In January 2024, Rentals United hosted an interactive workshop with our partner, Rental Ninja.
We delved into the topic of growing your business with an integrated PMS and channel manager, answered your questions and demonstrated how using automation for internal operations and channel management can save time and increase your income.
Rentals United and Rental Ninja work in harmony, giving property managers everything they need to optimize operations and channel distribution so that you can grow your business.
Here, we’ll recap the main points we discussed.
We’d like to thank all the property managers who attended and participated in the workshop!
If you missed it, catch up here.
Speakers:
Partnerships Manager Vivian Zitman, Key Account Manager Alejandro Gomez, and Customer Success Specialist Marina Michielin spoke on behalf of Rentals United.
The Rental Ninja team was represented by Maria Battlo, co-founder and Product Owner, and Pol Batllo, co-founder and CEO/CTO.
What is Rental Ninja?
First, a quick introduction. Rental Ninja was founded in 2017 in Barcelona by Pol and Maria Batllo, along with co-founder Dídac Alvarado.
Pol and Maria are a brother and sister team with years of experience in property management from running the family vacation rental business. They created Rental Ninja to solve their own challenges and reduce the manual work of managing properties so they could focus on growth.
They now help property managers “skyrocket performance” with an all-in-one PMS to reduce costs and improve efficiency through automation.
Rental Ninja is a centralized platform where you can easily manage operations and scale your business. Features include:
- Team and task management — Create and assign tasks to individuals and teams, and use automation to assign tasks according to role.
- Accounting software — Keep track of all financial information, track which payments are transferred, and generate and send your invoices.
- Statistics and reports — Get performance insights to measure your growth and compare it with previous months and years. Review all key metrics and track results by property, location, etc.
- Guest experience — Set up automated check-in emails and SMS messages, provide information about your property and location that’s accessible by mobile, and maintain communication with guests throughout the stay.
Rentals Ninja also has a mobile app and integrates with Rentals United.
Automating manual tasks with an all-in-one tool
During the webinar, Maria Batllo gave an overview of everything Rental Ninja can do.
She explained how having one tool to manage business operations is crucial to running your business efficiently. Automating many aspects of short-term rental management, from scheduling cleaning, laundry pickups and maintenance to handling your finances and tax payments, benefits both property managers and guests.
“When the back office is running smoothly, this is felt by guests on the outside.”
Property managers can invite team members, homeowners, contractors, and collaborators into the Rental Ninja platform for full transparency. You can customize the unique requirements of each property through automated task assignments or by allowing team members to take on tasks independently. As well as increasing efficiency, you’ll reduce errors and miscommunication with your team.
Aside from the back office administration, Rental Ninja assists with guest relationships. Automations allow you to maintain communication with guests, collect information and documentation, and offer attentive service without hiring a large customer-facing team.
The power of a good distribution strategy
Marina Michielin, Customer Success Specialist at Rentals United, talked about the importance of distributing your listings on the right mix of channels.
She explained why niche and specialist channels should be a key part of your market strategy to ensure you reach ideal customers. Rentals United customers are given recommendations for the best-performing specialist channels suited to their location, niche, and property type.
Marina emphasized the need to understand your strategic goals, i.e., whether you want to work on occupancy or increase the average booking value, both of which can be achieved with a different mix of channels.
On the subject of how to choose niche channels, Marina explained that it is important to understand what type of guest you’re looking to attract and then research which channels cater to that profile.
With a channel manager like Rentals United, listing on more channels doesn’t increase your workload because all listings can be managed from one place.
For a complete guide to the best listing sites on the market, download our free Channel Handbook.
Using data to discover new opportunities
Alejandro Gomez, Key Account Manager at Rentals United, talked about the importance of data and analyzing your own performance.
He explained how Rentals United’s data platform Elevate was created to help property managers make sense of performance and take smart actions to increase revenue and guest satisfaction, and also stay ahead of the competition.
Elevate divides data into 3 categories:
- Your own KPIs and performance
- Market data to compare and benchmark your results against competitors
- Optimisation to get personalized, AI-powered recommendations for your listings to improve conversion and reviews.
You can track key metrics like total bookings, revenue, lengths of stay, ADR, and more to prepare and adapt your strategy. And, with the personalized recommendations from Elevate, you can take immediate action to optimize your performance.
How to grow your business with Rental Ninja and Rentals United channel manager
Rentals United and Rental Ninja complement each other perfectly. After all, a comprehensive PMS and reliable channel manager are the foundations of a successful vacation rental tool stack, and are essential for every property manager.
Manage all aspects of your day-to-day operations with Rental Ninja, including finances, managing your team, and engaging with customers.
Meanwhile, increase your exposure by listing on a wide range of both major and specialist channels using Rental United’s channel manager.
With Rental Ninja and Rentals United, you’ll be able to:
- Automate manual work — You can efficiently manage internal operations and automatically sync all your listings across various channels with minimal manual work.
- Simplify accounting — Stay up to date with your finances and manage your payments from your PMS.
- Improve the guest experience — Rentals United’s Smart Guest Communication tool centralizes all guest messages and allows for automated messages and guest reviews. With Rental Ninja, you can facilitate easy check-in and provide helpful information for guests.
- Increase bookings and income — By listing on a wide range of channels (choose from 50+ with Rentals United), you can reach a huge audience and target specific guests through specialist sites that suit your niche.
- Get direct bookings — Build a website in minutes with Rentals United’s My Website tool and start getting commission-free bookings.
- Track and optimize your performance — Both tools have a data platform. With Elevate from Rentals United, you also get fully personalized, AI-powered recommendations for how to improve your performance.
Discover how you can grow your business with Rentals United – book a demo.