Insights to Success: 9 Ways Property Managers Are Using Hostaway

Successful property managers rely on technology to enhance their competitive edge. Whether that’s by improving efficiencies through centralization and automation, increasing market penetration or streamlining owner management, they rely on property management systems to augment and enhance their short-term rental businesses.

This is why Hostaway exists. To give short-term rental managers the technological help they need so they can do business better and scale faster. We’ve been doing it for nearly a decade now and served thousands of hosts. Some of whom even let us spend a day filming them in action.

In this article, we take a look at the biggest takeaways from our three video case studies so you can learn how some of the most successful vacation rental managers are leveraging Hostaway.

1. Boost Operational Efficiency

A good property manager knows the importance of a property management system (PMS) to gain operational efficiencies in their short-term rental business. A great property manager understands their business needs an all-in-one vacation rental platform.

As Alek Dekirmendjian, CEO of Park Place Properties — a full-service property management company — says, Hostaway has allowed their team to get more efficient because all their operations can be done in one platform. Or as he calls it, "A beautiful ecosystem." Meanwhile, Host Services Group, the largest STR manager in Toronto says Hostaway has increased their efficiency by at least 100%.

From managing different processes involved in vacation rental management like bookings, channel management and marketing within one system, to automation of routine tasks like invoicing and cleaning scheduling and notifications, property management companies are using Hostaway to manage even hundreds of properties located around the world with the same or even fewer staff members.

2. Expand Market Penetration

Increasing visibility is key to bringing in more bookings and revenue. And the ability to list properties on multiple online travel agencies (OTAs) is a key reason property managers choose Hostaway.

Hostaway has not only been awarded the highest possible partner status by Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com but also has direct integrations with OTA giants like Expedia, smaller booking platforms like Hopper and niche marketplaces like Golightly and GetawayGoGo. Its robust API allows smooth and reliable data transfer to and from each channel

Park Place Properties, for example, uses Hostaway to list their over 420 properties on 12+ OTAs, while Lifty Life CEO Connor Griffiths calls Hostaway “more important than even Airbnb” to their business.

3. Improve Guest Communication

From that first booking inquiry and until the review, guest communications is crucial for ensuring a great guest experience.

Hostaway's unified inbox, the gold standard in the short-term rental industry, streamlines guest communication by allowing vacation rental hosts to easily manage communications from a unified platform. It also offers support for email, text messages and WhatsApp.

Automating guest communications is another feature hugely appreciated by short-term rental managers. In fact, Lifty Life now automates more than 50% of their guest communications across Airbnb, Vrbo and their website, seamlessly. By improving response time and giving guests professional and consistent services, property managers are finding Hostaway gives them an edge over their competition.

 4.  Gain the Direct Booking Advantage

Direct booking websites allow short-term rental hosts to earn higher profits and have greater control over the guest experience. That's why savvy property managers include it in their channel distribution mix. But relying on third-party partners like developers or services like Wix and Square is not only costly but can also be risky.

As Brian Edelson, COO of Host Services Group says, before Hostaway they were "looking for a PMS that offered the ability to create a direct booking website, so we could take control of our customer list, save on commissions and manage availability better."

Many Hostaway users choose Hostaway's direct booking engine (which can take as little as ten seconds to set up) and allows for plenty of customizations. Even property management companies like Park Place Properties, Lifty Life and Host Services Group use Hostaway to build, personalize and manage their vacation rental websites.

5. Smooth Onboarding and Training

Onboarding is an often overlooked aspect of choosing a PMS and many property managers are put off by how bad the process can get. Hostaway users however have found their onboarding process to have been "exceptional".

"A customer success manager even came to our office to help with training," says Edelson. "All-in-all, it took us about a month or so to get everything where we wanted. Marcus, the CEO, also made time to meet us personally, which was a nice touch."

Property managers appreciate Hostaway's intuitive user interface and personalized onboarding process. This ease of use and support even reduces the learning curve for new staff and enables quicker adaptation to the system. “We don’t have to onboard new staff and train them on ten systems,” attests Griffiths.

6. Streamline Owner Management

"Reliability and transparency to clients is critical to your business reputation," says Edelson, and other property managers agree.

They use Hostaway's Owner Portal to provide the owners of the homes they manage transparency, maintaining trust and growing their standing in the industry. Homeowners log in through a separate portal, available on both desktop and mobile, so they can't disrupt the staff working on the system. Plus property managers can control how much owners can see.

The functionality also reduces the amount of work property managers need to do to manage their homeowners. As Edeslson puts it, "Hostaway has real value in the user functionality that allows for most of our clients to be answered by logging into Hostaway themselves.”

7. Fast and Reliable Support

Customer service is just as important as functionality in your vacation rental software and property managers find Hostaway to go the extra mile to ensure their success. From direct help and proactive problem-solving to weekly Customer Success Hours, short-term rental hosts appreciate the help they receive to optimize their business.

Like Park Place Properties says, their Hostaway representative "demonstrated extensive knowledge and patience while working with our team. He swiftly identified solutions to accommodate our unique business processes within the Hostaway platform.”

“In situations where immediate solutions were not readily available, Andrew promptly communicated with the development team and facilitated calls between our developers and Hostaway's team. This collaborative effort ensured effective navigation and ultimately led to finding suitable solutions."

8. To Grow and Scale

Hostaway's reputation as a scalable solution that enables rapid and vigorous growth is attested to property managers, having facilitated anywhere from 6X to 642% growth for short-term rental companies. The platform's ability to handle hundreds of listings across different regions and channels is crucial in supporting this growth.

Park Place Properties, for example, has grown the number of properties it manages from 150 to over 420 (180% growth) since using Hostaway, expanded into 10 new markets and grown its team to 55 (72% growth).  Lifty Life now manages 40 properties, recording 6X growth.

Host Services Group, managing multiple property types from condos and apartment buildings to basement units all through Hostaway, has experienced a gigantic 642% growth since switching to Hostaway, more than making up for the significant losses they incurred during the pandemic and surpassing their pre-COVID peak.

9. To Reduce Costs

"We wanted to scale but to do so we needed the right partners. Our previous PMS had a very finicky API with our OTAs and had a lot of gaps in the software. We were using third-party systems that actually ended up costing more than the PMS itself," says Matt Barbuzzi, CTO of Park Place Properties, of their time before switching to Hostaway.

By consolidating multiple functions, reducing operational complexity, decreasing overheads and enabling immense growth at scale, Hostaway is an important investment in their short-term rental business for property managers looking to cut costs and grow profits.

Unlocking New Levels of Success with Hostaway

In an industry as dynamic and competitive as short-term rentals, leveraging the right property management system can make all the difference.

As the video case studies reveal, short-term rental managers using Hostaway consistently experience enhanced efficiency, market expansion and growth, making them very happy customers.

Choosing Hostaway is more than a purchase. It’s an investment in an all-in-one ecosystem designed to propel property managers and their short-term rental businesses towards heightened success.