Bookings
Booking calendarEvery property, every date Channel managerBookings from your channels Booking engineA widget for your websiteGuests
Guest databaseStay history and ratings Guest blacklistKnow the risks before arrival NotificationsBookings, cancellations, cleaningPractical guides for owners and managers: occupancy, booking channels, guests and your team.
A guest house or a group of cottages is different from a city apartment: more guests, longer stays, stronger seasonality, and extras such as a sauna, a barbecue or parking. There is more work too: cleaning a large house, laundry, the grounds and communicating with groups of guests. Here is how to organise bookings, staff and cleaning so your guest house runs predictably.
Read moreAlmost every short-term rental owner starts with a spreadsheet: rows for apartments, columns for days, coloured cells for bookings. It is free, simple and always at hand. But as the business grows, the spreadsheet starts taking more time than it saves. Here is where the line is and how to move to management software without losing bookings.
Read moreMost guests treat someone else’s home with care, but one bad stay can cost an owner repairs, complaints from neighbours and several days of lost bookings. Checking a guest before confirming a booking lowers that risk and takes little time. Here is what to look at, how owners’ blacklists work and why it pays to keep your own guest ratings.
Read moreMonthly revenue on its own says little about how well a property performs. One apartment can bring in a lot of money and still lose it on expenses, while another looks modest but delivers a better result. Here are the metrics that show how profitable a vacation rental really is, with formulas and a worked example.
Read moreBooking channels bring plenty of guests, but every property there competes with hundreds of others, and the channel sets the rules. Direct bookings from your own website and returning guests give an owner more control over price, guest communication and occupancy. Here is where direct guests come from, what your website needs and how to handle requests quickly.
Read moreA prepayment protects the owner against no-shows, and a deposit against damage and losses. Both seem simple while bookings are few. As the number of properties grows, it gets hard to remember who has prepaid, what balance each guest owes and whose deposit is due back. Here is how to organise prepayments and deposits and keep track of them.
Read moreCleanliness affects vacation rental reviews more than anything else. Guests forgive modest décor, but not hair in the bathroom or crumbs on the table. With one property, the owner cleans or arranges a housekeeper by phone. As apartments and rooms multiply, cleaning has to be planned, assigned and checked. Here is how to organise it.
Read moreAvito, Sutochno.ru and CIAN bring most short-term rental bookings in Russia, and many owners list on all three at once. To avoid selling the same dates twice, the channel calendars need to be linked to one shared calendar. Here is how sync works with each channel, how long updates take and what to check during setup.
Read moreOwners of apartments, guest houses and hotels list their properties on several channels at once: occupancy is higher and they depend less on a single source of guests. But every channel keeps its own calendar, and keeping them identical by hand is hard. A channel manager solves this. Here is how it works, what types of connection exist and what to look for when choosing one.
Read moreThe booking calendar (known in Russia as the “shakhmatka”) is the main working screen in vacation rentals and hospitality. It shows which properties are occupied, where dates are free and when check-ins and check-outs happen. Here is how it is laid out, which features you really need and how to manage occupancy of apartments, hotels and guest houses with it.
Read moreOne rental apartment can be managed in a notebook and the channels’ own dashboards. With a second and third apartment, the workload grows faster than revenue: calendars on different sites, same-day changeovers, keys, cleaning, prepayments and expenses for every address. Here is how to organise your work so several apartments are as calm to manage as one.
Read moreA double booking (overbooking) means a property has more confirmed bookings for the same dates than it has space. For an apartment or house, that is two bookings for the same night; for a hotel, more guests than free rooms of the right type. It happens most often to those who sell on several channels at once: the more sales channels, the higher the risk that the same period is bought twice.
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