Thinking about expansion? Spare some time for prep work before you begin to manage direct booking listings. You must decide how to get direct bookings, verify guest’s identity, check people in/out, troubleshoot emergencies, clean the property, and do many other things remotely. If you don’t set up everything in advance, rental management can become way too stressful and demanding.
Fortunately, the combination of software and specialized services makes remote booking management possible. You can cover many routine tasks with apps for hosts and hire dedicated staff for others.
Learn what it takes to manage direct bookings remotely in our post. These tips will help you minimize your personal involvement while getting a decent profit from direct rentals.
Benefits of remote management of direct bookings
Why would anyone manage direct bookings remotely if it’s so difficult? Even though renting through OTA may seem an easier choice for remote, direct bookings have a 10% to 30% higher profit margin. With high occupancy rates and a proper pricing policy, you can earn much more. Besides, remote management of direct bookings allows you to:
- Live wherever you want and invest in rental properties globally. Some locations are just better for short-term rentals due to many factors like picturesque nature, tourist attractions, active business landscape, lenient rental regulations, etc. But you don’t have to live in New York if you love your small town. Remote direct booking management allows you to choose where you live and where you have rentals.
- Have broader marketing opportunities and more fair competition as you don’t depend on third-party booking platforms with hundreds of listings. With direct booking listing, you can build a client base and reach them with special offers when you have a prolonged vacancy period or low season.
- Choose better insurance and guest screening. With direct bookings, you must take care of property safety yourself, but it also opens a great opportunity to integrate more advanced tools. You can get more solid insurance coverage, implement a vacation rental damage waiver, and take other measures to protect your property remotely.
In other words, remote management is all about the freedom and flexibility many property owners and managers crave. Some other pros of remote direct booking management is the ability to build your brand and launch more rentals. You can also target a specific audience, choose a cancellation.
Issues with managing direct bookings remotely
Some of these challenges may seem obvious, but we still want to warn you about them before you consider remote management. The most evident one — you won’t be there. You won’t be there to meet your guests. You won’t be there when a washing machine breaks in the middle of the night. You also won’t be there when someone damages the property and leaves without a word. Many things can happen.
Here are some other issues to be ready for when managing direct bookings remotely:
- Dependence on vendors and software to make sure everything goes smoothly on-site. You must choose cleaning services, maintenance providers as well as property management apps very carefully. If you fail, it may result in bad reviews, refunds, or worse — the need to come to the property personally.
- Delayed response due to time zone differences. If you live far away from where you manage direct bookings, it may cause inconvenience. Guests or local vendors caring for your place may disturb you late in the evening or even at night. Yet it’s all fixable with open communication and some personal boundaries.
- Legal and tax issues if you live in another country or state. Sometimes, no limitations apply, but we recommend double-checking the rules before launching remote direct rentals. You must know what permits to get and what taxes to pay.
Remote management of direct rentals will probably need more effort at the start. You may face the listed issues, but they shouldn’t stop you from living your best life while running rentals remotely. A good strategy and advanced software can make rentals easy.
10 tips to manage direct booking listings remotely
Now, let’s talk business. If you are about to start direct rentals and manage them remotely or want to improve your current approaches, we have some tips based on our experience and best practices. They will help you launch and manage direct booking listings remotely with a decent, stable income.
1. Create a direct booking website
When you abandon Airbnb in favor of direct bookings, you become fully responsible for finding guests. Creating a personalized website is the most common and effective solution in this case. There are tons of guides about using website builders, including our article on how to build a direct booking site in 6 steps. You don’t have to be a coding expert to do it. Modern tools provide simple instructions and cool design templates to customize web pages.
You can also learn search engine optimization (SEO) basics to promote your website online. Writing content about your property, like travel tips and lists of dine-out places near the rental location, is a great move.
2. Choose a reliable PMS for automated operations
You may do without PMS software if you have one remote rental property. But how do you manage more direct booking listings without a PMS? If you manage multiple locations or struggle to coordinate many routine tasks, a PMS system is a must-have. Hostaway and OwnerRez are popular options. Many PMS tools also provide website builders, so you can use them to launch a direct bookings website besides automating routine tasks.
Designed for professional property management, a PMS tool can help you to:
- Set up dynamic messaging through email, SMS, and other channels
- Optimize accounting and document management
- Offer the right price with dynamic pricing
- Integrate core payment systems to your website
- Automate and store guest records
- Gather data on rentals for advanced analytics
- Write custom guest communications and listing descriptions with GenAI
- Set reminders to remind guests about leaving reviews
3. Hire someone local to look after the property
With direct short-term rentals, you need someone at hand to assist guests and check the property for signs of damage. We recommend hiring a property management company or professional maintenance team to clean the place according to the schedule and prepare it for the next guests.
