How to Manage Airbnb Remotely with a Virtual Assistant

For Airbnb hosts, this platform presents both opportunities and challenges. It can be lucrative, but the demands of a lease can be time-consuming. Today, many hosts turn to virtual assistants to handle business tasks, freeing them up for property marketing and guest satisfaction. Virtual assistants specialize in managing guest inquiries, bookings, and check-ins. They allow guests to focus on improving their property profiles, implementing social media marketing strategies, and delivering exceptional guest experiences. 

What is an Airbnb Virtual Assistant?

An Airbnb virtual assistant is a remotely based assistant who helps hosts manage their vacation rental properties, including guest inquiries, check-ins, and check-outs, arranging the cleaning and maintenance, and dealing with these services’ invoices. It also deals with reviews and promotions. An Airbnb assistant works remotely using technology to communicate with guests and may use software tools to manage the property, permitting the hosts to outsource time-consuming tasks, thus freeing up their own time.

Hiring a Virtual Assistant for Your Airbnb Rental

A virtual assistant can be a great addition to your Airbnb business if you want to manage the property remotely. A VA will help you with managing Airbnb remotely by:

• Listing creation and editing (including photos, descriptions, and calendars)

• Marketing, including sending out emails and following up on leads generated from ads

• Customer service, from responding to inquiries about existing reservations to handling cancellations or payment issues that arise during the stay

So, how do you find someone suitable for your business? First of all, don’t just hire anyone! Could you make sure they have experience working with vacation rentals?

The best candidate should also be able to provide examples of their work and some portfolio or portfolio link where you can see samples of their previous work. It’s also good practice to review past clients’ reviews of the VA before making a decision—if there are any issues, they will show up here first!

How to Manage Airbnb Remotely with an Assistant

Hiring a virtual assistant can help you stay organized, address guest inquiries promptly, and offer the best customer service. To help your virtual assistant, here are some measures you can include: 

Set up a checklist

One of the most important things you can do is create a checklist for your virtual assistant. This checklist should be in Microsoft Word or Google Sheets and include everything needed—from scheduling appointments with cleaners and contractors to responding to guests’ inquiries. You can then share this document with your VA, who will check off items as they’re completed.

We recommend creating shared folders within Google Drive for all important documents related to Airbnb management (like cleaning checklists) early on. This way, everyone has access, but it’s easy enough for you alone or someone else with administrator privileges at any time if necessary.

Automate Your Communications

Streamline your guest communications with automation. Craft ready-to-use email templates for contacting guests before, during, and after their stay. This simplifies your process, saves time, and guarantees consistent, professional communication. For instance, set up a template for welcoming guests, including check-in and check-out instructions and amenities. Additionally, prepare a template expressing gratitude for their stay and encouraging them to leave a review.

Create an Online Calendar

Your next step is setting up an online calendar so anyone on your team can stay on top of upcoming tasks and events. To keep everyone informed without being too overwhelming, only invite people who need access to certain parts of the calendar (for example, only invite cleaners) so they don’t see anything they aren’t involved in.

Use Property Management Software

Optimize your Airbnb management with property management software. This tool automates tasks like handling booking inquiries, managing check-ins/check-outs, and organizing cleaning schedules. By automating these processes, you can reclaim valuable time to concentrate on other facets of your business. Select a property management software that aligns with your requirements and budget. Some examples include Guesty, Lodgify, Hostfully, Hostaway, and Doorloop.

Key Airbnb Management Tasks

There are five critical tasks that you want to delegate to your virtual assistant to supervise and arrange for you:

• Cleaning

• Laundry

• Housekeeping

• Maintaining the property (e.g., landscaping/gardening)

• Booking guests

• Calendar management 

• Sending guest information such as check-in instructions or conduct rules and sending them a welcome message

• Drafting the content so your listing can stand out

• Manage your social media platforms.

Identifying the Need for an Airbnb Virtual Assistant

To determine the need for an Airbnb virtual assistant, you must first look at the tasks that take up a significant amount of your time. These are the ones that have become repetitive and tedious and can be easily automated or outsourced. The tasks also shouldn’t be core parts of your business—if they are, this may not be the right move for you.

Many things can fall into this category:

• Data entry

• Email management (sending out emails)

• Phone calls (answering inquiries)

A Different Way to Get Things Done! 

There are many ways your virtual assistant can manage your Airbnb remotely, from systems to administrative service providers that can help you manage your to-do list effectively.

Why Hire a Virtual Assistant for Your Airbnb?

When you become an Airbnb host, you’re managing not just your home’s day—to—day operations but also everything else it takes to keep your business moving forward. You have to manage the marketing and promotion of your listing, communicate with guests before and after their stay, respond to any issues that arise during their stay (and there are always issues!), monitor guest reviews, make sure that there are enough clean towels and sheets in the house…the list goes on. The last thing you want is for this all-consuming task list to distract you from what matters most: making money! 

That’s why hiring a virtual assistant is crucial for anyone who runs a remote Airbnb business. A VA will take care of all those administrative tasks so that you can focus on growing your business by adding more listings or boosting existing ones. 

The Benefits of Hiring a VA 

Hiring an Airbnb Virtual Assistant offers several key advantages.

• They save you time, allowing you to redirect your focus to other business or personal priorities.
• They enhance efficiency by automating tasks and managing routine inquiries, boosting productivity.
• A virtual assistant contributes to improved customer service, responding promptly and professionally to guest inquiries, enhancing satisfaction, and elevating your Airbnb ranking.
• A virtual assistant can expand your reach by managing listings in multiple languages and time zones, attracting a diverse range of global guests.
• Entrusting your Airbnb to a qualified virtual assistant provides peace of mind, allowing you to enjoy life and concentrate on other pursuits.

How Can a Virtual Assistant Help with Your Airbnb?

Virtual assistants are a great way to manage your Airbnb remotely. They can help with tasks like:

• Guest reviews

A virtual assistant can help you review and respond to guest reviews quickly and efficiently, allowing you more time for other important tasks or just for fun!

• Reservations

Virtual assistants make managing your calendar and booking guests into their rooms easy. You don’t have to worry about double bookings or cancellations because the VA has already collected all these details in one place on your behalf!

Calendar events management

Your VAs will keep track of all the information they need from their clients while attending any events scheduled on their calendars (e.g., meetings, conferences, etc.), which makes keeping track of multiple calendars much easier than it would otherwise be without this service available at one’s disposal 24/7/365 days per year around the globe in every time zone imaginable including UTC+0 which is commonly referred as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Should You Hire a VA for Your Airbnb?

If you struggle to juggle your Airbnb business with the rest of your life, then hiring a virtual assistant can help. Here’s why:

• Virtual assistants can help you manage bookings, respond to guest questions, and keep track of payments.

• Hiring a virtual assistant can be cost-effective. Their rate will depend on their experience level and where they live.

• Virtual assistants can arrange tasks like cleaning rooms or doing laundry for you. The laundry and the apartment can be cleaned before the next guest arrives. 

The Bottom Line: How to Manage Airbnb Remotely

So, should you hire a virtual assistant to help manage your Airbnb? The answer is yes. It’s a lot of work, and if you don’t have the time or inclination to do it yourself, hiring someone else makes perfect sense—especially if they can take care of everything for less than what it would cost you in terms of salary alone!