When it comes to managing availability and access to a holiday home there are a fair few ways to tackle this. Here are a few of the problems and considerations.
Who ‘owns’ and manages availability
This primarily depends on the instruction of the owner. If they employ a letting agent, ownership or responsibility for updating the calendar lies with them. Most agencies now have live online availability, so the owner will be able to see which weeks are booked at a glance.
Be aware of the agent’s process of booking your own weeks in the property. Popular properties will book quickly so you may not be able to stay in the property over the summer.
Alternatively the owner will manage the property calendar; and that is where the fun can start...
How is it managed?
How owners manage their availability can vary wildly, from a hand-written sheet of paper on the home office wall, to an all-singing all-dancing online manager with live availability for websites.
Having a hand-drawn calendar chart on the wall of a home office or kitchen is cheap and simple. Availability is there at a glance should a booking enquiry come in by telephone so can be answered promptly and accurately. The problem occurs when the calendar goes missing or is damaged. What is the back –up plan should it go missing? And no-one is yet to develop a system of automatically updating calendars on a website and portals from a piece of paper on the wall...
So the alternative is to use a computerised system to manage availability. There are numerous ways to do this, from MS Office products like Excel to dedicated booking software.
Using something like Excel will allow the owner to customise the layout and add customer details of bookings. This will still not link into live availability calendars however, so some dedicated software may be the appropriate way forward. This will provide the user with a number of useful features such as:
- Easy management and uploading of prices
- Login to access from any computer
- Link in guest details
- Automatic reminders for balanaces etc.
- Automated online availability so guests can easily see which weeks are available.
Of course there is a cost to such a service, so owners need to consider if the benefits of time saving and improved customer service are worth the outlay.
Whatever the chosen path, it is vitally important to organise and manage availability in a highly organised and professional manner, especially when guests are booking direct.
