Pocono Rental Management

Company overview

Dave Emerson is the owner of a property management company based in Pennsylvania. Dave launched his first property back in September 2019 and now manages over 20 properties in the Poconos Mountain area in Pennsylvania.

The Challenge

Overwhelmed by multiple booking sites and manual work

Dave Emerson started his business with a digital marketing background. After seeing the opportunity from his first vacation rental property, Dave saw that most property managers in the Poconos were realtors who did property management as more of a side job. Dave recognized this opportunity to focus on the property management side of things for homeowners.
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After managing just a few properties, Dave recognized the need to eliminate some manual work that came with multiple properties on multiple listing sites, mainly double bookings.
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“My biggest fear was somebody’s going to book on Airbnb, and I’m not going to block the dates out on VRBO. Then somebody’s going to book on VRBO, and then I have to cancel on somebody.”

"Canceling a reservation of Airbnb or VRBO will absolutely destroy your credibility and negatively impacts your score for any organic ranking.”
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Dave realized he would need a channel manager to help with these manual processes.
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“After adding a few more properties, it certainly got to a point where I was like, “All right, I need one of these channel partners.”
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Dave looked at Uplisting and Guesty for his solution, and Uplisting’s pricing structure, customer service, and no contract stood out.
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“What I really liked about Uplisting is the flat rate and not the percentage rate...When I saw Guesty’s price, I was just like, “Nope. Nope. I went with Uplisting.”

And with Uplisting, there’s no contract. So if something doesn’t work, I can always back out later. So after working with Vince, I decided to give it a try.”
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After speaking with one of the founders of Uplisting, Vince (who stayed at one of the properties), Dave felt confident to try Uplisting for his property management business.

The Solution

Business features that eliminate manual tasks

As the business grew, Dave started to use some of Uplisting’s features to cut down on manual tasks.
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“I had six or seven tasks that I would need to do in a certain order, and then with Uplisting, I was able to knock it down to about three tasks. So it made it that much easier. So that way, I wouldn’t miss anything.”

And to Dave’s surprise, Uplisting offered several business features that helped him manage different aspects of pricing and the business as a whole.

“I started learning about dynamic pricing, and I was like, “Oh, this is cool. Oh, I can pump this right in, this is great. Now I don’t have to worry about looking at supply and demand every week and figuring out what I should do for pricing. Uplisting is kind of doing all that for me with third party integrations.”

The Results

A centralized hub to streamline the booking process

Uplisting’s channel manager and integrations with Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO (Homeaway), and more not only eliminated double-bookings for Dave, but they also were able to automate much of their daily tasks.
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“I would say just that streamlined approach to making sure I have one centralized hub to manage all of the different platforms is the most valuable for me.
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Just making sure that I’m able to be on Booking.com, on VRBO, and Airbnb, or even booking directly and just having the peace of mind knowing that the dates are blocked off.”
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Uplisting also automates a lot of processes and digital presence online, allowing Dave to focus on other business areas.
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“Uplisting helps take care of a lot of that digital presence for me quite a bit, where I don’t have to worry about changing prices or sending check-in and check-out instructions. It’s all done automatically. That frees up a lot more time to take care of the other boots on the ground type stuff”.