You are thinking of subscribing to a Channel Manager for your vacation rental but have not quite decided yet? Then this article is for you! Discover seven reasons why you should use a Channel Manager to better manage your vacation rental!
What is a Channel Manager?
A Channel Manager is a cloud-based software that allows you to manage your bookings on your different booking portals like Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, etc. and update your calendars in real time.
A Channel Manager also allows you to synchronize your own personal reservation system installed on your personal website. This allows your calendar to be up to date, every second of every day!
7 reasons to use a Channel Manager for vacation rentals
A Channel Manager will support you in facilitating and simplifying the management of your vacation rental. Here are 7 reasons to use a Channel Manager:
1. Centralized booking management
Imagine managing your Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO and other reservations in a single calendar… A dream that can soon be realized with a Channel Manager!
A Channel Manager will save you time by not having to log into each platform and will give you an overview of your past, present and future bookings. The central dashboard will display all the essential information to run your business.
2. An up-to-date booking calendar
A common stress point that all vacation rental owners have in common: synchronizing booking calendars. It can be a real headache and you have to act fast in order prevent double bookings.
Moreover, synchronization becomes more complicated when you you have listings on multiple different booking portals: Airbnb and your own website for example, or Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com etc.
A Channel Manager allows you to connect multiple booking portals and synchronize your different booking calendars automatically and in real time. No more stress and no more double bookings. What a relief!
3. No more double bookings
We mentioned it before. Double bookings are a nightmare for vacation rental owners. They cause stress, create extra work and most importantly, they give a bad image of your vacation rental business. You may receive bad reviews and ratings, which can tarnish your image and make future bookings difficult.
A Channel Manager avoids all this and offers better reservation management thanks to the automatic and real time synchronization of booking calendars on all connected booking platforms (Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO etc.). You will always have an up-to-date calendar!
4. Centralized synchronization of the rates of your different portals
Updating your rates can be time consuming for a vacation rental owner. You have to connect to each platform, take into account the fees of each one, enter the different prices: low season, high season, weekday prices, weekend prices, etc.
With a Channel Manager you can define and synchronize your price andalso your minimum nights. As each booking platform takes a commission on the bookings, you can use intelligent mark-ups to unify the prices on the different portals and take into account portal commissions for an efficient pricing strategy!
Another advantage of a Channel Manager is that you only change the price once and do not have to log in to each portal individually. The Channel Manager then sends the adjusted price to the booking portals. It’s that easy!
5. Grow your business and revenue
Opting for a Channel Manager also means developing your business. Why and how? Because you can list your property(ies) on multiple platforms, you statistically reach more potential travelers. As a result, you will generate new bookings, and consequently more income. It’s almost like a math class!
Multiplying your presence on the platforms therefore allows you to fill your booking calendar and increase your occupancy rate.
6. Automate and centralize your communication
Communicating with travelers can be repetitive: sending reservation confirmations, sending access information, sending the Guest Guide and house rules, sending thank-you notes.
With a Channel Manager like Smoobu, you can centralize and automate your communication with your travelers. You save precious time on redundant tasks. Your communication also gains consistency and uniformity. You can prepare your message templates and trigger them at key moments of your traveler journey.
A channel manager allows you to free up time to devote to welcoming your travelers, for example.
7. Significant time savings
In general, a Channel Manager allows you to optimize the management of your seasonal rentals. It also professionalizes it and allows you to save an average of 3 hours of work per week. Time that you can invest elsewhere. Time is money, am I right?
Discover more advantages and information in our complete guide dedicated to the Channel Manager.
Try out Smoobu Channel Manager and boost your activity
Do you want to facilitate and optimize the operations of your vacation rental business and limit human errors? Just do it with a Channel Manager! Test Smoobu, the The All-in-One Software for Short Term and Vacation Rentals, for free and for 14 days (no credit card required) and see THE difference!
