Which airbnb property management software should you choose ?

Have you started offering concierge service for vacation rentals and are looking for the channel manager best suited to your needs?

To help you make your choice, read the information in our article presenting this tool and its essential features.

Then check out our site for detailed reviews of the best-performing software on the French market.

But first, is this tool really indispensable?

Our TOP 3 airbnb property management software :

So you’ve created your own concierge service for vacation rentals , taking over the complete management of your customers’ properties (gîtes, houses, apartments).

After putting the ads online on various channels Airbnb, Booking or Abritel ;

The next step is to take care of it and the management of the travelers:

• reception, handing over of keys ;
• communication with travelers
• check out and cleaning.

Your business is growing. So you need to reorganize so you can find time to devote to advertising to other owners.

So you need to automate recurring tasks and delegate those that don’t add value to your business (cleaning, laundry, etc.).

A tool like the channel manager is there to help you optimize the management of your short-term rentals.

What’s the main advantage of a channel manager?

The system allows you to automate tasks and connect to different partners. Streamlining your tasks is therefore essential if you want to grow your business.

Connection with reservation platforms :

Make sure your channel manager connects to as many distribution channels as possible. Airbnb, Booking, Abritel are of course indispensable.

In addition, your software must provide a bi-directional connection with these platforms. This will ensure instant blocking of your customers’ calendars, and avoid double bookings that will be difficult to explain to both your travelers and your customer. Synchronization must be perfect!

In addition to this type of connection, your channel manager must also be able to link to your customer’s own website. It must also be able to connect via Ical to other well-known sites (Le bon coin, Tripadvisor, Agoda etc.).

Why is this so important? If one of your prospects uses a booking platform that your channel manager can’t handle, you’ll have to manage it separately, which will undoubtedly be complicated and time-consuming, and therefore less profitable.

The channel manager is a software program that helps to synchronize tourist rental websites.

Connect with other tools for your vacation rental concierge service:

What’s more, connecting your channel manager to other software may prove useful(or even essential) for even more efficient management of your properties. Among the best-known services :

• Stripe to manage website payment or deposits, for example;
• Nuki, Igloohome for connected key boxes ;
• For automatic rate management, we suggest Pricelabs, the leader in dynamic pricing. To find out more, read the Pricelabs review, essential software for a concierge service…

and others… The most successful channel managers manage dozens of partners.

Tariff management and synchronization :

You are going to have dozens of properties to manage, and regularly updating rates is mandatory according to :

• season ;
• On request ;

You can do this either manually or with the help of Pricelabs, which will manage your prices automatically.

In both cases, a channel manager is essential. All you have to do is update the rates on the software, which will modify them on each site in a matter of seconds.

In this way, weekly price updates can be carried out without difficulty.

If you want to automate, make sure you’re connected to Pricelabs, for example.

You can create several user accounts for your channel manager:

Create visualization accounts for your concierge customers:

Your channel manager must enable you to create dedicated accounts for each of your customers. You’ll have to deal with 2 types of owners:

• The one who trusts you 100% and never asks for access. Only the sales generated at the end of the month will count for him;

• The second will want to keep an eye on the management of his rental. You can satisfy his needs by providing him with an often simplified view of his apartment. This way, they can follow the occupancy rate, sales, etc. live…

It’s a function we find indispensable. It will save you a lot of exchanges with your more inquisitive owners throughout the year !

Create accounts for your service providers :

In addition to your customers, it’s a good idea to give (limited) access to your service providers.

So, for example, your cleaning service provider will be able to access the calendar to best organize his various interventions. Once again, this access will avoid a large number of exchanges with your service providers.

It is therefore essential to have this function. Superhote, for example, offers it.

Consult your reservations in one click :

To facilitate the management of your travellers, make sure that the channel manager allows you to easily consult bookings with a range of information useful to your business:

This will make searching for booking information quicker and more efficient.

Automated, centralized communication :

To facilitate communication with travelers, we recommend that you use a channel manager that allows communication via a single interface. Some of them allow you to do this. However, most of the time, this will only be with the 3 largest platforms Airbnb, Booking and Abritel.

To take things a step further, we recommend that you quickly set up message delivery according to a scenario that you define yourself.

For example:

– a welcome message at the time of booking;

– one on the day of arrival with the key box code;

– another before departure

– a last one to thank your customers by asking for a 10/10 rating on Booking, Airbnb…etc…

You can let your imagination run wild. Some software programs allow you to set up a scenario as you see fit. What’s more, they’ll provide you with message templates that you can use or adapt.

The best of them will offer you a system of shortcodes to allow you to go even further in customization.

# Traveler’s name

# Key box code etc…

Finally, another idea for improving customer satisfaction : the French Superhote channel manager lets you send :

– a pre-stay welcome guide ;

– a rental agreement ;

– the paid invoice at the end of your stay.

Detailed and comprehensive dashboards :

One of the criteria for selecting your software is to have a detailed dashboard.

In fact, some channel managers are much more comprehensive than others when it comes to measuring the performance of your concierge service. You’ll find data on :

This will enable you to eliminate the platforms that generate few bookings. For some types of property, Abritel is a very good online agency, while for others it’s not useful at all.

This table gives you a better understanding of your business. Strengths and areas for improvement.

How much does a channel manager cost?

The software is billed on a monthly or annual (discounted) subscription basis.

Rates vary according to the number of apartments you manage. Count 50 euros for 3 seasonal rentals. Then 6 to 8 euros for each additional property or apartment.

THE choice of your concierge channel manager:

As you can see , subscribing to a channel manager is essential. There’s a plethora to choose from. Many software products are available on the French market.

Price should not be your only selection criterion. After all, it will undoubtedly be your main tool for day-to-day management. So it can do you a world of good!

To get your bearings, read our detailed reviews. The list of benefits, features and our ratings are there to help you. They are based on the criteria we consider most important.
However, handling and design are up to you.

The trial periods are there to confirm and refute your choice, so go ahead and test!