What is a Hostaway multi-unit listing?
- A multi-unit listing is a group of units that are similar or identical in size and appearance, that share the same booking terms. For example, an apartment block with Six double rooms. Each unit is called a "sub-unit"
- The Multi-unit is an identical listing that must be at the same address, with the same amenities, same size, same appearance, same booking terms, and price strategy
- A Standard Apartment will be treated as a listing in Hostaway whereas Units are only a reflection of the availability (how many Standard Apartment you want to rent)
Good to know: Reservations will be charged for one of the 6 or 2 units in the 2 listings as if they were separate listings. However, your Hostaway subscription will take into account only the 2 listings and not the units in them.
When to use this feature?
You can use this feature if you have several listings at the same address.
For example, you have an apartment with 6 standard double rooms and 2 standard double rooms with a sea view. With the multi-unit feature, you can create 2 listings in Hostaway and covert them to multiple units as shown below:
- Standard Double Room (6)
- Unit 101
- Unit 102
- Unit 103
- Unit 104
- Unit 105
- Unit 106
- Standard Apartment with sea view (2)
- Unit 201
- Unit 202
How to convert a listing to a Multi-Unit Listing in Hostaway?
- Go to your Hostaway Dashboard > Listings
- Create the listing in Hostaway
- Go to Channel Manager > Listing Mapping
- Click on the 3 dots as shown in the screenshot > Click on Convert to multi-unit
- You'll get a pop-up box to select the number of units you want to offer as the listing you're going to convert to multi-unit
- Click on the dropdown > select the number > Click on Convert
Important
- The update can take from a few minutes to hours, depending on the number of units and information
- There is no way to delete a specific unit, you can only reduce them (the system will make arrangements for the new number of units).
- If you reduce the number of units, it can generate situations of overlapping reservations
- The Units are not cross-listing. If a unit is booked, the other units are still available. Cross-listing is not possible for Multi-Unit listings
Multi-units in different channels
How to connect Multi-Units with Airbnb?
If the Multi-Unit listing is already available on Airbnb
You can simply import the listing from Airbnb which will create the multi-unit listing in Hostaway. Adding units in Hostaway will automatically update the Airbnb listing.
If the listing is not available on Airbnb
- Create the listing in Hostaway
- Convert to Multi-unit
- Once you created the listing in Hostaway you can simply export the listing to Airbnb
When you create the property in Hostaway, make sure the property type is "Condominium" or "Apartment" for multi-unit properties. It is not recommended to use "house".
How to connect Multi-Units with Booking.com?
- Create the listing on Booking.com as a multi-unit, this is done on your Booking.com extranet under Property > Property Layout > Edit number of unit on each room/apartment
- The same listing should be set as a multi-unit in Hostaway
- Once the listing is live on Booking.com, you can connect the Booking.com multi-unit listing to the Hostaway multi-unit listing
It is not possible to export multi-unit listings to Booking.com.
How to connect Multi-Units with Vrbo Api?
- You should have/create the listing in Hostaway as a Multi-unit
- Then you can export the multi-unit listing to Vrbo the same way you would export a single listing
- If the listing was a single unit on Vrbo it will not change but it will still be handled as a multi-unit, based on the units available on the date.
Follow the article to export the listing to Vrbo.
How to connect Multi-Units with Expedia?
- Create the listing on Expedia as a multi-unit
- The same listing should be set as a multi-unit in Hostaway
- Once the listing is live on Expedia, you can connect the Expedia multi-unit listing to the Hostaway multi-unit listing
How to connect Multi-Units with Marriot?
At the moment it is not possible to connect multi-unit listings with Marriot.
How does multi-unit work?
Listings
Multi-unit listings will have units created with random IDs that are internal to Hostaway. The IDs are visible in Listings > Edit > Units. The name of the unit can be changed and will be visible on the calendar.
Calendar
- The calendar rate is the same for all units
- When a reservation comes in, it will be assigned to a unit randomly
- You can drag and drop to maximize occupancy or click on the reservation > Edit > Change the unit
- If you are using multi-units in a listing and you have received two or more bookings for the same dates, it may appear as a double booking in the calendar unit, but it is not
- All you need to do is drag and drop one of the red bookings onto a free space on another unit in that listing
- This is because the system sometimes does not know how to distribute these bookings within the listing, so all you have to do is manually change the unit of the booking
- Hostaway software always tries to distribute the reservations throughout the units, but there may be cases where this does not occur as intended and will look like a double-booking, however, this only means the reservation will need to be manually relocated to the correct available unit. If this happens we still send the correct availability to the connected channels by blocking any available date that could not be allocated correctly, this will prevent actual double-bookings:
Our system optimizes monetization for any available gap days on multiple units by unifying the spread availability of multiple units as one listing only if reservation redistribution is possible.
This means that you may receive reservations for a unit that might not look like it's available but manual relocation of the surrounding reservations will allow for the booking to be processed.
In this example, a 3-night booking was received on Unit 3 based on the gap days available from Units 2 and 3, since it's a consecutive availability the system allowed the booking on Unit 3 and suggested moving the 1-night booking to Unit 2 to fit the new reservation.
NOTE: This only applies if the reservations can be moved vertically to a different unit on its current dates, if this is not possible then the system will not allow a reservation on these dates.
Financial Reporting
Analytics, listing financials, and occupancy reports will all report data on a listing level, not on a Unit level.
Tasks, Automation, Guest Reviews
All these features will work the same.
Good to know: If you want to include the unit number or name in the automation, we recommend that you delay triggering the automation because sometimes you may need to move the reservations from one unit to another. This way, the automation will update the correct unit name or unit ID according to your custom field selected in the automation.