This Hospitable review aims to provide vacation rental property owners and managers with the information they need to decide if this is the right software for the management of their business.
Managing short term rentals – whether on a part-time or full-time basis – is a demanding job, and having access to the best tools is a proven way to eliminate some of the stress associated with the job.
Hospitable is one of the main platforms that promise to help hosts and property managers automate vacation rental management, but do they deliver on this promise?
In this article, we’ll review the Hospitatable features, integrations, pricing model, and customer reviews to help you decide if this is the right platform for your needs. We’ll also propose the top Hospitable alternatives for hosts and managers with different needs and requirements.
What Is Hospitable?
Hospitable is a vacation rental software platform that aims to make vacation rental and short term rental hosting trivial for both owners and property managers. The company was founded in 2016 by Pierre-Camille Hamana, who was looking for a tool to help him rent out his one spare bedroom in Brussels. Currently, the company has its headquarters in San Francisco, CA.
The Hospitable mission is to give short term rental hosts – and property managers – their valuable time back. The company strives to do that by providing the tools to automate the most time-consuming elements of vacation rental hosting in addition to educating hosts and managers on how to grow their short term rental returns.
As of now, more than 300,000 listings have been managed with the help of Hospitable.
Key Features of Hospitable
Hospitable provides solutions for both Airbnb-style property owners and property managers. This is done through a dozen of different features, whose main purpose is to automate as many Airbnb management tasks as possible. Short term rental property management automation can not only boost time and human-resource efficiency but also improve processes and enhance profitability.
Specifically, Hospitable helps bring multiple listings on various distribution channels under a single roof through tools such as a channel manager and a unified inbox.
In addition, it helps streamline day-to-day operations through task management and team collaboration functionalities.
Furthermore, the tool allows you to improve guest satisfaction through guest communication optimization and smart locks integration for easy check-in and check-out processes.
Hospitable Features Detailed Review
Detailed review of Hospitable features
The most reliable Hospitable reviews need to include a detailed, in-depth description and analysis of the features provided by the software tool.
Following is a list of the Hospitable features for vacation rental hosts and property managers:
Guest Communication
One of the most important aspects for the success of any vacation rental business is efficient and effective guest communication and guest satisfaction.
The Hospitable Guest Communication feature aims to automate the bulk of messaging with guests before, during, and after their stays. You can set up automated campaigns for Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com based on guests’ milestones or days of the week.
You can also use pre-programmed answers to speed up responses to common questions that guests have without overwhelming them with unnecessary information. In addition, the Hospitable AI tool helps quickly draft responses to answer less frequent guest questions and requests.
Unified Inbox
Another Hospitable feature related to communication is the Unified Inbox. A unified inbox is a standard part of any short term rental property management system.
The Hospitable Unified Inbox allows property owners and property managers to manage all messages from Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com in a centralized inbox, hosted on the app. In this way, you can directly respond to all guest messages, and your responses will look as if coming from the original distribution channel.
Moreover, you can approve or decline reservations as Hospitable provides you with crucial guest information such as reviews, ratings, and location.
Channel Manager
The Airbnb channel manager is at the core of any vacation rental property management software.
The Hospitable Channel Manager helps hosts and property managers list the same rental on a number of different channels without the need to manage multiple platforms and without the risk of messing up calendars, cleaning, restocking, or communication.
The vacation rental channel manager provides a single booking calendar where you can check out available nights, booked nights, and daily rates.
This will not only help avoid double bookings but also make the process easier and less time-consuming.
Team Collaboration
Smooth team cooperation is crucial for short term rental property management companies of all sizes, both small and large. But it’s also important for hosts who need to coordinate the work of cleaners, accountants, and other staff.
The Hospitable Team Collaboration feature allows you to grow your team along with your business needs without having to allocate more time and effort to the management of your vacation rental management staff.
You can assign tasks to team members and give them access to specific properties in your portfolio and specific features on the platform.
The roles available on the Hospitable app include Owner, Manager, Concierge, Cleaning, Laundry, and Maintenance as the key members on a hospitality team.
Task Management
As a host or a property manager, you need to continuously assign tasks to both yourself and your team members. After all, the vacation rental industry is a very dynamic business with constant check-ins, check-outs, cleanings, restockings, laundry tasks, and maintenance fixes and repairs.
The Hospitable Task Management feature allows you to automate many of these tasks in accordance with the booking information. You can set up custom rules so that the system automatically assigns tasks to all team members based on check-in and check-out dates, including for last-minute reservations.
Team members can receive task notifications by email, SMS, iCal feed, and daily digest.
Analytics and Reporting
Reliable Airbnb data is a must for a successful short term rental business. In addition to market and competitor data and analytics, you also need to know how your property and your business are performing at all times.
The Hospitable Analytics and Reporting feature allows hosts and managers to access and view data on the performance of their short term rentals in real time.
You can filter data based on indicators such as property, dates, guests, team members, and others. This eliminates the need for complicated Airbnb spreadsheets on Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, making accounting for revenue and expenses much more straightforward.
Manual Reservations
While the bulk of vacation rental bookings come from the large distribution channels such as Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com, the importance of direct reservations should not be overlooked.
