Improve your Airbnb hosting in 2024: Discover the top apps to simplify management, maximize earnings, and enhance the guest experience.

The Most Useful Airbnb Apps for Hosts in 2024

Airbnb apps for hosts streamline operations and help scale your business without significantly increasing the time you spend on management.

From key exchange to cleaning schedules to channel management, there’s an app for that. 

Tools like Uplisting by AirDNA roll many of the top Airbnb app features into one so you’re never overwhelmed by too much tech. 

Technology plays a crucial role in the vacation rental business. Ever since smartphones went mainstream, apps like Airbnb have helped hosts and property owners create and manage listings for travelers looking to book a short-term rental. As the vacation rental industry grows, more and more apps have sprouted up to streamline the process and ease both sides of the transaction. 

Let’s talk about some of the best Airbnb apps for hosts and how they can take your short-term rental business to the next level. 

How Apps Help Airbnb Hosts and Property Owners

The right vacation rental app can change how you do business, from streamlining operations and elevating the guest experience to finding more renters within the competitive vacation rental market. Apps for Airbnb hosts provide all kinds of helpful benefits, including:

Efficient Communication: There are great Airbnb apps for hosts that offer instant and automated messaging to help short-term rental hosts promptly address guest inquiries and concerns.

Seamless Property Management: Apps like Uplisting and Tokeet automate booking tasks, track reservations, and manage cleaning schedules from a single platform.

Enhanced Guest Experiences: Welcome apps like HelloHere and Touch Stay provide a personalized touch for Airbnb guests, while Operto consolidates smart home tools that enhance guest safety and convenience.

Optimized Booking Management: Booking apps synchronize rental calendars and ease communication to help avoid double bookings.

Streamlined Cleaning and Maintenance: Cleaning apps help schedule cleanings and track maintenance tasks.

Uplisting: Uplisting streamlines Airbnb property management with features like automated messaging, calendar synchronization, and channel integrations, making it easier for hosts to manage listings across various rental platforms while enhancing guest communication and overall efficiency.

Guesty: This comprehensive Airbnb property management platform has tools to automate processes, improve guest communication, and effortlessly manage listings across different rental platforms.

Hostaway: Hostaway simplifies booking and guest management with calendar synchronization, automated messaging, and integrations with multiple booking platforms.

Lodgify: This app lets hosts create eye-popping vacation home websites, manage reservations, and accept direct bookings. 

Operto: Operto provides smart home automation like keyless entry, remote temperature control, and noise monitoring to protect your property and delight guests.

Host Tools: This app offers a suite of tools for efficient property management like cleaning scheduling, task automation, and simple guest communication.

Honorable mention includes Airbnb’s Host Assist app, which provides tools from Airbnb partners to help with many of the tasks above. Host Assist is available only in select locations. 

Uplisting: Uplisting’s guest messaging tools empower hosts to automate messages to guests across Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo to save time and keep guests happy. 

Duve: This user-friendly Airbnb app for hosts provides instant messaging tools that let you respond promptly to guest inquiries and concerns throughout their stay. With Duve, guests have an open line of communication with hosts, leading to higher satisfaction and more positive reviews.

Host Tools: Designed specifically for Airbnb hosts, Host Tools simplifies guest communication by centralizing messages from different platforms into one convenient dashboard. Manage conversations, send automated messages, and coordinate check-in to ensure a seamless guest experience.

Touch Stay: With Touch Stay, hosts can create interactive welcome guides for guests to access via a mobile app. Guides can feature local recommendations, house rules, check-in instructions, and tips on what to do nearby. 

Uplisting: With Uplisting, you can send pre-booking messages, instantly accept direct guest bookings, and spin up booking pages for your rental’s website effortlessly.

Bookiply: Bookiply helps you manage reservations, synchronize calendars, and communicate with guests seamlessly. Features like automated messaging and smart pricing help you keep your properties occupied and maximize revenue.

Guesty: Guesty offers tools for reservation management, guest communication, and task automation. Hosts can centralize bookings and streamline operations across different platforms through this user-friendly platform.

Hostaway: Hostaway offers calendar synchronization to simplify the process of managing reservations across multiple platforms so you can focus on delivering an exceptional guest experience.

