Helpful Articles - Vacation Rental Management Resource Center

An Introduction to Online Reservation Systems for Vacation Rental Owners and Managers

In this article I'll introduce you to the online reservation systems and explain why they're a valuable tool for managing your vacation home.

At VacationRentalDesk.com, we've spent a lot of time working with individual vacation rental owners and finding common problems and limitations they face on a daily basis.

From our experience, most vacation rental owners:

Are pressed for time
Perform repetitive tasks (e.g. emailing or faxing rental contracts, payment receipts, and booking confirmations)
Perform error-prone record keeping by hand
Continuously take unnecessary trips to the bank
Do not have e-commerce support for their website or rental listings
Do not promote their property to its fullest potential

Many vacation owners also find themselves in a situation where it's difficult to stay organized without spending too much time being chained to their desk. It's ironic how owners find it difficult to go on vacation themselves – after all, how are you supposed to enjoy a vacation while dragging around your PC, fax, and printer?

If you only own one vacation home and you encounter some of these problems, just imagine what it's like owning three or four of them.

Let's face it, managing a vacation home isn't an easy job, and that's exactly why most people pay professional vacation rental management companies thousands of dollars per year to do it for them. Since most owners cannot afford the monthly costs, percentages of total rent income, and other fees that management companies charge, they're only option is to manage everything themselves.

So how do the professionals do it? Property management companies -- with large inventories of vacation homes -- use special reservation systems allowing them to track reservations, process credit card payments, organize bookkeeping, automate guest correspondence, and much more.

The do-it-yourself vacation owner doesn't have access to, or the time to learn, such complicated software. Until recently, there was no other option for vacation owners except to invent their own paper-based systems, and, if they're savvy enough, apply for a generic “renter credit card program” so they can key-in their guest's credit cards by hand.

By working directly with vacation owners, we've designed our own time-saving reservation system called the Vacation Rental Desk ™. Think of Vacation Rental Desk ™ as your own personal rental agent.

You retain full control over your vacation home, setting your own:

Rates and fees
Rental policies and contracts
Security deposits
Payment dates and deadlines

There's no software to install because you do everything over the web through your account. This lets you manage your vacation home from anywhere that has an Internet connection: a Hotel, Internet café, Library, at work, or even on the go if you laptop has wireless Internet. Just log in to your account to:

Screen and accept new reservations made by guests online
Enter call-in reservations
Charge credit cards and track payments
Promote your property with rental coupons and specials

Besides making your job easier, our online reservation system helps your guest by allowing them to:

Conveniently make reservations online
Book last-minute reservations
Pay by credit card
Automatically receive emails for welcome & thank you packages, booking confirmations, payment receipts, and past-due reminders

You may be asking yourself, how do guests actually make reservations?

It's simple. We provide you with a “BOOK-IT NOW” button to place on your website and all of your rental listings. When a guest views your vacation home and decides to book with you, they click the book-it now button and go through a simple order process.

Each guest's personal information and credit card payment is collected when they make a reservation. Rent, service fees, and taxes are calculated, and the rental agreement is signed online.

You're notified immediately by email, cellular phone, or pager (must be text-capable) so you can log into your account, screen the guest, and accept or decline the order. If accepted, the guest's credit card payment is processed automatically and directly deposited into your bank account.

You can also key in credit cards by hand for taking extra payments or refunding security deposits. Best of all, each time you do a credit card transaction, it's assigned to a reservation so you can stay organized and simplify your bookkeeping. (If you're interested in learning more about credit cards, read The Guide to Accepting Credit Cards for Vacation Home Owners).

Now that you know about online reservation system is, there's no reason you shouldn't start saving time and taking advantage of the tools that professionals use. Plus, VacationRentalDesk.com will personally walk you through getting started step by step!

These are just a few benefits of using our online reservation system. Learn More about the Vacation Rental Desk™ online booking and reservation management software for vacation rentals.

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