch a pricing strategy that truly maximizes bookings and revenue across their portfolio. They can customize the base price, minimum and maximum rates, last-minute and far-future prices, and other indicators to build the optimal pricing plan.
The most significant benefits of Wheelhouse include full Airbnb pricing customization, numerous revenue management tools, optimized bookings, and potential to boost revenue by 20%. Some downsides are the lack of direct integration with Airbnb and Vrbo and a number of different pricing plans for access to various tools.
PriceLabs
Our PriceLabs review reveals that this platform has the potential to help vacation rental managers enhance bookings via a dynamic pricing strategy. The tool gives access to dynamic pricing, portfolio analytics, market dashboards, and revenue estimation. PriceLabs has a proprietary pricing algorithm, Hyper Local Pulse (HLP), which uses hyper local data and insights to offer price recommendations that increase both bookings and revenue.
The main pros of PriceLabs are the revenue optimization capability, multiple integrations, trustworthy data sources, and availability of a limited free plan. At the same time, property managers need to be aware of the complex design and interface and sometimes inadequate price recommendations reported by customers.
Beyond
Beyond–formerly Beyond Pricing–also ranks among the best Airbnb pricing tools for property management companies. This vacation rental booking and dynamic pricing software integrates real-time consumer demand data into its algorithms to recommend nightly prices that can enhance bookings and income. Beyond accounts for numerous factors such as seasonality, local demand, search demand, and days of the week to automate vacation rental pricing.
Beyond stands out with its simple-to-use dashboard, revenue management tools, and affordable fee model. Meanwhile, some major cons include the need for manual work to optimize pricing and occasional illogical rates for certain listings in some markets reported by users.
Best vacation rental channel management software
Another category of vacation rental software used by professional managers is channel managers. To maximize exposure and optimize bookings, it's important to list your properties on as many booking websites as possible, including large platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo and more niche channels such as Plum Guide and Whimstay. The best Airbnb channel managers help property managers sync their listings across multiple platforms and avoid double-bookings.
Following are the top three vacation rental channel managers.
Lodgify
Lodgify is the best vacation rental software for channel management that helps professionals manage and optimize listings on various websites from a single platform. With the Lodgify channel manager, Airbnb managers can update all listings quickly and efficiently without the need to retype the same information over and over again. Moreover, booking calendars are synchronized across all distribution channels.
Lodgify advantages include important features beyond channel management, smooth integrations with booking channels, and an easily accessible mobile app. The main disadvantages comprise syncing errors and sometimes poor customer service reported by users.
Smoobu
Smoobu offers another highly-recommended vacation rental channel manager that has the capacity to serve the needs of professional managers with different portfolio sizes and compositions. Unlike some competitors, Smoobu allows tailored synchronization across distribution channels based on an entire listing or sub-units which is helpful for those managing multifamily properties and boutique hotels. The platform helps sync listings, improve occupancy rates, and increase income while preventing double-bookings, a common reason for negative reviews in the hospitality industry.
Smoobu pros include the intuitive dashboard, strong capabilities, and good customer support. Smoobu cons, on the other hand, comprise technical problems with blocked nights and lack of onboarding support.
Beds24
Beds24 is a leading channel management solution for short-term rentals that offers preferred partnerships with major booking websites (OTAs). The platform provides highly customizable options with available features including listing imports, pooled inventory, occupancy pricing, real-time updates, and others. Beds24 offers additional tools that go beyond simply channel management.
The most significant benefits of Beds24 include the numerous features, customizable options, and multiple OTA integrations. The main drawbacks to keep in mind are the unintuitive design and challenging onboarding.
Best vacation rental accounting software
Streamlining financial and accounting processes is crucially important for Airbnb property managers, especially those with large portfolios, working with multiple owners, vendors, and employees. While some PMS platforms offer limited accounting functionalities, large-scale property management companies need dedicated accounting software tools.
These are the top three vacation rental accounting software options.
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online is easily the best Airbnb accounting software platform. The tool automates your management of revenue tracking, expenses, online payments, VAT tracking, and reporting, and more. Property managers can connect multiple Airbnb and Vrbo accounts to QuickBooks Online to streamline financial data importing, bookkeeping, and consolidating.
The main pros of QuickBooks Online include all-in-one financial tracking and reporting, intuitive interface, and ability to link a number of Airbnb and Vrbo accounts. Some cons to take into account are restricted customization, lack of direct integration with Airbnb and Vrbo, and expensive pricing for multiple users.
Wave
Wave offers a good vacation rental accounting solution, particularly for beginner and small-scale property managers with a tight budget. Available features include accounting, invoicing, payments, payroll, and mobile receipts functionalities. The user-friendly dashboard makes it possible for Airbnb managers with no previous accounting experience to streamline financial processes.
