When it comes to property service or maintenance issues, traditionally guests call their host or property manager, who typically then phone around their list of approved local home service pros, to find someone to fix the problem. Once they find the right home service pro, they then have to get authorization from the home owner to send the home service pro in to inspect the job, which typically costs and finally get a price to fix the problem. The property manager then has to phone the home owner to sign off on the costings. The property manager is then back on the phone to the guest, to schedule the works, and so on.
With margins razor thin for hosts and property managers, all are looking for the cheapest solutions that are being bastardised to fit an ever changing landscape. One of the core issues facing hosts and property managers is the ability to transparently message their guests outside of welcoming messages services that just don’t fit the bill.
Whatsapp especially is heavily relied upon by property managers. Many have their preferred partners messaging them on Whatsapp, including many of their operations team, but when managing multiple properties its very easily to lose track of the pictures and videos for service and maintenance problems, and often operations team can confuse the issues across properties.
This is what happened to a property management company in New Mexico, who managed 51 properties. Their cleaners were raising problems, after guests had left via Whatsapp. They had a group put together, but it just wasn’t manageable in everyday life and was insufficient for what they actually needed.
