Hostaway is the all-in-one vacation rental software for property managers who want to get more bookings with less hassle. Designed to automate and optimize all aspects of your operations, Hostaway centralizes your business in one place for effortless end-to-end property management. Easily connect and manage your listings across all major travel platforms, like Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Google, and more. Supercharge profitability and increase occupancy through dynamic pricing and your own direct booking website. The mobile app gives you and your staff the ability to manage all your reservations, guests, and tasks across all your properties, across all connected channels.
3 Things Need Fixing
These 3 things are why I give the app 3 stars: Calendar: Cannot view nightly rates after booking: Within the calendar, HostAway hides the nightly rates after the dates are booked. Why would they do this? Nightly rates should always be visible. Owners need to spot check which rates were applied to each booking at a glance. HostAway has forced the owner to do math using a Total Price amount (including taxes and fees). Not even the Base Room Rate is given, which would allow for simpler math. No math should be required at all. The rule should be: Don't hide the nightly rate in the calendar. Ever. Inbox: Cannot easily see payment status from inbox (or anywhere): People work from either the Calendar or the Inbox - not the Reservation tab. That's just the way it is. Within the Inbox, there is no fast way to see if the booking is fully paid. You must click the booking, then click Details, then click a tiny ellipses in the top right corner, then scroll all the way down to the bottom, and then you see a tiny "Paid" indicator. It is beyond me why. The Payment Status is so important, the user should not need to click anything to see it. It should almost be part of the booking's name. Ideally, the user would see Payment Status tagged to the booking on the front page of the Inbox (and Calendar). The rule should be: Don't hide the payment status. Ever. Payment workflow: No mobile payment workflow: Anything to do with taking payments or updating payment information cannot be done from the mobile app. This is easily the most disappointing part of the app. Owners don't want to be tied to a desktop to manage payments, but they are forced to. When you integrate VRBO with HostAway, VRBO stops managing payments, and the owner starts managing payments. You can automate payments up front (that's great), but there is no way to adjust anything afterwards. Here is an example: A guest has fully paid and is now enjoying their stay. They message that they need an extra parking pass, because their niece is coming to visit for a day. You stop what you're doing, put down your phone, go find your desktop, and do the following (no joke): Open HostAway on your computer, find the booking in your inbox (you know it’s in the Reservations Current Stays section, but you never use the Reservations tab), open the "Reservation" page of the booking (tiny button), go find the financial fields section in your booking, add the parking pass and amount within the financial fields section, click Save so that the Financial Fields section updates the Total amount due, go find the Payments section, create a new payment to match the amount you just entered in the Financial Fields section (do you remember what it was + tax?), click "Charge Now", sigh and hope the next message that comes through is not an extra parking pass request (or any upsell). Oh, P.S. - you also then manually create a task for your staff to drop off the extra pass, since HostAway didn't recognize you just ordered an extra pass for that booking.
United StatesVery limited features
The features are very limited and the app is buggy. The calendar is so hard to read it’s useless.
United StatesSome excellent features but app and website still need major upgrades
As a STR host, there is a lot that I love about Hostaway. The main website interface and App have undergone recent improvements and are modern and easy to use for syncing calendars, messaging guests and overseeing financials. That said, Hostaway PLEASE improve the “listings” functionality and descriptions to make them more user-friendly in updating listing descriptions and photographs. The interface looks like it is from 20 years. Badly outdated and poor functionality. The customer service also needs work - PLEASE add a chat live function. Emailing a help desk and getting a response the next day is too slow when we as host are working to respond quickly to guests. Excited to see what Hostaway can do with its new funding money and look forward to more improvements going forward.
United StatesLimited
The app has very limited functionality. If I want to do anything I have to go to the website.
United StatesLimited functionality
The app is convenient for looking at Calendar and Messages but other than that does not allow you to do much. You have viewer update, listings or direct booking site still have to go on the web-based platform to make any major changes.
United StatesVery limited
Features are extremely limited. Terrible buggy UI. Even things as basic as the calendar are super hard to read at a glance.
United StatesSuper basic. Missing features
The app is really barebones. The website already lacks a lot of features and the app lacks even more features. Can’t believe they are supposed to be one of the better PMSes
United States
- bug fixes and improvements
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