Hospitable.com

Phenomenal - I have tried it all - finally a company that deserves 5 stars in so many ways

Comments: This company solved most of my problems I was looking to solve by looking for a channel manager. I had created 150k/year of sales from just airbnb in just a year and new I needed to scale my biz, but I also knew I would not be able to handle more administrative work without finding a way to delegate and automate more fully. I knew I needed to scale to different marketplaces, VRBO, then flipkey, then booking.com... but knew I needed an integrative software to manage that process. I hunted and hunted, I reviewed 50 or 60 tools, pricing structures, features, claims, I tried 20 free trials, I actually set up 8 different tools, until I finally tried this one. While every other tool had a fundamental problem - profoundly over charging, taking a % of your company ( % of sales ), broken essential features like chat features ( tokeet ), broken import/export/linked listing features ( guesty )... this one didnt. Superhost tools was an exception - solid little tool for what it does, but SmartBNB does the same stuff - BETTER... specifically superhost tools automates communication - which is sometimes profoundly out of context but better then nothing, and smartBNB enables review of scheduled messages, which lets you edit them to fit to context. It literally does almost EVERYTHING I could have wanted, but BETTER. While the calendar feature needs a simple fix ( scrolling is the only workable means for that for ease of use like Airbnb ) - THIS is the app to set up and follow.

Pros:

- $7/listing - No setup costs - Enabled automation of 90% of my communications - I can review communications that are scheduled automatically BEFORE they go out - They don't want a percentage of my COMPANY to provide a killer service ( no % of sales model ) - They are under priced and over deliver - They under sell and overdeliver I have tried SO many tools!! Guesty and Tokeet were so glitchy they cost me money to try to setup. Guesty wanted $1000 just to set me up AND a PERCENTAGE OF MY COMPANY ( % of gross sales ) STAY AWAY from any company like that! Wheelhouse automated my prices, for a PERCENTAGE OF MY COMPANY - meh. Guesty promised to scale my ads and failed miserably. Tokeet's chat feature was garbage, but import/export listing feature was awesome. In the end, you can only hook up one channel manager to your airbnb account, so if your like me, you have got to decide on one at a time. I have tried 8 and reviewed 50-60... and Im done looking. SmartBNB delivered in almost every way I could have wanted. - Dirt cheap for what you get - Perfect communications channel w guests ( I am super picky ) - Seamless automated messages WITH THE ABILITY TO REVIEW THEM BEFORE THEY GO OUT - Bad Review strategies and are automated, rational, and effective - Almost instant, and intelligent customer service - Killer Documentation that actually trains you and almost never confuses you - Phenomenal - like off the charts phenomenal customer service tools.

Cons:

- The calendar viewing is weak. Its fine because you can just use Airbnbs... but to improve it guys: clicking to go to the next month? Really? You cant scroll to Jan 15th to feb 15th? Fix that. Make it scroll like airbnbs please immediately. I don't touch that, but again, its not really a point against the company because you don't actually need to use it, I can get everything from the airbnb cal with info imported via Ical from the other sites.

I couldn't have scaled from $200,000 to $2 million without Hospitable

Pros:

When I first started scaling and became a 3-home operation nearly overnight, I was really struggling to keep up with effective communication to my guests. I had dozens of note documents for each property on my iPhone for things like; Check-in instructions, the first morning follow up message, Check-out instructions, etc. I would have to copy/paste these into the messaging apps and found myself making frequent, detrimental errors such as sending check-in instructions for the wrong house to a guest. Another major challenge I was running into before Hospitable was that I couldn't travel easily or do anything that wouldn't have strong cell phone service because I always had to be available to send check-in/out messages to my guests. Hospitable solved all of this and more. After a few weeks using the platform I went from thinking I hit my ceiling at owning and operating 3 homes, to believing I could effectively manage 15 or more. Fast forward to today and my company, Good Life has grown to 8 (soon to be 9) independently owned and managed homes that are all top 10 revenue producers in their respective zip codes, all maintain a 4.9+ overall review, and gets tons of repeat renters. This simply would not be possible without the automated communication SmartBnB enables to our guests and team.

Cons:

I honestly don't have any cons to list about Hospitable. I signed up for Hospitable and had the automated messages firing to guests and my cleaning team within a few hours thanks to the smooth onboarding flow and pre-built messages that were already populated. I've been using Hospitable for a few years now and have never had issues with it not performing. The few times I've had to contact support about questions, they were lightning quick to respond. It's amazing they don't charge more for this platform, honestly.

Signed up for Free Trial, tried to import Airbnb - didn't work. Customer service ghosted me. Awful!

Comments: Terrible, I haven't been able to use any of it and was ghosted after an initial 2 responses by their customer service chat.

Pros:

Nothing. I haven't managed to get anything to work yet, nor have a reasonable conversation with customer service

Cons:

I signed up to their free trial, thinking it looks like a good product. When importing my Airbnb listings, a glitch happened. So I contacted customer services. A person called [sensitive content hidden] initially responded in a few minutes, I explained the problem, then she asked for more informaiton which I provided. She then literally disappeared. I am sat there waiting like a lemon. It appears her shift must have ended. She had no intention of letting me know of course. So I sit there waiting for the next 45 minutes, writing to her asking if she is there and then after realising she left, I wrote again berating her for not telling me she was signing off. I am quite shocked at this level of ineptitude with a potential new client, firstly with the software and secondly with the customer service. How does this product have so many positive reviews? What am I missing here?

Perfect except a persistant BUG on booking.com sync

Comments: Good

Pros:

The owner access and guest portal which are perfect

Cons:

BUG on booking.com SYNCING. When syncing with Booking.com, all existing calendar restrictions are deleted. For exemple, if you set allowed checkin/checkout days in Booking extranet, theses restrictions are deleted when Hospitable syncs. So, it is not possible to keep calendar consistency between Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking. I mentioned it to Hospitable team which is dragging on this issue.

Simplifies short term rental management

Comments: The biggest thing by far is the automated email platform. It's highly customisable, and after a bit of playing round I was able to come up with a setup that I am very happy with, with most of the routine emails being sent automatically.

Pros:

Automated email system The calendar showing bookings across both AirBnB & HomeAway platforms Integrated messaging An indication at the bottom of the window showing likelihood of winning booking

Cons:

I wish I could enter & manage bookings that haven't come from AirBnB or HomeAway, with comms done by email.