The most important benefits of Wave include a full set of features, real-time data, ease of use, and budget-friendly pricing. Meanwhile, the main downsides of the platform are the absence of direct integration with Airbnb, overly simplified tools for larger managers, and a range of additional fees for access to extra tools.
Xero
Xero is another popular short-term rental accounting app that emphasizes the importance of automation in the financial management of an Airbnb management company. Some noteworthy features cover accepting payments, bill payments, claiming expenses, paying runs, tracking projects, bank connections, bank reconciliations, and Xero contract management. Xero focuses on dedicated small-business solutions which can be a good fit for property managers that are just getting started.
Xero advantages over alternatives include above-average automations, ability to scale, and user-friendly design. The most considerable disadvantages are the lack of direct integrations with Airbnb and Vrbo and high costs of more advanced features.
Best platforms for short-term rental marketing
Where you list your properties for rent is a key factor determining the number of reservations that you generate and the type of guests that you attract. Thus, property managers need to focus their effort on posting their portfolio STR rentals on the websites where they will get in front of the eyes of the most qualified renters and bring the largest number of bookings.
Following are the top three vacation rental marketing platforms.
Airbnb
With over sevent million listings, Airbnb is by far the largest vacation rental website and the one with the strongest outreach to all types of guests around the globe. What makes Airbnb the best short-term rental platform for all kinds of properties are the multiple features available to hosts (including property managers), such as detailed listing information and features, optional built-in dynamic pricing, co-hosting, Superhost status, review management, damage protection, and liability insurance, provided at reasonable Airbnb host fees (usually 3%).
The most important pros of Airbnb include the unmatched number of guests, the global brand recognition, the readily-available tools for hosts, and the affordable fees. Meanwhile, some cons to consider are the strong competition, need to continuously optimize listings, poor Airbnb Smart Pricing performance, and need to meet tough conditions to become a Superhost.
Vrbo
With two million listings and 48 million users, Vrbo is another widely used vacation rental marketing website for property managers who list entire properties and separate units. The platform has features that allow hosts to update listings, manage availability, synchronize calendars, screen guests, communicate with potential renters, and integrate with third-party vacation rental management software tools.
The main benefits of the Vrbo website are the focus on entire rentals, ability to concentrate on family and group travels, strong guest screening capabilities, and less competition. The major drawbacks, on the other hand, include access to fewer potential guests, more restricted tools for hosts, and potentially high listing fees.
Booking.com
Booking.com is yet another major short-term rental website with millions of homes, apartments, and other unique places to stay in addition to millions of hotel accommodations. The experience that Booking.com provides to hosts resembles the more traditional hospitality approach, so it could be a good option for property managers who have experience in more conventional portions of the industry.
Booking.com advantages over competitors include global exposure to diverse guests, ability to compete with hotels, and access to dynamic pricing tools. The most considerable disadvantages of this website are the need to provide hotel-like services, limited guest screening functions, guest-friendly cancellation policies, and higher commission fees (10-25%).
Best vacation rental cleaning software
To meet guest expectations, receive 5-star reviews, and continue generating reservations, you have to provide exceptional cleaning services. While coordinating the cleaning and housekeeping of a few properties is doable, things can get complicated once your portfolio reaches a few hundred short-term rentals.
The best Airbnb cleaning services software can help. These are our picks.
Turno
Turno allows vacation rental managers to automate cleaning between guests for problem-free turnovers. Available features include automated scheduling, automatic payments, cleaner marketplace, photo checklists, inventory management, in-app chat, and problem reporting.
The main pros of Turno include the hands-off approach to vacation rental cleaning, easy setup, large marketplace, and affordable pricing. Some cons to take into consideration include the need for further automation and occasional technical glitches.
Turnify
Turnify is one of the best Airbnb management software solutions when it comes to cleaning. Turnify offers automated calendar sync, marketplace, automatic job scheduling, cleaning checklists, staff management, and problem reporting.
Turnify advantages include access to high-quality cleaners, unlimited choices, and available customer support. Some disadvantages are the difficult to use interface and frequent technical problems.
Tidy
Tidy is another vacation rental software for cleaning services that also provides maintenance operations. Key features of the Tidy platform are automated job scheduling, digital checklists, easy inspections, access to a network of professional cleaners, and payment services.
Tidy benefits over alternative solutions because of its access to vetted professionals, comprehensive features, and affordable pricing. Some drawbacks to keep in mind are issues with scheduling and poor quality of cleaning jobs reported by users.
Bottom line
With so many vacation rental software options out there, property management companies and professionals need to focus on the ones that deliver the services that they need with the expected level of quality and efficacy.
If you're searching for the best all-in-one vacation rental management software to grow your portfolio and improve performance with smart, data-based decisions, check out Summer Forecast and SummerOS.