The Hospitable Manual Reservations feature allows you to add direct bookings from third-party tools in order to benefit from the channel manager, the unified inbox, and the other Airbnb property management features.
All you have to do is to add the booking manually to the Hospitable PMS.
Direct Booking Websites
The Hospitable Direct Booking Websites feature refers to a vacation rental website builder.
With this tool, hosts and property managers can launch and run a dedicated short term rental website where they highlight all the characteristics of their properties that they think are most likely to attract guests.
The vacation rental website builder can help boost an existing website or start one from scratch.
This also helps with listing properties on Google Vacation Rentals.
Importantly, guests from direct bookings can be screened through Autohost, and properties can be protected via Know Your Guest by Superhog.
Double-Booking Protection
Double bookings can be a major source of frustration and failure in the vacation rental management industry. On the one hand, they can lead to canceled reservations, which can result in a drop in your Airbnb occupancy rate. On the other hand, they can bring a ton of negative reviews by guests, which can be a real nightmare for both property owners and managers.
The Hospitable Double-Booking Protection works through a centralized, synced calendar connecting all distribution channels where your properties are listed.
The single calendar with available nights and booked nights ensures that double bookings do not happen due to human error.
Pricing Sync
The Hospitable Pricing Sync feature helps unify and synchronize your daily rates across all listings websites, which makes dynamic pricing easier.
While Hospitable does not provide its own Airbnb dynamic pricing tool, it integrates with third-party smart rental technology tools such as PriceLabs and Beyond that take care of this aspect.
This means that optimized nightly rates can easily be applied to all listings in an effort to push up reservations and revenue.
Review Management
Guest reviews are crucially important for the success of short term rental properties which makes them an integral part of how to list on Airbnb and other channels. First of all, they help your listings rank higher on distribution websites. Second, they increase conversion rates as guests are more likely to pick a property with a lot of positive reviews and a high ranking.
The Hospitable Review Management feature automates parts of the review process to help hosts and property managers get more 5-star reviews.
For instance, there are personalized review templates and automated review request options.
There is also a mechanism that prevents negative reviews.
Smart Locks Integration
Finally, the Hospitable Smart Locks Integration feature allows you to let guests in during check-in while keeping all unwanted people outside of your property.
Hospitable integrates with a number of smart lock systems (integrations are discussed in more detail below) to create, send, and delete unique door codes for guests.
This functionality contributes to the automation of the vacation rental property management process.
Review of Hospitable Integrations
Trustworthy Hospitable reviews should also list and explain what third-party tools the platform integrates with. After all, to deliver all features successfully and smoothly, a vacation rental software tool needs to work well with other platforms too.
Following is a list of available Hospitable integrations by category:
- Accounting: Clearing and VRPlatform as main Airbnb accounting software tools
- Channels: Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and Google Vacation Rentals. It’s worth noting that this list is rather limited compared to the distribution channel integrations provided by many Hospitable competitors.
- Cleaning: Turno, Cleanster.com, and ResortCleaning.com
- Dynamic pricing: PriceLabs, Wheelhouse, Beyond, RankBreeze, DPGO, RateGenie, and Buoy
- Guest portal: Charge Automation and Dack
- Guest verification: Autohost and Superhog
- Home automation: RemoteLock, SmartThings, Yale, Schlage, August, Nuki, and IglooHome
- Marketing: Intuit Mailchimp and StayFi
- Monitoring: Minut and Alertify
While Hospitable integrates with a lot of leading brands in the hospitality industry, the available integrations are less than those provided by other similar tools. In case you already use tools not available in the list above, it might be worth it to check out Hospitable alternatives (provided shortly).
Hospitable Pricing Overview
In your review of Hospitable as a potential short term rental management solution, you need to take into consideration the cost. You have to ensure that the expense is worth the advantages that the tool provides to you, as a host or a property manager.
Our Hospitable review shows that the platform runs a subscription-based pricing model. The Hospitable pricing depends entirely on the number of properties that you have in your portfolio. There are no different tiers that offer access to different features.
The monthly price starts at $40/month for one or two properties and goes up together with the number of rental listings. It’s important to note that you get charged only for properties that have actual check-ins within the last 30 days.
The price available on the Hospitable website reaches $591/month for 98 properties. For 99+ listings, there is custom pricing, and interested property managers need to get in touch with the Hospitable team.
Hospitable does not offer annual subscriptions, which usually benefit from considerable discounts. Nevertheless, the monthly fees are competitive when compared to other available tools with similar capabilities.
The only Hospitable add-on that’s charged separately is Direct Booking. It costs between $2 and $8/month per property, depending on the feature (Direct Basic vs Direct Premium) and the number of properties under management.
Comparing Value for Money
To decide if Hospitable is a good option for your Airbnb business, you need to conduct cost-benefit analysis.
To calculate the cost, you simply need to visit the Hospitable pricing page and estimate the monthly price of your plan. This depends on the number of vacation rentals you manage and on whether you want access to Direct Booking.