Lodgify: Lodgify empowers hosts to create their own website for booking and simple reservation management. Features include online booking, channel management, and payment processing, helping hosts streamline their booking process and attract more guests.

Smoobu: Smoobu simplifies the booking process with a user-friendly interface where hosts can effortlessly manage their vacation rentals. Features like automated messaging, channel management, and pricing optimization enable hosts to maximize occupancy rates and keep rental revenue flowing.

Most vacation rental owners list their rental homes across multiple platforms—but managing all those platforms can quickly become overwhelming and you risk double bookings. 

Here are some of the best apps for Airbnb hosts to keep their listings organized, no matter how many places they appear:

Uplisting: With direct API connections with Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com, Uplisting syncs data across platforms in real time.

Host Tools: Host Tools synchronizes property listings across platforms to minimize any risk of double bookings while ensuring consistent availability and pricing information across all listings.

iGMS: iGMS centralizes property listings and automates tasks such as messaging, guest communication, and cleaning scheduling. 

Zeevou: Zeevou seamlessly integrates online travel agencies (OTAs), helping hosts maximize occupancy rates, simplify admin tasks, and optimize revenue potential for their vacation rentals.

Your vacation rental may be amazing, but is it better than your competition? Connect your Airbnb listing to AirDNA to see its Booking Performance Score

Uplisting: Uplisting’s comprehensive property management system for Airbnb hosts, automates reservation management across multiple booking channels while providing analytics and reporting features to optimize profitability and enhance guest experiences.

Guesty: With Guesty, hosts can automate bookings and guest communication through a single property management system. Guesty also provides analytics and reporting features to help hosts boost rental property profitability.

OwnerRez: OwnerRez integrates with many booking channels to automate tasks like guest communication, payment processing, and cleaning scheduling, so hosts can focus on providing fantastic guest experiences. 

Tokeet: Tokeet’s property management tools are designed to streamline operations and maximize rental income, from automated messaging and reservation management to dynamic pricing and channel management.

Breezeway: With Breezeway, hosts can create cleaning checklists and schedules while tracking the completion of tasks in real time. The app’s quality assurance and property inspection tools help to ensure that your property is clean and well-maintained for every guest.

Properly: Properly simplifies cleaning for vacation rental hosts by enabling detailed cleaning instructions, communication with cleaners, and cleaning progress tracking. With photo verification, you can be sure that your properties are cleaned to your standards before guests arrive.

TIDY: TIDY provides on-demand cleaning services tailored to vacation rental properties. Hosts can schedule cleanings through the TIDY app, then customize cleaning preferences and track the status of each cleaning session. 

Turno: Turno helps hosts organize and automate their property cleaning schedules. Create cleaning tasks, assign them to cleaners, and monitor cleaning progress across multiple properties through the Turno dashboard. Keep track of inventory as well so that cleaners always have supplies at the ready. 

Party Squasher: Party Squasher is a state-of-the-art noise monitoring solution that alerts Airbnb hosts if noise levels exceed a preset threshold. With Party Squasher, hosts can prevent unauthorized parties and disturbances and stay in neighbors’ good graces. 

Operto: Operto leverages smart home automation to provide contactless key management, temperature control, and more. 

Yale Access: Yale Access lets hosts grant property access codes to guests via a mobile app, eliminating the need for physical keys and simplifying check-in.

Igloohome: The Igloohome App provides unique PIN codes and Bluetooth keys for each guest. The app also offers real-time entry and exit logs, as well as offline access capabilities to ensure reliable access in areas with poor connectivity.

KeyCafe: KeyCafe’s lockboxes let property managers store physical keys that guests can retrieve using a unique access code upon arrival. 

RemoteLock: RemoteLock provides cloud-based smart lock solutions that empower property managers to remotely control and monitor access to their properties. 

Tips for Using Apps to Manage Your Vacation Rental Business Efficiently

Host apps are great at making life easier for hosts by using software to solve common problems. 

Stay in Touch: Guests shouldn’t have to wait long for answers to their questions. Apps can provide fast responses to common inquiries. 

