It’s a big challenge being part of the global growth of the vacation rental business. Once the challenge has been accepted, there is an even bigger challenge called the successful vacation rental business. You face up to the challenge and you want to take all possible steps to justify the epithet “successful”. Once you are heading in the right direction for success, an unavoidable part of the road are the portals. Every vacation rental owner knows that the portals are excellent marketing for their business. Every owner knows that the portals get their property in front of a huge number of people in the shortest time. Every owner knows that the portals shorten the path to success. Knowing all the positive aspects of the relationship between your business and the portals, you are in an optimistic mood to spend some relaxing and enjoyable time, knowing that it will be spent wisely, and you begin the game called Portal.

Level 1 - Beginners

As a beginner to the game, you do not feel the need for any special skills or any special qualifications for successfully completing the first level.

Very often these expectations are met because the whole level has a few basic, but very crucial steps, where you start to enter the initial property details:

• Title – This is very easy to enter and not time-consuming unless the number of words or letters is limited and you get: "You have reached the character limit for this field", and usually you need just one more word to describe your property.
• