Many “airbnbs” simply take some photos, list a house on that platform, hire a cleaner, and hope for the best. At the other end of the spectrum, there are property owners who simply outsource the whole management of their homes to a large property management company, stay out of the way, and just receive checks in the mail.

We are vacation rental enthusiasts who want to be hands-on. We actually enjoy it! We try to take advantage of a whole range of systems and technologies that make it possible for us to self-manage our cabins from afar.

Most of you probably don’t have an interest in any of this 😜, but we thought we’d share some of the tech we use. Maybe it will inspire you if you are intersted in having rentals of your own. We (mainly Bobby!) are happy to answer any questions you have about the tech we use. Here’s a sampling:

Ownerrez 

This is our property management software that handles all the backend booking processes and payment portal. Ownerrez makes sure that all of our calendars talk to each other and avoid the dreaded double-booking (!!). This is important because we list our cabins on our own direct booking website, Airbnb, VRBO, HomeToGo, etc.

Ownerrez also handles most of our automatic messaging related to billing, and the initial welcome message. It also lets us create custom discount codes, send out custom price quotes, and manage security deposits. Honestly, Ownerrez is really the backbone of our tech and makes everything else work smoothly.

Touchstay Guidebook

This is our digital guidebook that you receive once you book. While we do still have the binder in the cabins for now, the go-to for amenities, instructions, and recommendations is now the digital guidebook.

Direct Booking Website

Our website is hosted by Boostly, a company out of the UK. Boostly provided the initial template, maintains the site, offers tech support, and provides tons of vacation rental marketing tips.

Most cabin owners don’t create their own websites. We (Bobby!) have invested a lot of time in learning to manage, update, and improve our website and blog. The website is a great way for us to make it easy for people to book directly with us and to showcase our cabins, the area, and ourselves in a way that we could never do on a VRBO listing.

Smart Home Automation. After years of testing and trial and error, we’ve found a system that works. We use Smartthings devices to manage our door locks, security cameras, thermostats, and some of our lights. The smart thermostats help us conserve electricity and gas while keeping the cabins comfortable for you. And we’ve figured out how to manage all of our lock codes so that your codes are programmed, activated, de-activated, and erased, all automatically!

Pricelabs dynamic pricing. Pricing is a touchy subject to be transparent about, but you can handle it! It is really hard to know how to price a vacation rental. If you price it too low, you can’t come close to covering the high costs of maintaining the home. If you price it too high, you become unaffordable, and people won’t book!

Pricelabs helps us price our nightly rates depending on season and local market demand. Our prices are higher in high season and lower in the off season. We could try to do this manually, but this software does a lot of the heavy lifting, and we can tweak it from there.

Turno

The Turno app is what our cleaners use to help them organize their work. It is integrated with our booking calendar and tells them when their cleans are scheduled, allows them to communicate any issues with the cabin to us, and helps them track inventory so we know when to, for example, buy more coffee! ☕

We thought it might be nice to share with you a bit of the behind-the-scenes tools that we use to keep you safe, comfortable, and enjoying your vacation without a hitch. Good tech doesn’t replace our real human hospitality, friendliness, and welcoming attitude. I think we’ve managed to become good at both, which is why people keep coming back year after year!