Guesty vs Hostaway: Which is a better fit?

Keith S.: So it's Keith, Director at Bnbhost, Limited and I'd rate Guesty five. So we compared to Limova, I think they were called. Again, they were pretty bad, so I don't actually remember what they were called. We got a small trial of them and it was just the facilities and the size of Guesty, in comparison. It was a lot cheaper, wasn't as good. I think that made us aware of how good the infrastructure around Guesty was. So if there was a problem with calendars and them syncing, then it was how available the customer service team at Guesty was, in comparison, is night and day. So with Guesty, it was something that was, you would open a ticket and someone would instantly respond and you would have it escalated. With Limova, I think it was, we'll get back to you within a couple of working days. And again, when you're trying to run multiple units across the city in a high-paced environment, a couple of days kills you. You would have to get something that was bigger and better. And so actually when we weighed up the cost differential, it was substantially less expensive, but we pretty much went with the old adage of, you pay for what you get, and that's why we stayed with Guesty. The other thing that was excellent about Guesty was their integration links. Not only the direct integration links, but just the variety of platforms that they were going to set us up with. What we felt was a non-negotiable for us as a company is if there was not a direct calendar link or integration and someone says, "Oh, you would need to rely on iCal links," they're just never as good as direct integrations. The thing that kills you in this industry is when you have double bookings and with iCal links, I know that they are near perfect, but there's always the chance that you can have a double booking because they've just synced. Two people book at the same time for the same dates, and the iCal links don't have enough time to talk to one another. So again, we're not really in the business of taking chances at any point. So we decided, "Do you know what? With the integration links that Guesty provides us, it's so varied and it covers the big players." Other really nice thing about Guesty was if there was something a bit niche. So we added it with a company called, our website called Plum Guide and with Marriott Bonvoy, we actually reached out to Guesty as one of their bigger channels to say, "We would really like it if we had a direct integration with them." It wasn't available at the time, but they flagged it up as if, "Okay, you're one of the people that's asking that. That'd be nice to do it." And eventually both Plum Guide and Marriott Bonvoy Villas appeared as direct integrations. Sometimes, they make it a premium feature, which again is slightly frustrating because it's, again, further payments, but actually, again, you pay for what you get. The other thing that we looked at was kind of Guesty started appearing with further products that meant that instead of going to other third party websites to do different tasks that we need, they were able to bring these things to us in one place. Again, trying to cover as many things that they would know a working management agency would need. These are things like the accountancy tools, advanced analytics so that it can work with our pricing software. All of these things just mean that you become more reliant on Guesty, which a lot of people would probably say, "Well, you don't want to be too reliant," but actually, we are the opposite. We see that why would you not have all the information in one place when we've got so many moving parts within the business? When we were uploading and starting with Guesty, the best thing about it was it's so simple to use and again, that's something that is well appreciated when you're doing it at volume. Even things like how to upload the pictures, how to move them into the order that you want, how to upload captions. The best thing about Guesty is is that you can have that middle section whereby you've got all of the information that you want to push out to all of the different channels you want to be listed on, but you can do it in one place. You don't need to do it four times over. You can do it in one place. So that was for ease of setting everything up and then getting it integrated. The other nice thing was that you can tag internal names on them. We refer to our flats with the line of the address first and then the owners afterwards. So it's just a nice way that when we're looking at Guesty, instead of looking at addresses, which would be kind of hard to keep track of, it's always just the internal names that we can see and that just allowed us to easily upload everything, know what needed to go and where. And then once we had everything set up, it was almost like the more time you took on setting up, which was simple enough, it was just bulky and the amount of stuff we were adding up, the more time and effort you made on spending the time to get everything right. It just meant that the follow-up features like pulling reports and your analytics and everything was more beneficial to use as a company. So it was easy to set up one, but then also, it was worth taking the time to set up because you felt the benefits of taking that time afterwards. So the onboarding side of things was effortless. The other nice thing was we were given a direct success manager called Hazel who has been excellent throughout and she was readily available to talk us through any of the process that we were stuck at, introducing new features if they were there and then explaining to us in easy terms as to Guesty is your hub and it pushes out. It's not that if you make changes on your Airbnb account, it doesn't pull through to Guesty. Guesty is your mainframe and it pushes out. Once