Implement Automation for Airbnb Business Efficiency: Top Tips and Tools

Guest messaging, calls, and cleaning schedules can quickly come to dominate your week. Especially on busy days like a Friday or Saturday, any plans to run inspections or meet with homeowners quickly go out the window as you become overwhelmed with manual, time-consuming tasks.

If you want to scale your business and manage more Airbnb properties, this is a major barrier you’ll have to wrestle with—guest inquiries and questions, last-minute booking updates, and coordinating cleaners force your higher-level business concerns to take the backseat.

And adding new properties to your portfolio only amplifies the issue, complicating your operations until you risk mistakes, stress, and burnout. This is why simple, efficient operations and guest management with automated processes are so essential to a growing vacation rental business.

In this article, you’ll see the strategies you need to maximize Airbnb business efficiency and the best tools to automate guest messaging, property care, and more.

Why you’ll benefit from more efficient operations

Efficient operations aren’t only necessary for scaling your business (and having normal working hours)—they also help you provide a better service to your Airbnb guests. 

As you know, this is essential to your business success, as 5-star ratings and service lead to Superhost status, better performance in Airbnb search results, and more bookings.

Here are the top reasons to implement automation and operational efficiency across your business:

• Fewer manual tasks: Many Airbnb hosts have to deal with long hours and high levels of stress. With automation, you can keep a careful eye on your operations without being dragged into the details of each task.

• Less human error: Mistakes like a poorly communicated message or, worse, a missed clean, are a nightmare you’ll no longer have to deal with.

• Scalable processes: You can’t build a bigger business if you’re already maxed out on managing turnovers and guests. Automation lets you take on more properties without it adding to your workload.
• Better guest reviews and search rankings: Being able to consistently deliver a fantastic guest experience will set you apart from the competition and improve your reputation.

The key areas to automate for boosting productivity 

Automating key areas of your business can have an immediate impact on your experience as a property manager, as well as improve business performance and guest reviews. Here’s a look at what you should automate and why.

Cleaning and turnover operations

The condition of your short-term rental is the first thing your guest notices on arrival, and it’s the biggest concern for homeowners.

But ensuring a pristine cleaning service each and every time is incredibly hard work. Even when you partner with an Airbnb cleaning company, last-minute bookings and cancellations, late check-outs, and scheduling errors threaten the guest experience and add hours of work to your day.

For this reason, property care processes can be the most time-consuming and crucial areas of your operations. This is also why vacation rental software with scheduling automation and cleaning checklists makes the biggest, most immediate impact on short-term rental property management.

Here’s what you need from your property care platform:

• Task scheduling: The software connects with your property management software or the sites you list on and schedules cleans based on the latest booking information and your customized rules.

• Digital cleaning checklists: The cleaning checklists should be property-specific so cleaners can see exactly what they need to do for each turnover.

• Mobile app: A user-friendly app lets housekeepers and maintenance staff access their schedules and digital checklists, plus record their clock-in and clock-outs (if working on an hourly basis).

• Inventory management: With a streamlined solution for keeping track of your linens, toiletries, and supplies, you can make sure cleaners—and guests—always have what they need.
• Homeowner solutions: Whether it’s a special way to arrange furniture for an owner stay, sharing maintenance issues in real-time, or reporting end-of-season results, your cleaning software can automate it.

Guest communication

Without automated guest messaging solutions in place, you can be looking at hours of extra work each week. Aside from inquiries from potential guests, the most common messages and calls you’ll receive will be about arrival, access, and getting settled in.

You can dramatically cut your time spent on handling these communications—and speed up your response rate—with automated messages and digital welcome books. 

Here’s what you’ll need from them:

•  One central portal: A single go-to dashboard for all your guest messages makes it easy for you to track and organize your communications.
• Pre-built message templates: You can create a bank of messages for your guest so you never have to worry about what to write—it’s all ready and waiting for you.
• Automatically pulled data: Your guest messaging software can auto-populate fields like the guest’s name and their booking details so you never make a mistake.
• Gap night messaging: Use your automation tools to offer guests a discounted extra night when you have a gap in your booking calendar.
• A digital guide with instructions and insights: Use your digital welcome book to guide your guests through their stay and answer all their questions before they even need to ask them. You can include:
  • Directions
  • Smart lock codes
  • WiFi access details
  • Property instructions
  • Local recommendations

Dynamic pricing

Your nightly rates have an obvious and direct impact on your occupancy and revenue, but adjusting them manually is complicated and time-consuming. 

However, to remain competitive, you need to stay up to date with the rates of other vacation rentals and Airbnb listings, adjust rates for the off-season, and anticipate changes in demand due to local events.

With pricing tools as part of your tech stack, though, you can save yourself time-intensive work, avoid costly mistakes, and ensure your pricing strategy more accurately reflects the market’s fluctuating market conditions.

Channel management and direct booking website

To maximize occupancy rates, you may need to list your properties across multiple listing sites other than Airbnb, like Vrbo and Booking.com. As well as these major online travel agencies (OTAs), you can create your own direct booking site, which can gain you loyal customers and repeat bookings.

To manage all these booking channels, use a channel manager or property management system (PMS), which often includes channel management features. 

These synchronize your listings, save you from having to manage updates across multiple platforms, and protect you from double bookings.

Security

If you manage Airbnb rentals remotely, a major concern is that a guest will have a loud party that disturbs your neighbors and causes damage. If you’re not nearby, you’ll have to rely on a local contact to let you know if there’s an issue and to manage any problems as they arise.

This can be incredibly stressful—but not as stressful as a midnight phone call from an angry neighbor, damaged contents, or even structural property damage.

With noise monitoring software, though, you get alerts about any sustained loud noise from one of your properties. You can then automate a message that requests your guest to keep it down.

