The daily task list for a vacation rental business can sometimes be four pages long. If you’ve been looking to reduce the time you spend managing your rental while also automating tasks, Lodgify’s integration with Zapier will be extremely useful for you and your business. Lodgify connects with over 4000 apps on Zapier.
In this article, we’re going to show you some of our favorite Zaps for Lodgify users and vacation rental property managers. Automating tasks not only helps you to save time and effort but also allows you to stay organized and never miss a beat! Let’s take a look at the integrations you can achieve with Lodgify and Zapier.
Lodgify integrates with a number of useful tools to help grow your business. Sometimes workflows, connections and integrations can be overwhelming or confusing for a newcomer. Zapier is a product that automates workflows between applications and services. In simple terms, a zap can be seen as a shortcut for completing a task without you having to put any manual labor into it.
To give you an example of an easy zap, we’ll look at the process for guest feedback. Let’s say you like to send out guest surveys, store them and analyze the results. Each step can take an incredible amount of time, from manually sending the email to uploading the results in a Cloud-storage service. What if we told you that each of those steps could be automated? You could create a Zap that automatically sends the guest survey to recent visitors, then stores the responses for you on Dropbox and uploads the data points into one of their analytics connections.
You can automate, organize, and manage any number of workflows or “zaps” using the Zapier and Lodgify integration.
Why do you need Zaps for your vacation rental?
If you’ve gotten in the habit of doing all this administrative work yourself, you might be wondering why your vacation rental business needs automated workflows in the first place. Once you start using it, you’ll surely never go back! Zapier saves hours of administrative labor by automating those tasks for you. Additionally, because it’s all done through their cutting-edge technology, you won’t have to worry about any slips from human error.
Zaps for Lodgify users
Lodgify seamlessly integrates with Zapier, meaning you can automate several tasks and projects with your Lodgify account; no extra steps necessary. Here are some popular Zaps for Lodgify users, which will help make managing your bookings, daily operations and reports a breeze.
1. Create a row in Google Sheets for booking reporting and dashboards
If like many vacation rental managers, you keep on top of accounts and bills via Google Sheets, with Zapier, there’s now a quicker way to update your books. Create a Zap to add a new row in Google Sheets for each new or updated booking.
2. Add booking to housekeeping calendar (+ invite cleaning company)
Whether you take care of housekeeping yourself or have a trusted professional or company do it, it’s easy to get confused. Whilst juggling bookings, inquiries, check-ins and check-outs, the last thing you need is any complications regarding cleaning schedules.
Set up a Zap to automatically add each booking party’s arrival and departure dates to a Google Calendar, then share it with your staff. Easy peasy!
3. Create check-in/check-out lists with Wunderlist
To stay on top of all the guests who are coming and going at your property, you can sync Lodgify with apps such as Wunderlist and create easy-to-follow check-in and check-out lists and see at a glance who is arriving or departing on a given date. It will even pull details of any booking notes – so you can check if you need to prepare something special for a honeymoon, birthday or family reunion.
4. Generate automatic invoices in your accounting software (via Xero, Wave, Quickbooks)
For users who have more advanced accounting software, connecting your Lodgify account is now effortless. Just set up a Zap to generate automatic invoices directly in your accounting software, e.g., Xero, Wave or Quickbooks.
5. Send an email to your reservation team
With this connection, you can easily set up a Zap, which will trigger the sending of an automated email to your reservation team – whenever you receive a new booking. This keeps your employees in the loop immediately, without any additional work on your part.
6. Send a Slack message to your reservation team
Additionally, if your reservation team is on Slack, you can set up similar automation to notify them at once about new bookings. Slack is a great team tool (and not only for booking teams!) because real-time communication means all members stay up-to-date.
7. Send a text message to the Guest or Owner
Using Zapier’s connection with Twilio, you can set up a Zap to automatically send a text message to your incoming guest or the rental owner. Additionally, you can use ChatArchitect.com to send templated messages through Whatsapp while also managing incoming messages.
8. Sign documents and send contracts to guests
Many owners opt for their own vacation rental agreement. If you want your guests to fill this out in advance, it’s vital that you have a way to get out these forms without the hassle of manually sending each agreement. With Zapier, you can connect Lodgify to Docusign to take care of all your document needs. You can automatically send, sign, and receive documents for you, your guests, and your team.
9. Send and study guest surveys
One of the biggest reasons for automation is to improve guest experience in the easiest, most efficient way possible. Receiving feedback from guests will ultimately help you to improve your business and short-term rental. There are several Zapier connections you can use to send and collect guest surveys, such as:
Survey Monkey
Survey Sparrow
Google Forms
Survey Anyplace
Survey Funnel
10. Create task cards to check off your to-do list (Trello and Monday.com)
Are you trying to get organized? Creating task cards helps you and your team check off your to-do list. This is especially useful if you run a multi-property business or have a larger team. Lodgify connects with multiple task management tools through Zapier, such as Trello and Monday.com.
11. Track Google Meeting time with Togl
Time is money, so why not keep track of it? Togl is a tool that will count the minutes and overall time spent in Google Meetings. If you pay a consultant, co-host, or any other team members based on time spent, you can easily track the time spent in meetings and manage that count however you like.