that was explained to us, it's pretty easy. So my advice if you are thinking about Guesty is don't balk at the price when you first see it. It is the best investment you'll make for your management company, certainly if you're wanting to scale up. I know it's expensive, but for me, Guesty comes into its own. It's when things go wrong is when you will rely on Guesty and everything that they have around them. And I think for me, there will be cheaper options and there'll always be companies that are startups that will be half the price or a quarter of the price, but actually, when you look into them and you think, "Oh, well, they're not much different. The user face looks almost the same." It kind of is. It is deep down, you know that there's tools there that Guesty have got you covered on. But most importantly, it's the reliability of the software. We have multiple employees that log in every single morning. It doesn't break. The calendars don't forget to sync, which leads to double bookings. Guesty becomes something that you can rely on and doesn't bring you problems. And sometimes, the cheaper software, when you're at high capacity times of the month and there's a lot of servers, messages coming through and calendars that need to be synced, they can be overwhelmed by it. So I would say that Guesty is a tool which by you pay for what you get and you embrace the fact that it's the best in its class and you just go with that. I would also encourage people if they stick with Guesty is to communicate with them what features do you not have that you would love to have? They're a company that like to get the feedback on things, and actually, you see the tweets come through. Eventually, if you wanted different features or different analytics or for it to look differently or pull different information, you push that onto them and they will have a team of people that can do that for you. So they're not the finished product. They never will say they are, but it's the fact that they can evolve and move with the different trends and different ways we analyze the data means that they're always improving, which again means that you've just got a more reliable service. So my advice would always be pay the money. It's the best bit of money you'll spend in your company and then just enjoy the relationship you have with them and communicate about things that could be better because they always take that on board.

Doug: Hi, I'm Doug. I'm the manager of The Pickleball Haven of Naples. I've been working with Hostaway now on the onboarding process, and I'd rate them a five on a scale of one to five. We're a brand new property that was just completed in Naples, Florida. The Pickleball Haven of Naples is a pickleball retreat that needs exposure, and we're brand new and we're just getting started, with Airbnb initially. And then we needed a channel manager to really work with Hostaway. That was the reason for working with the Hostaway company. So we did some research on the internet and looked at different companies, interviewed a few different companies for channel management. We'd actually been referenced to Lodgify, but we met with the Hostaway people, real impressed with the process, real impressed with the people, real impressed with the app. So we made the decision to go with them. So getting started with Hostaway was really quite simple. They do have an onboarding fee, which was quite reasonable compared to some of the other options we were looking at. The thing I'm most excited about with the onboarding process is we've got a wonderful leader that's taking us through the process, [inaudible 00:01:10]. And when you go through the process on these one-hour meetings, which are efficient, but they keep working with you until you get it right. So we've got a lot of complexity attached to what we're doing. We're building websites, we're doing payment processes for different sophisticated payment options for how we do the algorithms, and it takes a number of processes to go through that. So they just keep working with you on the onboarding process until you're satisfied with where you are, which is a huge advantage for us because if you try to rush this, you're going to miss stuff. So it's been a really good, healthy process so far. So I'd strongly recommend Hostaway to anybody that's in our situation of really trying to figure out the complexity of Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Expedia, Google. I mean, it's complex. And the opportunity that we've had with working with Hostaway is really coordinating all of that and have a direct website as well. So you get challenges. It's not an easy process, but the support is fantastic. I just spent an hour with the support team yesterday on a particular problem I had with creating a new website, a new web domain that's integrated with the website Hostaway. And they just kept sticking with me. And I've just had so many calls with support teams in the past where they get frustrated, they throw their hands up. It's like, Booking.com is one of them, and they don't follow through on what they said they're going to do. And Hostaway, in their situation they just kept getting more people, frankly, to help with the complex situation I was in until we figured it out. So they stick with it, and it's a great app. The app does so much for you. It's almost limitless in terms of what it can do for you, but to take full advantage of it, you need the support to be able to get it right. And we're really trying to build a sophisticated process with the Pickleball Haven of Naples. It's a wonderful new property. It needs exposure, and it's getting us that exposure. And so far, so good. And we've already had two bookings before we're even fully onboarded with Hostaway. So Pickleball Haven of Naples is very happy with Hostaway at this point.