Property access

In-person key handovers waste time and cause guests stress, but providing a simple access code for self-check-in is fast and efficient—this gives guests the flexibility they expect from a modern stay.

With smart locks and the right property access software, you can pull data from your PMS and then automatically share those details with your guest via SMS.

This is also a great solution for managing access for housekeepers, who’ll no longer need physical keys to your properties, which presents an additional security risk.

Accounting

Managing your short-term rental business’s finances becomes increasingly complex as you scale, require more cleaning and maintenance, and list your properties across multiple channels. 

By connecting accounting software with your property care platform, you can automate payments to contractors and private cleaners and easily manage payments made from guests through your direct booking website.

5 tools that will increase efficiency for your vacation rental business

As you grow your Airbnb business, you’ll probably need a PMS and channel manager to streamline your management of reservations and coordinate your listings. Even before this, though, you can use the following tools to set up efficient workflows that save you time, minimize costs and human error, enhance the guest experience, and increase revenue.

1. Breezeway: Industry-leading property care and guest communications

Breezeway automates your property care and guest messaging tasks. It does this by integrating with your listing site or PMS, then pulling booking and guest data to auto-generate cleaning schedules that are tailored to your specifications.

Take a closer look at how Breezeway automates scheduling and cleaning operations below:

Task scheduling

Whether you’re strictly an Airbnb operation or listing across multiple sites, Breezeway syncs your booking details to create cleaning schedules based on your customized rules, cleaner availability, and check-in and check-out times.

Breezeway automatically schedules turnovers so you never miss a clean

Digital cleaning checklists

Cleaners use your checklists to see images of how you want the property to look, understand exactly what tasks they need to complete, and read through any instructions that you’ve provided. If you have an owner staying at the property, you can easily switch to a different checklist, so the furniture arrangement, linens, and any other details match their preferences.

Mobile app

The Breezeway app is designed to be easy and practical. Cleaners can upload photos of their work for your inspection and click a button to indicate once a job is complete. They can also instantly create maintenance tasks as they go, streamlining the entire process.

Task notifications

You receive a notification as soon as a property is ready, giving you the chance to offer early check-in as a nice surprise for your guests. 

Other areas of Breezeway’s automation for property care include:

• Inventory tracking

• Linen packing reports

• Owner reporting
• Access management

Now see how Breezeway automates guest communication:

A go-to guest messaging dashboard

Breezeway organizes all your guest messaging into a single location so you can always keep track of your conversations. Among other key metrics, your Airbnb Superhost status depends on having at least 90% responsiveness, so this streamlined approach to guest communication can make all the difference.

Templated messages

Breezeway’s pre-built message templates make guest communication fast and simple. You can use templates for different phases of a stay (for example, pre-stay, welcome message, mid-stay check-up, and check-out reminder) to ensure guests have all the information they need and everything is to their satisfaction.

Breezeway makes it easy to create templated messages, taking the manual work out of guest communication

Access codes

Breezeway automatically shares access codes with your guests via SMS. So if your property uses smart locks, there’s no waiting around for your guest when they arrive—and no need for you to remember which code applies to which property.

Gap-night stays

If there’s space in your calendar, Breezeway will automatically offer a discounted extra night to your current guest. That way, you can maximize occupancy and generate revenue from what would otherwise be wasted inventory. If they accept your offer, your scheduled turnover is automatically updated and communicated with cleaners.

Digital welcome book

Breezeway’s welcome book answers your guests’ questions before they realize they need to ask them. By using your digital guidebook to provide arrival instructions, access details, property information, and local insights, your guests will be more independent and you’ll have fewer inquiries to handle.

Breezeway’s digital guide gives guests all the information they need to enjoy their stay

2. NoiseAware for party-prevention

NoiseAware integrates with your tech stack to monitor noise levels at your properties. It’s unobtrusive, meaning it doesn’t allow you to listen to conversations, but you’ll get an alert when noise levels go past a certain threshold for a sustained period of time. Plus, guests will receive an automated message kindly asking them to keep it down.

3. PointCentral for automating access, home management, and security

PointCentral connects your phone to your smart home devices so you can optimize energy use, oversee property access, manage security, and enhance the guest experience. If you’re overseeing your properties remotely, this will help you minimize costs, which can suddenly go through the roof if, for example, a guest leaves the air conditioning on when they check out. 

4. Quickbooks for easier accounting

Intuit Quickbooks simplifies your accounting processes by automating how you track revenue and expenses. The tool provides quick-to-generate financial reports for balance sheets, cash flows, and profit and loss statements. And as you grow your business and portfolio, you can use QuickBooks’ payroll solutions alongside Breezeway’s task tracking to automate how you pay staff.

5. Wheelhouse for dynamic pricing and rate optimization

Wheelhouse is user-friendly dynamic pricing software with both pre-set and customizable pricing tools. It provides you with market reports so you can make data-informed decisions on your rates, or you can use it as a hands-off solution so your pricing adjusts automatically. The platform sends you alerts to keep you informed of special events, plus makes it easy to review historical performance. 

Relieve stress with Airbnb automation and start to scale

Time-consuming, repetitive manual tasks are stressful, cause burnout, and keep you stuck in your day-to-day when you could be working on how to market and grow your business.

Without automated processes, vacation rental businesses simply aren’t scalable beyond a certain point—you’ll be too focused on putting out fires, updating your cleaning schedules to match your booking calendar, and answering guest questions about parking, property access, and connecting to the WiFi.

This is why a solution like Breezeway makes such an enormous difference—to both your day-to-day experience and your ability to achieve your larger Airbnb business goals.

By automating your property care operations, you not only reduce your stress levels, but provide a better service to your guests, improving their experience with consistently spotless cleans, responsive messaging, and error-free stays.