The Great App Explosion and the Consolidation of Technology

Umair Hassan
2/18/2025

The vacation rental industry is witnessing an explosion of new apps. In recent years, technology has played an increasingly critical role in streamlining operations, enhancing productivity, and maximizing returns. This led to the development of a vast number of apps designed to make property managers’ lives easier—and it’s big business.

In 2023, the property management software market was valued at $5.51 billion and is expected to grow by 8.9% from 2024 to 2030.

From AI-powered guest communication, staff-less check-in solutions, and climate control, to managing maintenance and housekeeping, boosting revenue management and controlling door access, property managers must navigate a dizzying array of apps designed to help them in every element of their business.

While these solutions can streamline processes and automate tasks—saving both time and money—the sheer quantity of apps can leave many property managers suffering from ‘tech overwhelm’ that may prevent them from fully unlocking the potential of their tech stacks.

The Current Landscape

Gone are the days when running vacation rental properties meant piles of paper, endless phone calls, and face-to-face meetings. In just a few decades, the vacation rental industry has been dramatically transformed due to the rapid adoption of tech. Specialized software, such as property management solutions and smart property apps, have become pivotal for vacation rental managers, streamlining nearly every aspect of their operations and increasingly automating tasks.

Property managers can now manage their portfolios entirely remotely from their phones or laptops, becoming increasingly adept at handling and responding to continuous app alerts. From granting access to a delivery driver and getting alerted to potential water leaks, to responding to guest queries and checking perimeter video footage, monitoring and managing these apps can become a 24/7 job.

While each app serves a specific purpose and undoubtedly offers benefits, the large number of them can leave tech stacks fragmented, resulting in inefficiencies. Managers are finding themselves spending excessive amounts of time switching between platforms, monitoring alerts, and responding to notifications. This can increase the likelihood of mistakes, reduce productivity, and decrease guest satisfaction.

Property managers are increasingly noticing that technology can work against them just as easily as it can work for them. It is becoming clear that the current level of app interaction is unsustainable, underscoring the urgent need to unify technology.

Educating Property Owners

One way that property managers can remedy this problem is by educating their customers. Homeowners are often keen to integrate technology into their properties without considering the level of activity required to maintain it once it is installed—or whether it’s something their guests even desire.

Understandably, many homeowners want to install tech that protects and monitors their assets while they are away. However, vacation rental managers know that some solutions, such as surveillance systems and video doorbells, can negatively affect a guest’s experience. This disparity in the desire for tech can generate unwanted friction in the owner-manager relationship.

Vacation rental managers need to guide homeowners with their tech adoption to reassure them that their property is protected and encourage them to only install tech that is genuinely needed for enhancing the guest experience. Educating owners before they make an investment in tech also allows vacation rental managers to promote the adoption of apps that are on platforms already being used by their teams.

There are times when properties are onboarded into portfolios already overloaded with solutions and their respective apps. In these cases, managers feel compelled to integrate even more interfaces into their tech stack. For example, one property could be using a Ring video doorbell, and the next an Arlo; another property could have an Ecobee smart thermostat; and another a Google Nest. This continually adds more and more platforms to the property management team’s dashboard.

It is this seemingly endless adoption of apps across many different platforms that overwhelms property management teams and results in tech becoming a burden.

To address this, property managers must establish a technology adoption standard to reduce the number of apps and streamline their tech stack. During the onboarding process, guidelines should be provided to property owners, specifying which apps the management team uses to ensure all properties operate on the same platforms.

Not only will this significantly streamline the property management team’s workload, but it will enhance the guest experience, leading to better occupancy and ultimately benefiting owners.

Centralizing Technology

Another solution to ease the app overwhelm is to unify apps and merge smart property technology into one centralized hub. Centralization is a key way of reducing the complexity of managing multiple vacation rental properties.

Consolidating vacation rental technology using a software platform not only allows property management teams to view all their solutions in one place, eliminating the need to switch between interfaces or to log in to multiple platforms, but allows them to operate collectively. For example, implementing occupancy-based rules can automate processes, resulting in significant time savings.

Centralization is beneficial for homeowners, property managers, and guests. It allows vacation rental staff to operate properties more efficiently and improves the guest experience by bridging gaps in communication. It allows teams to easily view, schedule, and manage bookings and payments from a single platform. They can also generate access codes, control the property’s temperature, monitor external security, and receive notifications of hardware failures such as water leaks or HVAC errors.

Technology has made the world a better place for vacation rental property managers, enabling them to manage portfolios from anywhere in the world. This flexibility promotes a better work-life balance and increases job satisfaction among vacation rental employees by being able to respond to tasks remotely.

We are still feeling the shockwaves across the industry from “The Great App Explosion.” While it has driven efficiency and profitability for many property managers worldwide, it has also introduced complexity and inefficiencies for others.

Today, it is essential for property managers to consolidate their tech stacks. Educating property owners, promoting standardized platforms, and centralizing technology can lead to a more sustainable and streamlined management approach. This not only enhances operational efficiency but also improves the overall guest experience, paving the way for long-term success in the highly competitive vacation rental market.

Property managers who embrace centralization will be better equipped to navigate the evolving landscape of the vacation rental industry, ensuring they remain competitive while delivering exceptional service to their guests.

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