It didn't exist when I was younger, and helps to automate the mailings, among other things.

Have you educated yourself on the process, on what it takes to choose a market, to stage, to set up the profiles, to manage the calendars, to automate the guest messaging?

If you have an email automation tool you can also layer email drops as well.Really when it comes down to it with whatever form of marketing you are doing consistency is the most important component. 

If you don't have any money for automated lead generation like Investor Carrot, you can go Driving For Dollars and send direct mail/phone calls/door knocks/whatever

If you have coding knowledge you can automate it. 

My strategy has being to manage the bookings myself only on Airbnb, which I have lots of automation around.And hire a PM, that I pay a flat fee, so they do the Check-in and out inspections, and manage the cleaning schedule, and call outs.They charge me about $125 flat fee per month

I've been using pricelabs which I have loved for weekend vs weekday pricing and other customizing features but it won't push to homeaway/vrbo - I've been using Smoobu for PMS and really like them but still stuck with automated pricing for vrbo - it works seamlessly with airbnb and now my direct booking but vrbo/homeaway I need a solution... 

If you answered no to many of these questions then I don't see the value in adding any home automation.

One is automated whereas the other is not.

Now I want to automate everything.