Even though you may hire a separate cleaner and handyman for a property, this approach is quite risky. Anyone may quit the job unexpectedly, have a vacation, or get ill, and you will have trouble replacing them quickly. A property management company takes care of such issues and ensures a steady quality of services. As a result, you get more positive reviews and less headache.
4. Prepare emergency contacts for different occasions
Even if you partner with a property management company, it won’t hurt to play it safe and gather a solid list of emergency contacts. These people may save you when something goes wrong during a guest’s stay and urgent help is needed. You can create a separate document with all these contacts so you can quickly access and find the necessary specialist.
You should also have the numbers of a local police and fire department, a local hospital, an insurance company, and a legal advisor. It will help you act quickly in emergencies and minimize adverse outcomes.
5. Sign a short-term rental agreement online
Prepare a short-term rental agreement with terms of stay and other details. You should include the property address, check-in and out rules, number of guests allowed, prohibited behaviors and penalties, house rules (e.g., smoking, partying, and noise restriction policies), security deposit collection and return conditions, guest screening process, etc. You can consult a legal advisor or experienced property manager in the target location on what to add to the agreement.
Then, ask every guest to sign this agreement before accepting their bookings. You can include it as one of the steps on your website or send a link to a service for online document signing. This way, you can easily organize document management and keep guests accountable for their behaviors.
6. Implement damage protection and guest screening
The main drawback of not being able to meet your guests in person is that you cannot see who lives in your property. It raises the risk of damage and theft. When people know no one sees them, they are more likely to misbehave. What can you do about it remotely? Implement damage precautions like collecting a deposit or waiver to make guests pay for the damage and accumulate money to fix everything. It’s a crucial step to keep bookings profitable.
Fraud and vacation rental scams are another common problem with short-term rentals, particularly when you manage them remotely. We recommend implementing professional guest screening tools that automatically request potential guests to provide personal information and check it against multiple databases to detect suspicious accounts.
Truvi is a unique tool that combines guest screening with damage protection. Get one of our damage protection plans for automated guest checks and up to $5,000,000 in damage coverage.
7. Have a marketing strategy for direct bookings
Plan how you are going to generate a stable flow of bookings. Otherwise, the place will have low occupancy and, therefore, become unprofitable. Creating a custom website for your property is a big step, but it’s not enough. Here are some other things you can do to develop your brand and attract bookers:
- Name the property and create a logo.
- Understand your niche and offer unique selling points (e.g., pet-friendly, hot tub, loyalty program).
- Collect guests’ emails and get their consent to receive special offers and newsletters.
- Create social media accounts and regularly publish content about your place. Make sure to include geo-tags.
- Use best SEO practices for your website to make it more visible in Google.
- Encourage guests to leave reviews on Google and tag you on social media.
- Analyze how different marketing activities affect bookings and modify your marketing strategy if necessary.
8. Track local rental market trends and changes
Even if you live far away from a rental property, you must know what is happening with the local market. Prices and trends regularly change, and you should adapt your offering. If not, you will start losing guests one by one.
You can use Airbnb to regularly check prices and new properties appearing nearby. AirDNA is also a nice resource to get a bigger picture of the market and details on annual revenue, occupancy rates, average daily rates, minimum stays, amenities, etc. You can also integrate PriceLabs for dynamic pricing and intelligent price recommendations to optimize your effort.
9. Use smart devices for extra security and savings
We recommend equipping your property with smart devices before you start rentals. It’s a big investment, but it will surely pay off pretty soon.
Smart locks are a popular solution for remote management of short-term rentals. You won’t need to provide guests with keys and can monitor when the doors are opened for security purposes. You can even integrate the locks with tools like Hospitable and Guesty to auto-send trackable codes to guests. Security cameras are a nice addition to smart locks.
Smart thermostats and lights are another must-have. You can remotely control the temperature, turn off the lights, and set energy-saving modes when the property is empty. It considerably reduces utility bills and expenses.
You can also read our article on how to manage Airbnb remotely for more helpful insights.
10. Create a guidebook for guests
When guests reach a rental property and enter the place, they will likely bombard you with questions. What is the Wi-Fi password? How does a dishwasher work? Where is the nearest restaurant? It can be draining, especially if you run multiple properties.
A detailed guidebook for guests is a practical way to assist guests without communicating with them 24/7.
Spend time to include all the critical information about your property and how to use it in a guide. Include emergency contacts and recommendations on where to eat and go. It will show guests you care about them and minimize your active role in remote direct booking management.
Summing up
Remote management of direct bookings gives you a lot of freedom. You can run a rental business from any location. At the same time, it may be more demanding than regular property management. Particularly at the start, when you must organize everything to ensure guests get high-quality services.
Fortunately, modern software like Truvi considerably simplifies remote property management. You can automate most processes with rental software and hire a local maintenance team to care for the rest.
