May 20, 2022
Short-term Rental Management Technology Must-Haves You May Not Have Considered
Our technology-forward world has led to incredible business innovations, particularly tools that make daily operations more efficient and can use data and automation to reach business goals faster and more effectively.
We’ve talked about some essential short-term rental management technology solutions:
- a property management system (your PMS)
- a customer relationship management system (or CRM)
- dynamic pricing tools
- data collection tools
- reservations management
- financial management tools
These make up the foundation of your short-term rental management business, streamlining operations, organizing data into digestible information, and making it easier to engage with potential and returning guests.
But other tools can supplement your workflow and optimize your resources—tools you may not have considered as essential to your short-term rental management business. Here are just a few that can make a big difference to everyday operations.
Project Management Tools
Task management and project implementation can be a real headache when trying to do it manually. Project management tools simplify this process by providing transparency to stakeholders and clear project milestones and expectations for team members. These tools are handy for internal teams like sales, marketing, revenue management, IT, and finance.
If you have the resources to do so, hiring a professional project manager—whether full-time or contract—can help establish an effective process that makes the most sense for your team. But regardless of whether you hire a PM or appoint someone as a project leader, today’s project management tools are easy to use and implement. Some even tie in easily with other internal applications like slack, Google Drive, and Dropbox.
AI Content Tools
Content is the key to your competitive edge. The basis for every marketing strategy lies in content—on social media, on your website, on OTA listings, in paid and organic ads, and the metadata of search results. It can be challenging to continuously churn out fresh content, even for property management companies with professional writers on staff.
AI content tools can help fill in the gaps and offer support to your content team (even if that’s just you!). Some software can write entire articles with just a few keywords as guidance. Others can make necessary updates to content to keep it fresh and relevant.
But there’s more to AI content tools than writing. There are also editing tools to help keep your spelling and grammar in check, personalization tools that can update language on web pages or ads based on geographical location, and keyword mining tools.
SMS Tools
Connecting with your customers where they are is one of the best ways to encourage a sale and build loyalty. And one place where people are all the time? On their phones.
SMS marketing has become increasingly popular, particularly for consumer brands. The vacation rental industry lends itself well to text message marketing since many guests now prefer to perform tasks like booking and checking in on their phones.
SMS tools allow your marketing team to plan and implement marketing campaigns with automated sends. You can also use these tools to set up check-in messages and post-stay reviews that align with your email nurtures.
Chat Tools
Similar to SMS marketing, chat features on your website add another level of engagement with customers. They also act as the first line of communication: You can set chatbots up with answers to frequently asked questions or links to relevant content that may help answer a guest’s question without a phone call. You can also add a guest services chat to help more guests faster. Remember, though, that chatbots only work if your team is quick to respond to requests for further assistance. Otherwise, it just becomes an annoying pop-up.
Adding solutions for organization, content creation, and customer engagement to your short-term rental management tech stack empowers your people to do their jobs more efficiently. What’s more, solutions that automate tasks or streamline workflow give you and your team more time in the day to focus on what matters most—providing your guests a fantastic experience.
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