You may not live in the same city where you run an Airbnb business. Some places are good for short-term rentals but are less comfortable to stay in for life. Regardless of why you rent property elsewhere, remote Airbnb management requires extra effort. Since you won’t be able to rush to the property to take care of guests personally, you must ensure someone does it for you.
The right approach to remote Airbnb management will increase your income and help optimize expenses. With specialized software, guest damage management, automated communications, and other best practices, you can make the rental process autonomous. It will save you 15-40% of the rental income you would give to property managers.
Learn how to run an Airbnb business remotely, what challenges to expect, and the pros and cons of remote short-term rentals in our blog post.
Why (not) attempt managing Airbnb remotely
Before talking about how to manage an Airbnb remotely, let’s clarify whether it’s a good idea at all. Remote Airbnb management gives you maximum flexibility. At the same time, you are more likely to wake up in the middle of the night from a guest’s call.
“I was watching the security cam and saw that my guests sneaked in a dog but I couldn’t do anything about it, I was 5,000 kilometers away so I just had to let it go.”
– Stephanie Figueros
There is a huge benefit to remote property management.
“I use AI to respond to simple questions to my guests in the UK while I’m sound asleep in Australia. It’s saved me many sleepless nights,”
Jodie Odlin – the Head of Hospitable Hosts and Founder of tetbury Escapes.
Listen to the full episode about how Jodie manages her listings remotely.
Here are some other pros and cons to be ready for:
Pros of managing Airbnb remotely
- You can live anywhere. With remote short-term rentals, you can move between cities, travel a lot, and avoid getting tied to one location.
- You have passive income. STRs generate a decent additional income, improving your quality of life.
- You can choose the best place. When you are not forced to do Airbnb in a specific location, you can start a short-term rental business anywhere. In our recent post, we covered the best US markets for short-term rentals.
- You can easily scale your business. Once you figure out how to run an Airbnb out of state, you have the experience and resources to launch new rentals.
- You can take time off. Remote rental management requires more effort at the start, but you don’t have to be engaged 24/7 when everything is set up.
Cons of managing Airbnb remotely
- Your life becomes more difficult. Even if you know how to manage Airbnb remotely, doing business is more burdensome than doing nothing. You will have to organize dozens of processes, some of which will get out of order occasionally.
- You have less control over property damage. Guests who don’t see a host in person may feel less responsible for keeping it intact.
- You lack a personal touch with guests. If you are an outgoing person and like the social aspect of hosting, you should know that remote short-term rentals don’t offer that.
- You depend on the third-party vendors. Remote Airbnb management is impossible without hiring someone to keep your property clean and tidy. You may also decide to cooperate with a property manager, which makes you dependent on a third party.
Common challenges when running an Airbnb remotely
Most hosts owning an Airbnb in another state or country face the same problems. You cannot be around when needed and must put in extra effort to fix issues remotely. What we cannot change, we must accept. And try to minimize its impact. If you are not ready for the listed challenges, consider mid-or-long-term rentals. Yet both short- and long-term models have their drawbacks.
Housekeeping and maintenance
Guests lawfully expect to come to an Airbnb that is clean and well-stocked. A dirty sock left by previous guests may bring you a negative review. The challenge is to fix everything within a several-hour gap between the checkout and the check-in. You cannot do it when you live in another state.
Urgent troubles and requests
When something breaks or the toilet gets clogged in the middle of the night, guests will call you and demand to do something right away. You, in turn, will have to find someone who can urgently come to the property and assist the guests.
Staying always available
Both guests and short-term rental platforms like Airbnb expect you to answer quickly. If you don’t respond within 24 hours, you get penalized, which may affect your listing’s position in search results. It’s one of the frequent issues hosts complain about.
“The nights I get messages at 2-3 am enquiring about my spaces (yes, this happens 2-3 days per week) in which I would be penalized if I do not answer as fast as I can. Time zones are a real thing, wonderful in some situations but because of the way hosts are penalized if they do not respond within hours they are also an awful concept for hosts in far-flung markets.” – shares Hamish Stanaway.
Security and property damage
Guests may leave your place unlocked, break stuff, throw a party, and misbehave in many other ways. Airbnb fraud is another big issue. Offenders create fake accounts to access your property and steal things. With remote Airbnb management, these risks surge, and you need a reliable way to verify guests and protect the property.
8 tips on how to manage Airbnb remotely
Now, let’s talk about how to run an Airbnb remotely with minimum risks and decent income. It requires thorough preparation at the start of rentals but will make your STR business highly efficient in the long term. Here are the best practices based on our experience and the tips from experienced hosts.
1. Provide a concise guestbook
Create a guide with all the information guests might need at your place. It will allow people to find the necessary information on their own instead of writing tons of messages. Guestbooks also improve the overall experience since many feel embarrassed about contacting hosts and like doing everything independently.
Here’s the standard information to include:
- Welcome intro with a brief introduction about the place
- Wifi password
- Instructions for using appliances and a healing/cooling system
- Smoking, pet, and other house policies
- Checkout procedure and time
- Key city locations and tourist attractions
- Emergency contacts
- Fines and penalties
Inform guests where they can find the guide and always put it in the same place. Don’t turn the guide into a book about your property. It should provide only the necessary information and be helpful.
2. Build a rental pipeline
Analyze what actions you do over and over and write them down. You will see that Airbnb management involves a lot of routine activities like standard guest communications, cleaning, etc. These are the processes you must make as smooth as possible and find ways to automate or outsource. Once you organize them, you can be less involved in remote Airbnb management.
- Repetitive processes in short-term rentals
- Guest screening
- Guest communications
- Pre-arrival and mid-stay cleaning
- Laundry
- Booking management
- Adjusting prices
- Restocking supplies
- Review management
- Maintenance and repairs
Lauren Gossman, property manager, shares her experience with that:
“I have a process for everything I do, meaning I have a step by step plan for before the guest books, after they book, before they arrive, during their stay, and after they leave. That way I’m covering all my bases and can make adjustments as I have guests throughout the busy season.”
3. Understand local regulations
Legal limitations are one of the key things you must note when deciding how to manage Airbnb remotely. There are many short-term regulations globally that require the rental property to be your primary residence, limit the number of nights you can host someone, demand an STR license, and introduce zoning and other restrictions.
You must note them for two crucial reasons. First, breaking the law will result in considerable fines, and you may be required to cease short-term rentals. Second, local limitations may make you reconsider the place for short-term rentals if they are too strict. That’s why we recommend consulting with a legal advisor before choosing a location for an STR business.
4. Have emergency maintenance contacts
You must have reliable emergency contacts for everything. Local plumbers, electricians, HVAC repair services, pest control, and a backup cleaning service. Things always go wrong at the least convenient time, and you must know who to call. Make sure these people are ready to respond quickly and work with Airbnb rentals.
Hiring a separate maintenance vendor may be a more convenient but pricey option. If you want to save money and are ready to manage maintenance yourself, you can do it remotely. But prepare all the necessary contacts in advance.
5. Implement guest screening
As we already mentioned, security is among the key challenges of remote STR management. Even though Airbnb has a guest screening process, it doesn’t check all guests. As a result, bad people may end up in your property and cause considerable damage or ruin it. You are also more likely to suffer from Airbnb fraud without reliable guest screening.
What to do about it? Use advanced guest screening services. The Truvi platform allows you to automatically check guest’s name, email, and digital profile and screen people against a unique internal watchlist. It also supports ID verification and sex offenders check, so you can detect anyone suspicious and reject the booking right away. This way, you don’t need to meet people in person to see who stays at your place and can manage remote Airbnb with more security.
Rob Ahrens, an Airbnb Host for almost ten years, says: “99% of guests are great, and 1% of your guests will cause 99% of your problems. With experience, you will get better at figuring out who the potential troublemakers are. Red flags include: No prior reviews; Anyone under 25 years-old; Last minute bookings (especially by locals); Anyone who says that they are having a couple of college friends over for a quiet dinner party; Anyone who goes into too much detail about how quiet and well-mannered they are.”
6. Use smart home devices
No need to turn your apartment into a sci-fi place. Install the devices that can truly benefit you as a host. Smart locks, door cameras, and smart thermostats are the key ones.
Jan Mitchell Johnson, Airbnb owner, shares how to use monitoring devices in the property:
“I also recommend a Ring doorbell (or something similar) outside your property so you can check in on who is coming and going. I don’t obsessively monitor this, but my protection plan does record and keep recordings for up to 60 days in the event there is an issue (like theft or damage from an unauthorized party). You DO need to disclose the presence of any surveillance devices in your profile on Airbnb BEFORE guests book. If you disclose this after the fact, they are within their rights to cancel and receive a full refund.”
While smart locks and door cameras will make your place more secure and better supervised, smart thermostats save money. A Tado, Ecobee, or Nest device limits heating/cooling and ensures you don’t burn energy when the property is empty.
7. Take care of damage protection
Short-term rentals increase wear and tear and the risk of property damage. Especially when you run an Airbnb remotely and have less control over what’s happening there.
That’s why, with remote Airbnb rentals, you need a reliable damage protection strategy for different types of damage. You should ask guests to pay a waiver or collect a damage deposit to cover minor issues and get short-term rental insurance for more considerable damage. Truvi offers flexible damage protection plans, protecting bookings up to $500-$5,000,000 in damages.
Damage deposits and insurance will allow you to get reimbursed for different kinds of property damage and avoid losing money. Find more tips on what makes short-term rentals profitable in our blog.
8. Use property management software for automation
There are tons of tools and apps to optimize business management and rentals. Research them and combine several solutions to make remote rentals effortless. With the right software, you can do the following:
- Manage listings and reservations
- Synchronize all data on reservations and available dates
- Use customized templates and messages to optimize communications
- Implement dynamic pricing
- Automate accounting and record-keeping
- Track business results and income with analytics
- Manage cleaning and maintenance tasks
Final thoughts
Can you run an Airbnb remotely? Yes. With some best practices and smart software solutions, running short-term rentals remotely can be even more efficient than rentals in the same city. You are free to choose any location and can be less involved in property management on-site.
Optimization and outsourcing are the key things to make remote Airbnb rentals successful. You must make all processes as smooth as possible and have someone local who can assist guests in an emergency. Learning local regulations, smart home monitoring devices, and advanced damage protection policies are no less important.