Automate Repetitive Tasks: Simple tasks like booking management and scheduling cleanings can be a headache. If those processes don’t often change, save time by automating them. 

Optimize Pricing: Dynamic pricing will help you maximize revenue potential, but knowing how to price short-term rentals requires understanding demand, seasonal trends, and competitor pricing—all of which apps are great at calculating.

Maintain Your Property: Schedule regular inspections so that a clean and well-maintained property greets each guest. 

Provide a Personal Touch: Guests love things like welcome gifts, local recommendations, and clear house rules. Apps offer opportunities to provide those personal touches.

Stay Informed: Stay up-to-date with industry trends, regulations, and best practices to keep your short-term rental business competitive.

Collect Guest Feedback: Encourage guests to leave reviews and feedback so that you can identify areas to improve.

Network With Other Hosts: Fellow Airbnb hosts can provide helpful insights through online communities, forums, and networking events.

Apps for Airbnb hosts can help improve the guest experience while earning more money. The better you understand them, the easier it’ll be to keep your rental properties occupied, profitable, and pleasant for guests. 

Plan your STR strategy based on real booking activity and trends—plus, see how things change year over year.

Airbnb apps for hosts make it easier to simplify short-term rental management while earning more. Get the complete list of top Airbnb apps for 2024.

Airbnb Occupancy Rate: Insights and Tips

Key Takeaways
The Airbnb occupancy rate is a vital metric for success and is calculated by dividing the number of booked nights by the available nights. The occupancy rate reflects how often your property is rented out compared to its availability.
Understanding and monitoring your occupancy rate is key to maximizing earnings, as it indicates property performance and influences pricing and marketing strategies.
How you interpret your occupancy rate is essential; high and low occupancy rates don’t always mean what you think.

Successful Airbnb hosts are obsessed with bookings, and for good reason—it’s the name of the vacation rental game.

When hosts talk about Airbnb bookings, they're really talking about occupancy rate: the percentage of available nights that guests book. Monitoring your occupancy rate is important because it shows how well your Airbnb stacks up against the competition. The occupancy rate can also indicate whether you need to switch up your strategy or pricing to boost your rental income.

Whether you’re new to short-term vacation rentals or an industry expert, it’s important to understand the methodology and best practices behind your occupancy rate. 

Learn about short-term rental data

What is Airbnb Occupancy Rate?

In its simplest form, the occupancy rate is the percentage of time a vacation rental property is booked compared to the time it is available for bookings. 

To make understanding occupancy rate easier, let's use a straightforward example.

Imagine you own a cabin that's available for guests all year. That means it could potentially be booked for 365 nights. Throughout the year, guests book your cabin for 90 of those nights. We can use that number to calculate the occupancy rate and see how often your property was rented out compared to its availability. 

By dividing the booked nights (90) by the total available nights (365) and multiplying by 100 to get a percentage, we find an occupancy rate of approximately 25%. This means your cabin was rented out for about a quarter of the year.

Reasons Why Your Occupancy Rate Matters
Maximize Revenue Potential: Physical products can be sold at any time if they’re not immediately purchased. However, a vacant vacation rental represents a unique challenge. If a property goes unbooked for a night, it's impossible to "sell" that night again. Each unbooked night directly translates into a tangible loss of potential income. That’s why the occupancy rate is crucial for owners looking to maximize their earnings. 
Reveal Property Performance Insights: Consider two similar properties in the same location. Property A consistently achieves an 80% occupancy rate, while Property B struggles to reach 50%. This stark difference signals that Property A might be better aligned with guest preferences or have better marketing. Analyzing occupancy rates helps identify performance gaps and areas for improvement, whether that's improving your listing or adjusting pricing strategies to meet market demand.
Determine Market Demand and Inform Pricing Strategies: High Airbnb occupancy rates indicate strong market demand, while low occupancy rates can reflect lower demand. This information informs your pricing strategy. Let’s consider an apartment near a convention center that has high occupancy during events but low occupancy rates otherwise. This trend suggests that you may want to consider adjusting your rates in relation to the convention center’s event calendar. Dynamic pricing takes into consideration trends like this and uses them to optimize revenue during peak and off-peak times.
Guide Investment and Enhancement Decisions: Evaluate occupancy rates before and after making upgrades, like installing high-speed internet or renovating the kitchen, to assess the return on investment (ROI). This analysis is crucial for prioritizing property improvements that make your listing more appealing and, subsequently, improve the occupancy rate.

