Are you managing multiple vacation rental properties across different channels? Then you know how taxing it is to keep up with all the listings, rates, and reservations.
That’s where vacation rental channel manager software comes in – to streamline your operations and automate tedious managerial tasks.
We’ve created a list of the 5 best vacation rental channel manager solutions to help you choose the best one for your business.
Let’s dive in!
How to Choose The Best Vacation Rental Channel Manager?
1. Channel Compatibility
One of the most important aspects of a vacation rental channel manager is its ability to connect with various booking channels.
Thus, check if your desired channel manager is compatible with all the channels where you want to promote your property.
2. Integration with Property Management System (PMS)
A PMS is necessary for managing your rental business’s day-to-day management, such as reservations, payments, housekeeping, and other activities.
A vacation rental channel manager that integrates smoothly with your PMS will enable automated workflows and make things simpler for you.
📌 Note:
Before choosing a channel manager, check its compatibility with iCal, which allows you to share calendar information between different systems.
Using iCal can broaden your property’s exposure to more channels, particularly those without APIs.
Moreover, incorporating iCal can help you coordinate your bookings across multiple sites.
3. Automation & Customization
The more automation and customization features available, the more time you can save on repetitive tasks such as pricing management and reservation updates.
Look for channel managers that offer features like automated pricing adjustments, customizable pricing, and reservation management to help you save time and improve revenue.
5 Best Vacation Rental Channel Manager Software To Try
1. OTA SYNC
OTA SYNC is an all-in-one hotel property management software providing solutions to automate and streamline hotel operations.
As such, it offers a wide range of solutions to facilitate check-in and check-out processes, optimize the distribution of hotel room inventory across various OTAs, etc.
Since it addresses full hotel management, OTA SYNC also comes with a Guest App that enhances and improves your guest experience and satisfaction via:
- Smooth check-in and check-out,
- Tailored suggestions on what to see and do,
- Crucial information about your hotel or rental, house rules, etc.
Regarding integrations, OTA SYNC has a 2-way XML connection with all major OTAs, as well as popular payment and marketing platforms like PayPal, Stripe, AdriaScan, and HubSpot.
Moreover, it offers iCAL links and API integration.
Key Features
✨ Channel Manager – Allows you to connect and synchronize your property on +100 OTA channels, manage and update room availability, rates, and bookings in real-time, ensuring consistency across the channels.
✨ The Booking Engine – Offers your guests live availability and rates, upsells and cross-sells relevant products and services, special offers, etc.
✨ Multi-Property hub integration – Connects a customized booking engine to your website and drives increased bookings without affecting the guest experience.
✨ Multi-property Dashboard – Enables you to oversee multiple properties from a singular platform and improve oversight across your portfolio.
✨ OTA Payments – Instantly automates process transactions and accepts customer payments through various online, in-store, or mobile channels and in multiple currencies.
✨ Plug and Play Revenue Booster – Allows for dynamic pricing based on specific dates and price lists, enables bulk updates for large date ranges, auto-yields rate plans, etc.
What’s more, with OTA SYNC, you can tailor the platform to reflect your hotel’s unique brand with custom filters, content, maps, and promotions that provide a personalized touch.
Pricing
OTA SYNC has 4 Premium Plans, starting from €55 if billed annually. Each plan comes with a 14-day Free Trial.
2. Rentals United
Rentals United is a channel manager for short-term and holiday rentals that helps you manage reservations, rates, availability, etc.
Being a channel manager, it allows you to to synchronize your availability and rates across multiple booking channels.
In addition, Rentals United includes features to manage guest communication.
Key Features
✨ Channel Manager – Allows you to automatically sync and update your listings on +60 booking websites, niche and local channels, meta searches, etc.
✨ Multi-Calendar – Enables you to track bookings from all your channels in one place.
✨ My Website – Helps you create your direct booking website.
✨ Quality Checker – Helps you find gaps in your content and provides suggestions so you can enhance your listings.
✨ Smart Guest Communication – Manages all your messages from a unified inbox.
Pricing
Rentals United has 2 Premium Plans, depending on the number of properties. The price for running 1-9 properties starts at €19, and there is a 14-day Free Trial.