Next, to quantify the benefit, you need to estimate the number of hours of work you’ll be able to save by introducing the platform to your business. The Hospitable website does not offer an estimate of this, but other comparable platforms suggest that you might be able to eliminate up to 20 hours per week through streamlining and automating. You can use this number and multiply it by the hourly Airbnb management fee you pay to your employees to get the benefit number.
If the estimated cost of Hospitable is more than the estimated benefit, it’s not worth getting it. If, on the other hand, the benefits exceed the costs, you can consider signing up.
Ideal Hospitable Users
According to our Hospitable review, the platform provides feasible solutions to both vacation rental property owners and property managers. The software can work with a single property and with a few hundred listings.
In terms of pricing, the estimated monthly cost seems reasonable for both small and large portfolios.
Hospitable Reviews and Customer Feedback
Hospitable reviews by customers
Before deciding in favor of or against this PMS, you should consider the Hospitable customer feedback available online. In other words, you should check out online customer Hospitable reviews. It’s better to use third-party sources as reviews on the company website might be controlled and biased.
Hospitable has generated the following average rankings on third-party online review websites:
The ratings above show that customers are generally satisfied with the Hospitable platform. However, there are some important complaints that can’t be ignored.
Positive Hospitable Reviews
Happy Hospitable customers comment on the easy management of multiple listings, the helpful automated messaging, the easy connections, and the smooth operations.
Negative Hospitable Reviews
Meanwhile, Hospitable customers report some problems including lack of sufficient customization, confusing Direct Booking functionality, challenges with the Booking.com integration, and delays in the display of messages. Other customers also complain about some features not being intuitive enough, the lack of expense tracking, the inability to attach images in guest communication, and the absence of annual subscription plans.
Reviews of Hospitable vs Competitors
The Hospitable platform might be able to meet the needs of certain hosts and property managers, but it’s not necessarily suitable for all in the hospitality industry. Thus, our Hospitable review concludes with analysis of the top Hospitable alternatives and their main pros and cons.
Mashvisor
Mashvisor is the leading Hospitable competitor and the only option available on the market that acts as a truly one-stop-shop for the needs of vacation rental property investors and managers. While other platforms are limited to vacation rental management software, Mashvisor works as a real estate investment tool, too.
We can help you with:
- Learning about real estate investing in and managing short term and long term rental properties
- Finding the best short term rental markets for investing
- Locating top-performing vacation rentals for sale
- Estimating what occupancy rate, rental income, cap rate, and cash on cash return a property can bring
- Obtaining, accessing, and analyzing reliable real estate data and rental analytics
- Getting Airbnb insurance
- Managing numerous listings on multiple platforms
- Dynamically pricing properties to maximize revenue and ROI (not bookings – like other platforms do)
- Unifying and integrating booking calendars
- Streamlining and facilitating guest communication
- Building vacation rental websites for direct bookings
To achieve these, Mashvisor features include:
In brief, Mashvisor can meet all your needs for the optimized and largely automated management of your short term rental property portfolio while helping you maximize income and return on investment.
iGMS
iGMS reviews show that this is a leading Hospitable alternative that offers more or less the same tools and features.
Something worth highlighting is the Market Insights as this is missing from the Hospitable app.
iGMS pricing comes with many different tiers and depends on the available features and the number of properties, with monthly and annual subscriptions. The cost can be charged by property or per booked night. The cheapest plan is $14/month per property.
Guesty
Guesty for Hosts is one of the most popular names in the vacation rental management software business.
A comprehensive Guesty review shows a lot of overlap with Hospitable. However, Guesty offers significantly more integrations with third-party tools.
Guesty pricing starts at $27/month and goes up with access to more features and more properties.
Lodgify
As an alternative to Hospitable, Lodgify offers similar features.
One tool that makes it different from Hospitable though is the Smart Pricing.
Lodgify reviews reveal that the cheapest available plan is $13/month plus 1.9% booking fee. Most software tools do not charge a booking fee.
Hostfully
Hostfully is another close competitor of Hospitable, with comparable functionalities.
An important addition is the Hostfully Digital Guidebooks which allows hosts and property managers to build guest guidebooks to enhance the guest experience while eliminating a lot of unnecessary communication.
Hostfully reviews show that pricing is more expensive, starting at $109/month for a single property. Moreover, use of the Hostfully Guidebooks app is charged separately. There is a free plan, but the better version pricing starts at $9.99/month per guidebook.
Hostaway
Hostaway appears to be a more sophisticated platform than Hospitable, with more available features and automations.
In specific, the Analytics and Reporting functionality offers more options.
On the flip side, Hostaway does not provide any pricing information on the company website, so it’s not possible to compare with Hospitable pricing.
Final Words: Is Hospitable the Best Software for Your Vacation Rental Business?
Our Hospitable review concludes that the platform can be a feasible choice for vacation rental property owners and managers looking for tools limited to the management of their portfolios. Online Hospitable reviews show that customers are generally satisfied, but there are some major issues with ease of use, integrations, and functions.
Meanwhile, if you want a comprehensive platform that can support you along your journey – from finding profitable opportunities for short term rental property investments all the way to managing them – you can check out Mashvisor. We help you make more money with vacation rentals, more easily.
