Avoiding Double Bookings
So, you picked your top 2 listing sites bringfido.com and worldsportsvilla.com. No doubt the bookings will come pouring in now. It’s going to be very difficult to manage both those calendars at the same time! We don’t want fido showing up the same weekend as the football players and popping a hole in their sports ball!
Its time to find a channel manager! A channel manager is a software that syncs your calendars on all your booking platforms to avoid the dreaded double booking. For example if you get a booking on bringfido.com it will automatically block those dates as unavailable on worldsportsvilla.com so that no one books that same weekend.
There are lots of different channel managers on the market today with different pricing models and different features. Some operate on a subscription-based model while others may even take a small commission off each of your bookings. While others offer additional features like 1 uniformed inbox so that you can message both your fido and sports guest from one single platform. This can make the process of managing even 1 listing on multiple sites extremely easy.
The more listings you have on more sites you advertise can quickly and exponentially increase the difficultly of managing your properties. It’s usually recommended once you go above 5 listings it might be time to consider switching from a basic channel manager to a PMS System (Property Management System). If you don’t want to use a channel manager there may still be another option. Some sites like Airbnb and VRBO allow you to directly sync your calendars without using a 3rd party software. This can save you some cash to put towards building your real estate empire, that dream vacation, or beer on Broadway cuz we all now those are EXPENSIVE!
A word of warning for all those who think they can manage and don’t need any extra help. It’s probably not worth the risk. Listing sites punish hosts very harshly for anyone who double books and must cancel on a guest. On Airbnb the punishment could be losing your super host status for an entire year because of one double booking cancelation. Don’t risk it.