3. Hospitable
Hospitable is a vacation rental software that provides diverse automation solutions: from guest messaging to calendar syncing.
It primarily focuses on Airbnb and Vrbo channels and caters to hosts with one or fewer properties.
Key Features
✨ Channel Manager – Allows you to list multiple channels and see all the info in a single calendar.
✨ Direct Booking Website – Provides customizable templates to build a website, with custom domain included.
✨ Pricing Sync – Provides tools to push dynamic pricing to multiple channels automatically.
✨ Unified Inbox – Manages all the messages from a centralized inbox.
✨ Automates guest messaging – Offers pre-built templates to create, customize and schedule messages you send to guests.
Pricing
Hospitable doesn’t have pricing plans, but the price depends on the number of properties, and it starts from $40 for 1 property.
There is a 14-day Free Trial.
4. Hostaway
Hostaway is vacation rental software that hosts PMS features to automate and streamline your property operations.
Thus, it comprises features like channel manager, automation tools, reporting and analytics, marketing, etc.
Moreover, Hostaway hosts the Marketplace with +100 integrated apps ranging from cleaning management to dynamic pricing.
Key Features
✨ Channel Manager – Provides connections to major OTAs, various niche websites and smaller OTAs.
✨ Multi-Calendar – Enables you to view different locations, property types and search for availability or do bulk updates.
✨ Multi-Unit Support – Connects multiple room types to single properties and assigns guests to units.
✨ Cross Listings – Combine multiple listings into one to reduce the risk of double-booking.
✨ Reservations Management – Manage your inquiries, reservations, etc., and keep track of your bookings.
Pricing
Hostaway doesn’t display its pricing but offers customized pricing with no free trial.
Nonetheless, it offers paid trials to property managers with more than 200 properties under management.
5. Hosthub
Hosthub is a vacation rental PMS with a focus on calendar syncing across multiple channels.
Furthermore, it provides a Zero Double Booking Guarantee, but it is only available for API-connected channels.
Speaking of API, Hosthub hosts open API.
Key Features
✨ Channel Manager – Provides 2-way sync with over 200 channels and allows you to sync prizes on Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, and Expedia.
✨ Unified Inbox – Unifies the management of messages and information in a single inbox.
✨ Team Management – Give access to property owners, staff, accountants, etc., to view your listings with multiple levels of permissions.
✨ Automated Messaging – Enables you to customize and schedule emails to your guests and provide reservation-specific details.
✨ Revenue Booster – Suggests which channels to add based on your property’s characteristics to increase occupancy rates.
Pricing
Hosthub’s Pricing Plan comprises the Channel Manager and PMS, starting from $20 per month for 1 property.
There is a 14-day Free Trial.
However, the Booking Engine, Revenue Booster, and other products are sold separately and range from $75 to $799.
Let’s Recap!
All of the above vacation rental channel managers provide various useful features to automate and facilitate your operations.
Some offer more integrations, others focus more on automation tasks, some on a smaller or bigger number of properties, some have a hefty price tag, etc.
Still, one solution successfully juggles multiple functionalities without compromising guest satisfaction and at an affordable price.
Enter, OTA SYNC!
Why Go For OTA SYNC?
OTA SYNC is an all-encompassing hospitality management solution coming with a wide array of features to enhance property management and operational efficiency.
It covers every stage of the booking process while maintaining a positive guest experience.
Thus, OTA SYNC can help you:
🔥 Do seamless onboarding in only 1 day without external assistance.
🔥 Change sales and pricing settings independently based on pre-set limitations.
🔥 Do flexible tax and general settings that are market-specific.
🔥 Efficiently control room distribution and avoid overbooking or underselling thanks to automatic updates.
🔥 Enhance your hotel’s online presence with an online booking system integrated into your hotel’s website.
🔥 Run and manage multiple properties from a single dashboard without switching accounts.
And so much more.
Ready to give OTA SYNC a try?
Sign up for OTA SYNC today and expand your property’s visibility and reach.
Keep Learning:
8 Tips to Start a Vacation Rental Management Business
