Managing your vacation rentals can sometimes be challenging. Owners and managers want to make sure that everything is running correctly, and while they are already busy enough dealing with numerous management tasks, choosing the right tools will help you not only save time but improve the guest experience.
Tools can be adopted to help you with guest registration, guest communications, payments, and even managing your staff can make a serious difference. In this article, we’ll dive deeper into learning more about which tools you can use for your business.
1. Chekin - Self-check-in tool

Chekin, the online check-in software is a popular tool because of its fast and easy check-in process. With the Chekin, you can automate the guest registration process by allowing guests to check-in on their own, from the comfort of their devices, before arriving. It simplifies the management process and cust check-in times down by 87%.
The tool helps you with ID verification, signing, and customizing forms & emails. You can automate the calculation and collection of tourist taxes, manage and automate all your guests’ payments, purchase, and send guests registration slips to local authorities to comply with legal requirements.
Key features include:
- Integrates with property management systems (PMS): Makes management more simple by synchronizing data between Chekin and more than 50PMS.
- Guest identity verification: This is done through biometric matching technology that is used for verifying and identifying the authenticity of guest documentation comparing with a real time selfie. The algorithm looks for similarities to ensure that it is the same person.
- Smart lock technology: You can automate the entrance of your guests by smart locks. Your guests’ experience will be better by having a flexible arrival time.
- Creation of digital contracts: Allows you to create and request to sign necessary digital documents, simplifying the administrative and legal process without paper.
- Automatically calculates tourist taxes: Can automatically calculate tourist taxes for any region or country.
- Upselling: You can include the sale of third-party personalized experiences, or your own.
- Fluid guest communication: Has many communication tools available that allows you to send over information and answer questions in real-time.
Chekin allows you to deliver personalized services, and let’s face it, the pricing plans are not that high, they start at only 4 Euros per month per property.
2. Powerhost (Rental United) - All-in-one software for hosts

Listing your properties on many channels helps you secure more bookings and increases your return on investment. Powerhost allows you to host up to 9 properties and connects your listings to online booking sites to allow customers to make reservations. It saves you lots of time from having to log in and out of booking sites separately and manually having to manage your listings.
Content is updated automatically on every channel you use, and the calendars and bookings are synced in real-time.
Key features with Powerhost include:
- Website builder: Create professional sites where your guests can directly book without having to go through too many clicks.
- Guest communication: Gives you the opportunity to chat with your guests from a single place.
- Multi-calendar: View all bookings in one calendar.
- Data platform: Get a full overview of your performance levels.
Pricing plans start at 19 Euros per month with a 1% booking fee. A free trial is available and helps you boost efficiency.
3. Wishbox (Duve) - Great for guest experience

Wishbox is an excellent tool if you are looking to save revenue and improve your guest experience. Wishbox can easily integrate with systems that you are already working in. A personalized guest experience platform helps property managers increase their sales and improve the guest experience.
Key features included with Wishbox include:
- Online check-ins: Give you information before you make a reservation.
- Smart upsell: You can sell early check-ins, late check-outs, parking prices, and include welcome packages along with your reservation.
- Document scanning: The tool will automatically collect customer’s personal documents.
- Scheduled messages: Allows you to send real-time automatic messages to your guests and personalized SMS messages.
- Auto-translations: These are available in more than 14 languages.
You have plenty of excellent features to choose from and pricing plans begin at $6 per room per month.
4. Digicheckin - Great for reception work

Digicheckin is a tool that does all the work a receptionist would do. Its primary goal is to improve the overall experience for your guests and staff members.
It makes sure that all security measures are easily performed for your team members and guests, protecting your properties from any future incidents. Key features include:
- Self-service Kiosk: A tablet that is specially made for guests who can register themselves, ideal for taking pictures of your visitors, security checks, and printing badges instantly that you can give over to your visitors.
- QR Code: Included in the Digicheck-in app, which is a useful feature for visitors and eliminates repetitiveness of having to continuously register information.
- Check-in SMS messages: Once the visitors check-in, you’ll receive an automatic email SMS when they arrive.
Pricing plans start at 2.45 Pounds per unit per month. However, the basic plan doesn’t include the AI-powered ID verification feature. This can only be accessed with the Pro plan, which costs up to 3.95 Pounds per unit per month.
Digicheckin is currently offering discounts on their plans, so if you think this tool is the right one for you, it’s a good idea to visit their website.
5. Ecobee: Smart thermostat

Smart thermostats can help you save money on your utilities by staying in control of your energy usage into your properties. You can save more than $280 annually by using the Ecobee smart thermostat.
This tool keeps your properties temperature at a constant level, so your guests are comfortable without having to waste more energy than required. If you want to avoid excessive expenses regarding energy consumption, you can leave Air conditioners (ACs) on, or your heating system while they’re not home.
Additionally, the tool offers a home security system that integrates with smart thermostats. Your properties are entirely protected and reduce the need for home insurance costs. Monthly prices start at $119.99.
6. RoomChecking: Housekeeping

RoomChecking is the tool you need to use if you are looking to deliver results. The system organizes everything you need and removes miscommunication. Its main goal is to provide a better housekeeping and maintenance system that connects hotel operations staff for improving communication and efficiency for team members.
It’s available in both desktop and mobile form that exchange information between front desks, housekeeping, maintenance, and management to make sure that the guest experience is a good one.
Key features include:
- Checklists
- Scheduling
- Workflow automation
- Collaboration and messaging
- Reports and analytics
Pricing with RoomChecking isn’t publicly available. Therefore, you need to visit their website and negotiate a price. Prices will strongly depend on the number of rooms you have in your hotel.
7. Igloohome: Smart lock

Igloo home is a smart lock tool that allows you to remotely access guests through a pin code. Each guest can have their own pin codes, which will last for the amount of time they stay at your rental property.
The check-in process becomes much easier for your guests and reduces time consumption of having to meet guests to give them the keys and inform them of other information. Let’s not forget that smart locks can also help with your security system.
There’s no application available for download, but you have access to the tool at all times, even when offline. Pricing starts from $499, and if you are looking for other extras, you can always visit their website to learn more about their other products. You’ll definitely not be disappointed.
8. AIRDNA: Analyzing vacation rental data

AirDNA is a vacation rental data platform that is used for viewing insights and analyzing data. The tool is claimed to be one of the world’s leading providers of short-term vacation rental analytics and data. It empowers people to analyze more easily and succeed faster.
The entire purpose of this tool is to help you study and identify the market trends in the past three years to help you gain a much better understanding of how the short-term rental industry evolves. The tool has an interactive map which makes it much easier for you to explore the performance of individual vacation rental properties. You can analyze more than 25 key performance metrics and this is an advantage you have since many tools don’t offer you this.
The tool is free to use, but if you are looking for more advanced features, you’ll need to contact the sales team. Pricing plans have a discount if you pay annually instead of monthly. The plan you choose will strongly depend on how many features you’ll need, so carefully analyze each of them.
Each tool has something unique that you can use for
When choosing the right tools, you can make your rental property business run much smoother and improve your reputation. These apps are great for improving the guest experience and persuading them to come back and even stay longer.
Knowing which tool to use can sometimes be a challenge, but the most important part is to initially analyze which problems you are trying to solve in your business. Many times, you’ll need to use more than one tool, but that’s fine. The better the experience becomes for your guests, the better it’ll be for you and your business.