Learn about Dynamic Pricing

How to Calculate the Airbnb Occupancy Rate

Understanding the occupancy rate of your Airbnb property is pivotal for optimizing your rental strategy. Yet, it all comes down to a single equation.

Airbnb Occupancy Rate Calculation

Reserved Days / Available Days x 100 = Occupancy Rate

With that in mind, here's a simple guide on how to find Airbnb occupancy rates:

Step-by-Step Calculation
Determine the Total Number of Reserved Days: Start by counting how many days guests booked your property over a specific period of time, usually 12 months. 
Identify the Total Number of Available Days: Calculate the total days your property was available for booking over the same time period, excluding any days you blocked off for personal use.
Calculate the Occupancy Rate: Divide the total number of reserved days by the total number of available days, then multiply the result by 100 to convert it into a percentage. These steps represent AirDNA’s version of an Airbnb occupancy rate calculator.

Example Calculation:

Imagine you own a house on the water in North Carolina and you're evaluating its performance on Airbnb over the last 12 months. The property was available for 340 days and booked for 240 days within this timeframe.

Reserved Days: 240

Available Days: 340

Occupancy Rate Calculation: 240/340 x 100 = 70.58%

Calculate potential earnings

Understand the investment potential of any address in the world. 

See your STR revenue potential
Interpreting Your Occupancy Rate

While a 70% occupancy rate may seem ideal, signaling guest satisfaction and consistent revenue, it's essential to delve deeper. High occupancy could indicate underpricing, meaning you might be missing out on potential income. It's crucial to balance occupancy with your average daily rates (ADRs) to maximize revenue. 

Think about it: A property with a 50% or 60% occupancy rate could earn more revenue than one that’s booked 70% of the time. It’s all relative to pricing. A property booked more often at $100 per night may not outearn a property that’s booked less often at $300 per night.

It’s important to ask yourself: Do I want higher occupancy or higher average daily rates (ADRs)? An accurate data tool can help you sort out which strategy is best for your bottom line. (Why guess when you can know exactly what you should be charging guests?)

What is a Good Airbnb Occupancy Rate?

Average Airbnb occupancy rates vary from market to market and year to year. You can see how the national average occupancy rate has fluctuated:

Trailing twelve months (TTM), March 2023 to February 2024: 55.1%
2023: 55.4%
2022: 58.6%
2021: 60.3%

The occupancy rate in 2022 reflects a recovery trend in the industry after the pandemic brought the average occupancy rate into the low fifties in 2020.

Determining a "good" rate is less about finding a universal number and more about understanding local market conditions, historical performance, and your personal goals for the property. Knowing your market's average helps inform decisions on pricing, marketing, and operations.

Start AirDNA for free

Average Airbnb Occupancy Rates by City: Top 10 Highest Occupancy Rates

If you’re new to the short-term rental market, understanding the average airbnb occupancy rates by city can help you choose a location that’s likely to generate a healthy revenue.

These markets had the highest trailing twelve-month short-term occupancy rates (March 2023 to February 2024):

Kauai, Hawaii: 74.4%
Oahu, Hawaii: 73.4%
Maui, Hawaii: 72.4%
Maine DownEast/Acadia Coastal: 67.7%
Big Island, Hawaii: 67.1%
New York City: 65.5%
Denver: 65.3%
Anaheim, California: 65.2%
Boulder, Colorado: 64.3%
 Outer Banks, North Carolina: 64.3%

Many of the markets with the highest occupancy rates are located in Hawaii. However, seeing as the vacation rental market in Hawaii is subject to fairly heavy restrictions, let’s consider the markets with the highest occupancy rates in the contiguous U.S.

