Vacation rental software can help you manage your properties more efficiently and effectively. It can automate tasks, track your finances, and help you connect with guests, owners and vendors. There are many different vacation rental software solutions available, so it's important to choose one that meets your specific needs.
Here are some factors to consider when choosing a vacation rental software:
- Features: You should be looking for a system that has comprehensive functionality. Integrated online bookings, calendars and other property information are standard. So, drill down into the features that are important to you or will make you successful in your market. Do you want to manage short term and long-term rentals? Do you want to function as an asset manager for your owners? Is customization important to you? Don’t be afraid to consider third party tools to augment your solution, but make sure you have API integrations for data sharing. Most consultative sales folks are happy to run down your list to show you exactly how your “day in the life” would work—don’t be afraid to ask.
- Trust Accounting: Good financial hygiene is important in the vacation rental business, where over 80% of states have some fiduciary requirement by the state’s real estate commission. Additionally, if you have plans to grow the business to sell it as an exit strategy, you will need to have your trust accounting in order.
- Security: Your solution should include up to date security features. If you are taking payments online through guest or owner portals make sure that is secure. Also, you should be working with a solution that goes through PCI compliance testing on the required schedule.
- Pricing Transparency: Vacation rental software can range in price from free to hundreds of dollars per month. Be realistic with your budget, but also be flexible to purchase a more expensive solution if it can be the platform for your growth for many years and without costly disruptions. Finally, make sure you can budget your future costs—ask for year one costs vs. the cost of the software in year five.
- Ease of Use: Vacation rental software can be complex, so it's important to choose a system that is easy to use. Make sure that you see how your daily tasks would work inside of the software. You should never have to use any workarounds to accomplish your important tasks. Also, pretty is great, but if it is hard to do daily tasks, you should move onto the next potential solution.
- Customer Support: If you have any problems with your vacation rental software, you'll want to make sure that the company offers good support. That means more than being able to put in a ticket in a support desk, it means answering the ticket in a timely manner, answering the phone, providing a chat channel and jumping onto a screen share. Find a company that still considers you important after you are out of the sales pipeline.
Once you've considered these factors, you can start shopping for vacation rental software. There are many different solutions available, so you're sure to find one that meets your needs.
Barefoot Technologies is a complete solution for the vacation rental companies. We have provided flexible and custom functionality for our clients for over 20 years, and we keep developing to our clients needs. That, coupled with our outstanding customer support, is why we continue to maintain a 95% client retention rate. Let’s run through the list of what is important for you, whether you are 5 units or 5000 units. Email me, claiborne@barefoot.com and we will get you some answers.
