Vacation rental businesses are in a time of cutting back and building up. The more software you can introduce to streamline processes and cut back on people costs, the better. Now, there aren’t too many SaaS tools out there specifically targeting the hospitality industry. But, those that are will be in this article.
We’ll also explore those SaaS tools outside of the hospitality “box,” that will most certainly help excel your vacation rental business. Let’s check out the software!
8 SaaS tools to support your vacation rental business
Whether you’re new to vacation rentals or are simply looking to up your game, some of these SaaS tools could be exactly what your vacation business needs to reach new heights.
Take a minute to consider each one, and if something catches your eye, follow the link and do some research for yourself. You’ll be surprised by the amount of time or money you can save your business by onboarding a SaaS tool.
It doesn’t just come down to operations; some of these tools will help you reach new audiences and build better relationships with future customers. Stay open to everything.
1. Lodgify—The one for booking operations
Lodgify is one of the few pieces of software that’s built specifically for vacation rental managers like you. It gives the gift of automation to your vacation rental operations. This unique vacation rental software allows you to:
- Handle bookings
- Management multiple properties
- Build a website
- Sync third-party booking channels
- Process payments
It’s the perfect tool to collect many of your processes under one roof.
Plus, just because you integrate Lodgify into your tech booking stack doesn’t mean any of your other channels are on the sidelines. This vacation rental software is a preferred partner of Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and more.
It handles the operations, so you can focus on getting more bookings and save time to do the things you’re passionate about.
2. Hotel Tech Report —The marketing know-how
Admittedly, this one’s not necessarily a piece of software. However, it is perfect for all of those SaaS heads in the hospitality field looking to sell more. The hotel marketing guide is your complete marketing walkthrough to better promote your hotel.
The guide is filled with information on how to market on third-party channels, hotel website design and SEO, email marketing strategy, and more. Jump over to the page, bookmark it, and come back to it later. It’s a great resource for small hospitality businesses stuck for ideas on how to go to market.
3. Unbounce—The one for landing pages
Whether you’re in vacation rentals or not, any marketer knows the pain of limited human resources. Things like designers, or developers, are often hard to get hold of at a reasonable cost. Unfortunately, that means that some of our best ideas often don’t get to see the light of day—especially when it comes to campaigns.
Unbounce is a “drag and drop” landing page builder that’s intuitive and filled with templates already proven to work. So, if you are short on design or coding abilities, Unbounce is your next best bet. Build landing pages for your campaigns that do your hospitality business justice and give your campaigns a fair leg (or two) to stand on.
4. Hootsuite—The one for social media
Social media, you fickle beast. If you’re not capitalizing on social media for your hospitality business, then you’re missing out on a world of opportunities—3.5 million, to be exact. 73% of marketers believe social media positively affects their business, and 54% of people use social media to research their next spend.
Plus, with the recent rise of TikTok and other more niche social media channels, there’s a wealth of opportunity for your business to “go viral” now you’re playing with new algorithms and not competing against the OGs on Instagram.
Yet, with all of this opportunity comes the need for management. We’re not just talking about one social media channel here, we’re talking about multiple. Each one needs to have its content plan and content niche. It’s almost impossible to do this natively and remain productive while doing so.
Hootsuite is a fantastic, low-cost, social media management platform. It will help you manage your social channels while collecting and analyzing data so you can constantly optimize, predict trends, and reach new eyeballs. 5.
5. Typeform—The one for guest feedback
Reviews are a great way of getting feedback. However, they tend to be biased or less constructive as people know they are public. To solve this situation, learn from your guests’ experiences, collect private reviews from them, and showcase data in qualitative, quantitative, and actionable ways.
Typeform is a fantastic tool for handling customer feedback. In using Typeform, you’ll create engaging, intuitive, and optionally anonymous customer feedback forms.
You can send these out via a link in emails after your guests have stayed with you or present them to guests on Ipads as they check out of your vacation rental.
The best part is, you can share the link you create an infinite amount of times, and all of the results go to the same place. You’ll have percentage overviews for Likert scales nestled neatly alongside your qualitative feedback, and can continue improving your guest experience.
6. Local Clarity—The one for handling reviews
Think of every review platform out there your hotel or rental can appear? What comes to mind?
- Google My Business
- Trustpilot
- Tripadvisor
- Expedia
- Booking
Any more? Local Clarity combines all of the above and more review platforms under one roof, so you never need to miss a review.
Rather than jumping from website to website, you’ll be able to monitor and respond to reviews in real-time, track your online brand efforts, business sentiment, drive sales, and work on enhancing your reputation.
Reviews also contribute a great deal to your off-site SEO strategy. By having a hold on them, you’ll positively build your business’s search engine rankings and earn more back-links to your website.
7. Intuit Quickbooks— The one for finances
Remember the days when our finances were in little hand-held books and pencil scribbles? Nope? That’s probably for the best then, and we’re most definitely showing our age. Hotel vacation businesses have a lot of finances to juggle, and they need something a tiny bit more extensive than a hand-held book or even a well-maintained spreadsheet.
Now, there’s a lot of bookkeeping software out there; each one has its benefits and its downfalls. If you know you need booking keeping software to lift your finance operations, then we’d highly recommend you spend a good deal of time doing your research. However, if you need help in general, then Intuit QuickBooks is a fantastic all-round solution.
The software handles live bookkeeping, manages outsourced talent expenses like vendors or freelancers, can handle payroll, and keep track of all your inventory and payments.
Worried about taxes? They’ve got you covered there, too, with tax penalty protection. If you receive a fine, no matter if it’s on your part or the software’s, QuickBooks will pay up $25k.
This software will come as a huge relief to those hoteliers that got into hospitality and the love of creating a customer experience but feel swamped in financials. It’s time to let the software do the tasks that you don’t want to, so you can focus on doing what you love and start your business in the first place.
8. Mailchimp—The one for email management
Last, but not least, we’re turning to email marketing. For every $1 spent on email marketing, businesses expect an average ROI of $42. That’s a massive leap and something any vacation rental business needs to take very seriously.
Of course, we know we can’t rely on sending emails for our business accounts. It’s not scalable, there’s too much room for error, and we’re bound to get marked as spam sooner or later. It’s time to turn to email marketing management software to help us do our job well.
At the top of our list for email marketing management is Mailchimp. Why did we pick this one above all of the others—besides the adorable monkey logo? Well, Mailchimp’s price plans are flexible and adjust as your business grows.
It means you’re not going to be stuck on one price plan for an entire year before being able to up or downgrade. Mailchimp is also continuously working on templates, resources, and inspiration to guide and dictate your email marketing strategy, so it works for your business.
Wrapping up the best software for your vacation rental business
Hopefully, this article has brought some new software types into the spotlight for you to consider to help your vacation business grow.
Remember, it’s not only operations that we can be improving in this sector. Think about how you can lift the customers’ experience, reach new audiences, and ensure your business keeps growing with all the success it deserves.
Ray Slater Berry is a content strategist at Outreach Humans. He has been working in social media and content marketing for nine years. He specializes in the tech, innovation, and travel sectors. He is also a published fiction author with his first title, Golden Boy.
