Escapia

Great software that provides efficient property management

Comments: they are well integrated within the hospitality industry and have multiple software options for smaller companies.

Pros:

I like the features that it provides and the customer support (rep) that we receive. I like the maintenance app, the housekeeping dashboard, new owner portal, online university and dynamic pricing model that is in process (beta currently).

Cons:

At our size, some of the more customizable items that we want are not able to be created. the housekeeping app (shared with maintenance), is not as user friendly as the dashboard, however, the dashboard can be accessed online via a website.

Solid Property Management Software with Excellent Trust Accounting

Comments: I have been using Escapia for 5 years now and overall it has saved us an incredible amount of hours we used to spend doing things manually. It does take a considerable amount of time to setup automations, owner contracts, etc. and just learn all the ins and outs in general. However, their implementation teams are extremely helpful and knowledgeable and they have great training articles and videos.

Pros:

The trust accounting capabilities within the system has greatly improved the speed and accuracy in which we complete our month end accounting procedures, and also provides our owners with very detailed financial statements. Also their integration/mapping with Vrbo is second to none.

Cons:

They are working on a lot of new features and improvements which is very exciting. However, sometimes they announce them way too early in my opinion and they should instead have a solid launch date to provide before announcing.

Alternatives Considered: Streamline and Lodgix

Reasons for Choosing Escapia: RDP is quite antiquated and did not have good distribution to vacation rental booking sites.

Switched From: RDPWin

Reasons for Switching to Escapia: Recommendations from colleagues, price, and distribution/integration with popular vacation rental booking sites.

Beach Blue Escapia Review

Comments: Overall, Escapia has been a very good platform for us. There are way more features available than we will ever use.

Pros:

Escapia is a complete and thorough vacation rental management software that covers almost all software needs related to the vacation rental industry.

Cons:

Escapia is not very user friendly and is not easy to learn. Also, when we onboarded with Escapia years ago, the training was at best incomplete. We didn't find that out until years later at Rezfest in a one on one session with accounting. Escapia then wanted over $3,000 to help fix the issues that we were not trained properly on in the beginning. Over the years, we have trained ourselves on how to fix those issues and how to use the modules we need. Also, when Escapia has issues or glitches in the system then do not notify anyone of the issues. Escapia waits until we have an issue and then admits there is a glitch they are working on. I just wish that we would be notified when there are issues, so we don't spend hours trying to figure things out before calling support.

A Big Complicated Software.

Comments: Escape has a lot of features, and potentially a lot of power, but it's so complicated that it's easy to miss a step and mess something up badly. Almost nothing about the software is user-friendly or intuitive, everything is convoluted and complicated, and requires many steps and a lot of double-checking. This also applies to EscapiaNET, which is also not as straightforward as one would hope since property information shows up differently on different platforms. I would count this one of the most useful features of Escapia. We have enjoyed being able to integrate with Glad To Have You and use that for guest communication and contracts, and we also push our properties out to other platforms. EscapiaNET is not without flaws and we have had issues even integrating with VRBO (which is also owned by HomeAway so you would think that would be easy), mostly because of the number of complicated, easy-to-forget steps to make sure everything is perfect in Escape. However, to be fair, I don't know if integration through any other property management software would provide better integration. As it does seem like a very challenging thing to do well.

Pros:

Escape customer support has done a good job troubleshooting and explaining how things work when I contact them. There are also lots of training resources, self-help articles, explanatory videos, etc, available. I have also heard that the Escape accounting features are useful and thorough. I have not had any experience with the accounting side of Escapia.

Cons:

One of the things that have been most frustrating about Escapia is the Owner web feature, which is supposed to provide an owner portal where our property owners can log in and see property details, upcoming reservations, owner documents, etc. Owner web itself is pretty limited, which is fine if that's what you want. One problem is that as of now owners cannot reset their password, and so they always have to contact us if they forget it so that we can change it for them. Another challenge has been that many of our owners own more than one property and that for accounting purposes each of these units has to be set up with different owners. That means that when one of those owners logs into the owner portal they can only see one of their properties unless they set up separate logins for each property, which includes separate email addresses. But then those email addresses will automatically be where their owner statements are sent, so if they want all the owner's statements to go to one email, they will have to forward them. We do not want to make our owners jump through hoops like this. We want their experience to be as simple and streamlined as possible. Escapia also lacks some features (such as automated emails, simpler reports, better filters for sending a guest communication, and the ability to add attachments to that communication) that would make the software more functional. I have also heard from our maintenance and housekeeping teams that Escapia is challenging for them to understand and use as they would like to. Basically, we've ended up using other software and strategies to fill in the gaps and give us the features we want, which is a little disappointing considering the seeming hugeness and complexity of Escapia.

Great Overall Product

Comments: Couldn't function well without it. Very pleased

Pros:

Not only does the software have all the functionality, channel management and ease of use one would expect, but very important to us, it provides good trust accounting and absolutely far and above customer support.

Cons:

It took some time to learn initially but that was due to its expansive overall functionality. Many upgrades to the software over the years has greatly enhanced the ease of use.

Alternatives Considered: Hostaway and Guesty For Hosts

Reasons for Switching to Escapia: Superior customer service. Accounting and Owner Statements included.