Review of Hostaway PMS

So it looks like that my last round of PMS reviews went down so well that I've actually had PMS reviews reaching out to me saying, can you review us? Which is exciting and this is really cool because what Hostaway have done is they've reached out to me and said, listen, could you just do an honest review for the Boostly audience? What we'll also do is we'll give you a behind the scenes access. So I've been given access to a dummy dashboard which I can show you so you can have a look at. And also as well, what's really cool is we've started up some dialogue and very soon Boostly and Hostaway will have a connected API connection for the website. So it's all good. I love this. If you are watching this and if you are one from the many thousands of PMSs that are out there and you want me to review you, there's no charge. All I ask is that you give me access to everything so I can give an honest review of the system to then pass on to Boostly people to see if they would like to switch, join or just know about for the future. So as I've said, today is Host Away. Welcome. If this is the first time that you've tuned into a Boostly podcast, welcome. If you're coming over from Team Host Away, my name is Mark Simpson, so I give hosts just like you, tools, tactics, training, but most importantly the confidence to go and get your own direct bookings. And if it's the first time you've tuned in, you, you've got over 300 episodes that you can go back on to get properly cat and caught up with everybody else. Every single day in 2021 I'm doing a podcast for you. So it's audio, written, video, you can go find it. Just go start the journey@booster.co.uk pop your email address in and you'll get notifications when a new one comes out. So let's get stuck into it. So let me share my screen. Here we go. So Hostaway, the leading all in one vacation rental software for property managers, recently became announced as part of the Airbnb Preferred Partner program. They had, you know, a lot of support. They are really fast growing, based out of Canada. I've got to chat to Marcus, who is one of the founders of the company. It's a lot of real good press around this company at the moment. Go and type in Hostaway and you can go and see all about it. Hostaway.com now let's dig into it first and foremost, what does it do? So it is a obviously property management software for vacation rentals. This is not applicable to you if you are a guest house or a hotel. This really is applicable if you are a management company. From what I gather, they really like speaking to people that have got five plus hosts. I think their sweet spot is anywhere between 10 and 20 pricing wise, very competitive. It comes in averages around about $150 every month for five properties. They are really invested in your growth. So this is why when you go to the, to the pricing section, it's one of the things I love is that they go for a couple of FAQs and X, Y and Z. But what they're, what they're really looking to do here is they want to speak to you. So they want to grow with you. So they're a company that wants to invest in you so that the more you grow, the more that you grow with them and they grow with you. Which I do really like that. One of the cool things about what they do and one of the cool things about their software, obviously like everybody, they link into all of the big OTAs. But one thing that I adore in the back end is the Channel Manager. Now I'm a massive fan of Rentals United and obviously you use Rentals United if you want a bit more of a personalized link up to each ota. Some of the other PMS providers don't provide that. But what you can do with Hostaway is for those that can't afford to have Rentals United on top of their pms. This is a real good in between because you can really bespoke the information that goes off. So as an example, the information that you send to booking.com from your PMS is going to be different to the information that you want to send to Airbnb. Airbnb have got different amenities and filters than they do on booking.com and VRBO. So you're able to personalize it for each one of your properties. Different picture, different wording, different description, different amenities and it's all controlled via your Hostaway dashboard. So Channel Manager tick. Another one of their really cool features is their automated messaging. So as you know, I'm a big, big fan of Smart BnB, which is now hospitable and one of Smart B hospitals. USPs unique selling points was the fact that they've got really good automated messaging with keywords. So you can pretty much automate 90% of your guest communication. Hopefully have a real good Guest communication, automated messaging. But Hostaway takes it to the next level. So what I love about this is that it's only about 150 average dollars a month for five properties but instead of having to invest extra in hospitable and invest extra rentals United it keeps your cost really down. So by keeping your costs really down and you can invest more into the business. So this is a big, big, big plus point for me right, right here. And again it sinks into all of the major OTAs. I went and did a little bit of a digging round on the, on the interwebs. I wanted to go and see what other people were saying about other hosts around the world was saying about it so I went to the captera website. Over 144 reviews. Overall rating 4.7. Very good ease of use 4.6 very good customer service 4.7. What I'm always looking to see on these review sites is the good and the bad. I think if you've got a company that has got 100% good then or 100% fantastic 555 and I think there's something always a little bit fishy with that. So it's really good to see a mixture of pros and cons. Pros. Automated messaging, fantastic. Task creation, cleaner sort of cleaner communication tools is really good. Big fan of the automated messages. I'm happy to have this company as part of my business. I'm excited to learn more and will use to help me grow my business which is the growth element which we talked about. The support we receive has been very helpful with the onboarding process. We hope to be doing most of our daily tasks through Hostaway soon. Again fantastic couple of the cons that was flagged upon on Capterra. Tried canceling my account multiple times. Had to dispute charges. Last issue I flagged for Hostway was something that negatively affected every user of their software. Customer service seems to be non existent. Export function to booking.com somewhat limited. Cannot create extra rooms via Hostaway bed setup. Now one of the things that I did notice when I was doing my research all of the negative reviews for Hostaway came from people who had guest houses or hotels. So so again this is, this is really important. Guest houses and hotels, this is not for you but if you were to go on the website host away very very clearly state from the off from the start that their target audience, the people that they benefit the most is vacation. Vacation managers, vacation property managers. So again as long as you're really clear on who their ideal audience is Then you know, if you are a hotel or a guest house, you've got Avivo, you've got free to book two very good ones that you can go and check out. But overall pricing is a win. I think the tools behind the scene in the dashboard is, is is really encouraging. They have an app which I know a lot of you love and again the most important thing for me is customer support. A couple of varying factors on, on the pros and cons but you know, just like anything, I think you should need to check it out for themselves. So a good way of finding out go to hostaway.com if you go right now you can go and have a little demo booked in. Enter your email, enter your full name. That's not an affiliate link or any, just literally pop it in here. Hostaway.com H O S T A W A Y.com thank you for the team at Hostaway for being really transparent, for giving me access to everything that I asked for one to definitely watch out for. I think that this could be a company that's potentially winning awards etc etc in 2022. And yeah, the API connection and the connection for the boosted websites. The Hostaway is, is exciting and I'm welcome. I look forward to speaking to more Hostaway clients in the future. Based out of Canada. Go and check them out. HostAway.com if you enjoy these style of podcasts and you want me to do more of them, all you need to do is let me know. Send me a message. Markly.co.uk but as always I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of the Boostly podcast if you could do me a massive favor if you could. Just like this, download this and subscribe if you haven't subscribed already. But most importantly, share this and tell a friend, tell a host, share it in Facebook groups and LinkedIn and LinkedIn groups or just email it to a host that you think would benefit from the help at Boostly. Thank you so much for stopping by. As always, be proactive, do not be reactive and let's go and get some direct bookings. Take care. Speak to you tomorrow.