Maine DownEast/Acadia Coastal: 67.7%
New York City: 65.5%
Denver: 65.3%
Anaheim, California: 65.2%
Boulder, Colorado: 64.3%
Outer Banks, North Carolina: 64.3%
San Diego: 64.2%
Sarasota, Florida: 64.1%
Lincoln City/Newport, Oregon: 64%
Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, Tennessee: 63.9%

Average Occupancy Rates by City: Top 10 Lowest Occupancy Rates

The average Airbnb occupancy rates by city in the following areas leave hosts wanting more. These markets currently have the lowest trailing twelve-month occupancy rates:

Oxford, MS: 34.9%
Big Bear, CA: 39.6%
Southbend, Indiana: 40.4%
Texas East Area: 41.4%
College Station, Texas: 41.8%
Mississippi area: 42.1%
Augusta, Georgia/South Carolina: 42.8%
Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania: 43.2%
California South area: 43.7%
 Louisiana area: 43.9%

If you’re looking to invest in vacation properties, avoid these markets because you likely won't get a good ROI. Property managers and hosts in these markets may need to lower their rates to encourage guests to book with them rather than other Airbnbs.

Hottest Airbnb Markets
Free Airbnb Calculator
Why Airbnb Occupancy Rates Differ from Hotels 

Hotels offer a consistent product and pricing strategy, but STRs vary widely in terms of property type, location, amenities, and host engagement. It’s crucial to assess STR occupancy differently than traditional hotel occupancy in order to accurately reflect performance in the vacation rental market.

AirDNA only considers active listings in its occupancy rate calculations, whether it’s for a specific market or when someone uses our Airbnb calculator. We define active as having at least one calendar day classified as reserved or available during the reporting period. If we included every available night from every available listing in our occupancy calculation, it would return a falsely low occupancy rate. This is due to variations in vacation rental host behaviors and motivations. We’re talking about host attentiveness in managing listing calendars and their responsiveness to reservation requests.

Here are three host cases that would falsely skew occupancy downward if we included them in the occupancy rate calculation: 

Event-Based Hosts: Hosts who list properties temporarily to take advantage of specific events, causing temporary market fluctuations that don’t reflect regular hosting activity.

"Make Me Move" Hosts: Hosts who set their prices significantly above the market rate, using Airbnb as an opportunistic platform rather than a committed hosting venue.

Dormant Listings: Properties that appear available but haven't seen a booking for months, often due to a shift in host priorities or property usage.

AirDNA ensures that its occupancy rate calculations reflect genuine market activity and trends by focusing on active listings. We stand by the accuracy of our data and use this methodology to help stakeholders understand the true dynamics of the STR market. Our insights are distinct from those that can be gleaned from hotel occupancy data.

How to Get High Occupancy on Airbnb

Occupancy rate may not be a complete picture of your property’s performance, but it’s still important. After all, you’re only making money if guests are staying at your property. If your occupancy rate is falling short of expectations, take these data-driven steps to learn how to increase occupancy rate on Airbnb. 

Increase Your Airbnb Occupancy Rate

Occupancy Rate is Just the Beginning  

According to ou annual best places to invest report, most of the destinations at the top of the list have occupancy rates of 60-70%. If you're interested to learn more about a market's occupancy rate, visit the AirDNA app.

While Airbnb occupancy rates are important, you need to track a range of metrics to assess how your Airbnb is performing overall. Our insights can help you optimize your properties for the best possible occupancy rate, average daily rate (ADR), revenue per available rental (RevPAR), and overall profitability.

Frequently Asked Questions:
What is a good occupancy rate for an Airbnb?

There is no universal “good" occupancy rate. Determining whether your occupancy rate is optimized requires understanding local market conditions, historical performance, and your personal goals for the property. Keep in mind that lower occupancy rates don’t necessarily indicate lost revenue. If you are charging a higher average daily rate, you might not need as many bookings to make as much money as a competitor with higher occupancy but a lower nightly rate.

Where can you see Airbnb occupancy rates?

You can see the occupancy rate for your listing as well as that of competitors in the area on your AirDNA dashboard. 

Find out what “Airbnb occupancy rate” refers to, how to calculate it, and tips for improving your occupancy rate and increasing your STR income.

The Most Useful Airbnb Apps for Hosts in 2024

ARTICLE SUMMARY

QUICK NAVIGATION