Best Property Management Systems for Airbnb Hosts in 2020
By: Keycafe Team
Tags: Property Management, Property Manager, Property Software, Airbnb, Hosting

A property management system can be an essential tool when it comes to managing a vacation rental property and optimising your short-term rental business. While there are a variety of indisputable benefits that these systems have, there’s a wide selection of property management software out there for hosts to choose from. We take a look at the five best property management systems currently available for Airbnb hosts in 2020, and compare their unique features so you can find out which works best for your vacation rental business.

The Five Property Management Systems

We looked at five different property management systems for this article, picking those with the best sets of tools for property managers and vacation rental hosts. We also chose property management systems that have unique features that stand out from the rest, so you can quickly know the key differences and advantages to using each one.

For this article we looked at:

The Common Property Management System Features

While these various property management systems have some differences in terms of style and a few features, they all share a lot of the essential tools that a vacation rental host is looking for.

The shared features across property management systems are:

Master calendar which shows all bookings across platforms

Channel manager to manage all your listings across platforms

Automated messages for guest check-ins and other events

Vacation rental performance reports

Financial reporting and payment manager

Price adjustment tools

While there are some small differences in the specifics of these features across different property management systems, they’re all similar in terms of their general functionality. So what are the key differences between these services? We take a look below.

The Unique Features of Property Management Systems

Hostfully: Upsell Platform for Extra Guest Amenities and Customer Management

One of Hostfully’s unique features is how it makes it easy for vacation rental hosts and property managers to upsell added services and amenities so hosts aren’t leaving money on the table. Hosts can create a customised platform of additional amenities to be purchased, ensuring any customer need is easily met. Whether it’s early check-in and late check-out or mid stay cleaning and special event packages, with Hostfully property managers can maximise their revenue and ensure that any special guest need is met.

Along with being able to offer a variety of amenities at an extra cost, Hostfully has a robust customer management system that collects customer information in order to potentially earn repeat bookings. This system collects information for all guests who have stayed at a property, enabling hosts to run remarketing campaigns and potentially book a repeat guest. This way, during low-seasons hosts can reach out to past guests who might be interested in booking a stay, and easily rebook them with just a few clicks.

iGMS: Team and Cleaning Management and 100% Functional Mobile App

iGMS features a team management system which allows hosts to easily assign tasks to specific members, including to cleaning teams and other staff members. Notifications are sent by text or email to members once the property manager assigns a crew member a task, and tasks can be automated to save property managers time and ensure that cleaners are always notified of their task.

To do notes can be pinned on any active reservation, allowing team members to see any specific requirements or notes about guests staying at a specific property. When team members are added to the iGMS platform, they can see their own complete daily schedule of tasks with the iGMS system allowing managers to give different team members’ different access rights depending on the duties they need to perform.

One of the best elements of iGMS is the property management system’s mobile application which is available on iOS and Android devices. The great thing about the iGMS mobile application is that it keeps 100% of its functionality, allowing vacation rental hosts to manage every aspect of their property while on the go.

Guesty: Deep Property Management Integrations and Free Authority Reporting

While many property management systems are integrated with Airbnb and Booking.com, few of them can boast the extensive list of deep integrations that Guesty can. Guesty has built a collection of integrations with companies in a variety of sectors that range from home automation and security to data analytics and market intelligence.

Keycafe is among the integrations, allowing Guesty’s users to stay on top of their key management and exchanges from within the Guesty interface. Whether you’re looking for an accounting software like Ximplifi to help you stay on top of your bill payments or want to outsource your housekeeping duties by using Properly’s marketplace of cleaners and service providers, with Guesty it’s all just a few clicks away.

Guesty also just recently announced a new feature which allows hosts in Spain, Portugal, and Italy to automate their pre-stay registration process to ensure they’re hosting in full legal compliance with local laws. While the feature is currently limited to the three mediterranean countries, Guesty is working on making the feature available for hosts in Germany, Dubai, and the Czech Republic soon.

Setting up the automated reporting is easy: hosts simply register their properties with the appropriate local authorities and enter the requested information on the authority’s website. After this, guests who have confirmed reservations are automatically sent the appropriate forms to fill out, Guesty sends it to the authorities, and hosts are notified once the process is complete. In this way, hosts can focus on welcoming their guests rather than dealing with legal paperwork for their bookings.

Rentals United: Get your Listing in Google’s Vacation Rental Search

Rentals United is a unique type of property management system that is aimed towards hosts and property managers with more than ten properties. While a few other property management services offer the ability to create custom booking sites for your property, Rentals United automatically creates sleek property pages for each listing as soon as you insert the property’s information on the Rentals United platform. This automates the site-creation process for hosts, allowing them to easily share a link where guests can book their stay directly.

Along with the automated creation of a listing’s direct booking site, Rentals United is able to get listings using their platform listed on Google’s vacation rental search. This allows hosts to reach millions more people directly from within the search engine, and frees them from being dependent on strict booking platforms. When reservations are made from Google’s vacation rental search they’re processed through the custom direct booking site, allowing hosts to apply all of their own policies, guest communication methods, and payment options.

Rentals United is also unique in the way that it allows seamlessly connects with other third-party property management systems. This allows hosts to sync up their listings that are already in other property management systems and take advantage of unique features offered by other software. There are currently more than 40 different property management systems partnered with Rentals United, including Hostfully and Guesty.

Uplisting: Integration with 1000+ Apps with Zapier

A lot of these property management systems have one or two unique features which set them apart from the competition, but Uplisting’s integration with Zapier allows hosts to add hundreds of different features. The Zapier integration allows connections with all kinds of accounting and invoicing apps, operational management software, and marketing tools.

Whether you’re using Monday and Google sheets to organise your workflow or Mailchimp to send out email campaigns and Hellosign to collect contract signatures, Uplisting’s 1000+ app integrations through Zapier give hosts a huge selection of tools to manage their property.

Which Property Management Systems are Integrated with Keycafe?

While unique features in a property management system are attractive, another important feature is integration with Keycafe. With Keycafe integration, property managers and vacation rental hosts can easily keep track of their key exchanges from a single platform without having to switch between their property management system and the Keycafe app.

Currently, the property management systems integrated with Keycafe are:

We’re always working on our integrations to provide more and better integrations with various property management systems and vacation rental platforms. For hosts not using these property management systems, Keycafe is also directly integrated with Airbnb. If you’re using a property management system that isn’t integrated with Keycafe, let us know at contact@keycafe.com and we’ll look to integrate with them.