12. Streamline your vacation rental hiring process
Running a vacation rental takes a village. When you want to grow your team, you’ll need to embark on a hiring process, which can be grueling if every step is taken care of manually. You can use the Workable connection to set candidate requirements and automatically short-list candidates who would be perfect for joining your team.
13. Collect client testimonials on Typeform
Beyond owning a beautiful vacation rental, guest reviews are going to be the major deciding factor for your potential clients. While star ratings and short-form responses are useful, displaying testimonials on your website could be the factor that sways potential guests to book. Using the Typeform connection with Lodgify will automatically and easily collect guest testimonials to display on your homepage.
Zaps for all vacation rental property managers
To set up these Zaps, you don’t need to be a Lodgify user. These general marketing-related automations will help simplify the management of different channels for your different properties.
Email
14. Add new bookings as MailChimp newsletter subscribers
In order to keep in touch with guests long after their departure, configure a Zap to automatically add any new bookings to your MailChimp newsletter subscriber list. This way, you’ll be able to send them updates about your property, special offers for future stays and any other correspondence – without any effort at all.
Simply use “New Booking” as your Trigger and “Add/Update Subscriber” as the Action in Zapier.
15. Parse through only the important emails
Even with a team behind you, sifting through emails can take an eternity. That time could be better spent on a number of other tasks your vacation rental business demands. Zapier offers an in-house email parser to take care of what’s important, summarize the details, and organize your messages in ranking order of urgency.
16. Translate emails to reach international audiences
Our vacation rental software offers numerous internal options for translation, such as listing descriptions, guest communications, and policies. If you’d like to translate outside of the Lodgify platform, you can use the Zapier connection for translation to translate and send translated messages via text, email, or other forms of communication.
Instagram
17. Autoshare Instagram photos to your Facebook Page
Instead of constantly flicking between different social networks to update them manually, set up a Zap to do it for you. With this Zap template, your Instagram will automatically share any photos you upload directly to your company Facebook Page.
18. Tweet Instagram photos with image preview
Just as with Facebook, you can also set up a Zap to share new Instagram posts direct to Twitter. When you use this pre-made Zap template, you’ll even be able to configure Tweets to show the image preview.
Gaining new Instagram followers is always exciting – even more so when your vacation rental guests start to follow you and tag your home in their pictures. Notifications don’t stick around forever, though. So instead of traipsing through your tagged photos every time you want to share some user-generated content, why not set up a Zap to keep a record for you? This template will record a new entry in Google Sheets every time your brand or rental is tagged on the image-sharing site.
21. Gmail alerts for new Instagram hashtag mentions and email summary of those mentions
If you’re researching certain hashtags or even trying to target potential guests, you can now set up a Gmail alert to send a summary of any hashtag mentions direct to your inbox. Never miss a relevant post again!
Facebook
22. Make a new post to your Facebook Page every week
As a property manager, you already have plenty of things to remember in your day-to-day. Sharing content on social media is now more important than ever, but it can sometimes feel like you don’t have time to do it all. Set up a Zap to make a new post to your Facebook Page each week, and you’ll likely see engagement levels receive a boost.
23. Post daily weather forecasts on Facebook Page
Weather is a big talking point when it comes to vacation destinations – no matter where you’re located. So whether your guests are expecting fresh snow on the slopes, or a beautiful blue-skied beach day, create a Zap to update your Facebook Page with the latest weather forecasts.
24. Share new Facebook Pages posts to LinkedIn
Automating the sharing of your posts from one social network to another is one of the best ways to save time when marketing your rental. Build a Zap to post any new Facebook Pages posts to your LinkedIn profile and never have to worry about manually sharing again.
LinkedIn
25. Grow your audience by sharing new blog posts on LinkedIn
As long as your blog provider has a publicly accessible RSS feed, you’ll save yourself a job when you create a Zap to autoshare new blog posts on LinkedIn. That way, all your followers and other professionals in your network can see what you’re writing about – with minimal extra effort on your part.
Twitter
26. Tweet at new Twitter followers
Build instant rapport and engage your online community when you welcome new Twitter followers and thank them for joining you with this automated Tweet Zap. This is a hassle-free way of getting new followers interested in your vacation rental.
27. Add your new Twitter followers to Google Sheets
Vacation rental property managers have notoriously busy schedules – but you still need to find time to Tweet! Don’t let your feed suffer – it’s easy to schedule new tweets to post every day with Zapier.
29. Save Twitter search mentions to an Excel spreadsheet
Find out what people are saying about your brand, monitor the competition or simply stay on top of industry news when you monitor specific mentions. With Zapier, you can create a Zap to store the mentions you decide in an Excel spreadsheet. That way, they’re all in one place when you come to reviewing them.
30. Add new Twitter geo search mentions to a new row on Google Sheets
As well as monitoring brand mentions, you can go one step further and monitor any mentions of events and other activities happening your location. This Zap will constantly skim Twitter for mentions of specific search terms, coming from the location you pick. The tweets it finds will then be added to a new row on Google Sheets.
Summary
Setting up zaps that simplify your vacation rental tasks just makes perfect sense. We’re always adding new Zaps to the list, so be sure to bookmark this post and check back for more ideas. When you use vacation rental software that streamlines business processes and integrates with powerful technology such as Zapier, your vacation rental benefits. Give it a try today with our free 7-day trial and get ready to grow your vacation rental business.
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