All Forum Posts by: Evan W.

@Jonathan Klemm If you need Tripadvisor integration, then Smoobu is probably your best bet. It’s pretty basic, so I guess it depends how much pricing capability you want. It’s around $23 for your first listing I believe.

If you’re good with just Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking then I would recommend YourPorter. YourPorter also allows you to push your Airbnb pricing across all other channels. So in this case, you create your pricing strategy on Airbnb and then sync that with the other OTAs.

Happy to talk further if you have any questions. Evan.

Superhost Tools recently added channel management, multi-calendar, and a unified inbox. Are there any Host Tools users that have tried these new features out? I used to run on Host Tools before switching over to Pricelabs and YourPorter. Curious what your experience has been with it! Seems to be the most affordable option for what it claims to offer... (I know the cleaner management tool has always been useless though).

Host Toolers, tell us what you think. Thanks, Evan.

Genius. Great arms. How about a QR code on the shirts that links right to your booking engine/Airbnb profile? 

Thank you @Aleese Butler ! That's great to know. I will definitely look into those groups. An in person meetup at Gresso's sounds fantastic. I'm still waiting for transparent masks to become popular... would make our social interactions a lot more comfortable ha ha .

@Cliff H. I agree about Erinc. They have been great about taking customer feedback and rolling out new features. I could tell that was the case from the beginning, and that's ultimately one of the reasons I chose YourPorter. I like your idea about a tiered pricing offering for a P1 support option. It's certainly something I would be interested in now, and especially as I scale my business. I'll mention this to support as well.

There have been quite a few instances where customer service has taken over 24 hours. I think they often see my inquiries, and rather than respond & acknowledge the issue, they get to work on solving it before they reach out. I can't say for sure, but it's happened a couple times where I encounter an issue/bug, and get a response 1-2 days later that says they cannot find the issue. I go back in to recreate it on my end, and POOF, magic... it's gone. I think they'd benefit from a little more transparency, but I definitely appreciate their ability to get **** done.  Ev

@Brian Gerlach I trialed Smartbnb for a few days. They definitely have a superior inbox and guest communication system, however there's not much else that I find useful in my own business. To touch on @Thomas Enright 's point, I think Smartbnb was essentially designed as a unified communication channel. It didn't solve my main problems, and it's mobile version is clunky despite it's sleek look. Biggest features they were missing for me - direct bookings/website builder, pricing control/integration, robust calendar. YourPorter's calendar is smooth and functional - both on mobile and desktop.

Yes, YourPorter just added Dynamic Pricing Integrations with Pricelabs, Wheelhouse, etc. but before that YourPorter pulled prices from Airbnb automatically - and pushed those prices to our booking engine.

I also use Breezeway for cleaning/maintenance/task management. Smartbnb and YourPorter's task management was not as feature-rich as I needed it to be, so that wasn't really a factor for me.

@Luke R. I-O !!!

@Brandon Goldsmith Thanks Brandon! I’m eager to learn, excited to make some connections, and happy to help anyway I can. Let’s hit the lake again soon. Ev

@Luke R. I've transitioned more into the managing model. There's less risk for us, and investors also get to feel the upside of STR. Your percentage will depend on your market rents and what you think you can pull in for monthly revenue as an STR. It also depends on what the owner's expectation is as far as risk/reward. Ultimately, it comes down to beating the market for the owner every month. For us, we can do that consistently at 35% in our target markets. Hope that helps. Ev

@Cliff H. Yeah I agree, the UI is a mess. Training someone on those platforms would be a pain. That’s ultimately why I went with yourporter - the whole platform is user-friendly, it has most of the features I need, and the mobile version is actually usable.

My issues:

- The direct booking website is very basic, takes too long to load, has very little functionality, and it looks decent.

- The inbox is barely usable - slow, too many clicks. I still use the Airbnb inbox.

- They actually just added a Smart Pricing integration, so that’s no longer an issue !

- Revenue management is basic and I’ve had trouble with multiple bookings being left out of reports.

- Customer service is not as responsive and prompt as I’d like them to be.

All in all, it’s been good. It just seems like Erinc is conducting the train - running around trying to improve the software, develop new features and make everyone happy. I’m worried he’ll burn out haha. We’ll see. Ev