Best rental property management software to consider this year

What is rental property management software?

Rental property management software allows you to manage your property’s operations online from one convenient location. It’s suitable for hotels, vacation rentals, holiday rentals, B&Bs, motels, hostels, and other small properties.

Web based rental property management software enables you to control your property’s reservations, calendar, guest details, housekeeping, maintenance, and payments much easier than manual methods such as logbooks or spreadsheets.

Using simple rental property management software will help you save time, automate annoying admin tasks, enhance guest experience, and boost revenue for your business.

Let’s look at some of the options available to your hotel.

1. Little Hotelier

Little Hotelier is a leading online property management software provider helping small accommodation providers run their business more efficiently, effectively, and profitably.

Designed specifically for smaller operators, it has everything you need in one simple interface, with tools to manage bookings, guest communication, housekeeping, payments, and more.

Little Hotelier has dedicated features that help with rental property management such as:

• Front desk system – Gain a central place of control to save time and simplify day-to-day operations. Manage reservations, allocate rooms, build guest profiles, organise housekeeping and maintenance, and more.
• Channel manager – Advertise every room on every booking site you have connected to. Your room inventory will be automatically updated in every location each time a booking is made.
• An online booking engine – Enable bookings to be taken directly from your hotel website, via social media, or from Google and other search engines. This helps you reduce third-party commission fees from the likes of Booking.com, increase revenue via upsells, and enhance guest communication.

2. OpenKey

OpenKey can be very useful for rental properties, especially those wanting to master their guest relationships.

It will help with mobile check-in, room keys, hotel information and guest communications.

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3. ChekIn

ChekIn is a provider that enables rental properties to enhance the entire customer journey.

It will help hosts automate guest management from booking confirmation all the way through to check-out, enabling properties to save time and money, and also comply with all legal requirements.

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4. Smartpricing

Smartpricing focuses on rental property revenue management and making it simple for rental properties. 

It will help in understanding market demand and competitor rates, as well as smart analytics and automatic price adjustments to ensure your vacation rental is as profitable as possible.

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5. Abitari

Abitari Kiosk helps rental properties create a seamless check-in and self-service experience for guests. This kind of rental property management software helps save time and increases guest convenience.

It will help with providing room key cards, IDs and references, upsells, and upgrades.

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5 reasons why rental property management software is important

First and foremost, rental property management software is important if you want your business to keep up in today’s modern industry that is dominated by the latest and greatest technology solutions.

Not only are other accommodation providers adopting better ways to manage their businesses, but guests also expect you to be using software to manage your property and their stay.

Here are a few other reasons why this software will help:

1. It makes things simple 

By having a single hub to access everything you need, instead of housing data and information in multiple places, your admin tasks will no longer be such a chore. Most processes will be automated or achieved with a few clicks of a mouse. You’ll notice the difference immediately!

2. It saves you countless hours of time

With your daily operations taken care of in one place, and helped by automation, you’ll suddenly be completing tasks much quicker, giving you hours of time back each week. You can use this spare time to improve other areas of your business or take time to enjoy yourself.

3. It gives you more power

High-quality rental property management software will also give you more data and performance reports in a digestible way. By analysing the information via simple reports, or by tracking guest details, you’ll be able to make smarter decisions and boost your revenue easier.

4. It creates better guest relationships

By using rental property management software to create a smoother booking process, better check-in/out services, easier payment methods, and more personalised experiences, you’ll be able to leave guests more satisfied and connected with your brand.

5. It allows you to master revenue management

Not only will your rental property management software give you powerful reports with which to make smarter decisions, it will also let you integrate with other systems such as pricing tools to ensure you are always selling your rooms at the right price for you to profit.

3 key features of the best rental property management software

There are some features that your rental property management software simply must have if it’s going to be worth the investment.

These include:

1.Front desk functionality

Your front desk is the heart of your property and where all the crucial operations take place. Your software should create a complete online version of your front desk. This will let you manage reservations, room allocations, inventory management, guest profiles, payments, housekeeping, maintenance, and more. This is much easier and quicker than managing it all manually.

2. ‘All-in-one’ capabilities

An all-in-one solution allows you to also manage direct bookings, distribution on sites like Booking.com, and your website alongside your front desk operations. This is preferable to using two or three separate systems that may not work well together. This would leave you in a similar situation to when you were managing your property ‘offline’.

3. A mobile app

A mobile app for your software is almost essential – as it allows you even more freedom and control. With an app, you can manage major functions like reservation management or guest check-in from anywhere, anytime. This means there’s no need for you to be physically at the property all the time. Instead, you can get personal errands or other business done.

How to choose the best software for rental property management

Careful consideration is always necessary when investing in a new software for your rental property.

Here are how some of the most common management systems compare to each other, and what you should look at when choosing the right solution for your specific needs.

Solution	Property size	Property budget	Features
Little Hotelier	Specifically designed and built for small accommodation providers, usually best suited to 1-20 room properties.	You can sign-up and get started for free, and there are two flexible pricing models to choose from. Pricing starts from $39 AUD.	Fully fledged all-in-one property management software, with a simple calendar, reservation management, mobile app, automated room distribution, and more.
OpenKey	Suitable for most property types including hotels, holiday rentals, and vacation rentals.	Starting from $4 per door per month for the ‘Lite’ package.	Focuses on features for digital check-in, digital room entry, and guest messaging.
Chekin	An app suitable for small property types including rental properties and operators who have more than one property.	Starting at 5 €/month per property.	Focuses on specific guest check-in and management features.
Smartpricing	Suited to small property types such as B&Bs, holiday homes, and apartment rentals.	Not publicly disclosed.	Focuses on specific revenue management and analytics features.
Abitari	Suitable for small properties who need a simple solution.	Not publicly disclosed.	Focuses mainly on check-in, housekeeping, and payment features for guests.

How to make the most of your software for rental property management

Once you’re up and running with your new software for your rental property, it’s important to:

Get everyone up to speed

If you have any partners or staff that will need to handle day-to-day operations, it’s important that they have access to the software and know how to use it. Make sure they’re included when you go through any training.

Import your existing data

Important information about your property and your current guests needs to be uploaded, so you can kickstart your setup and begin implementing your strategies for personalisation and targeted sales or marketing.

Optimise your listings

Since your software makes it easier to sell more rooms in more places, you need to also make sure your listings on sites Booking.com are optimised. This means treating them with the same care and precision as your own website. Ensure guests have access to crucial information and images that allow them to make a booking decision.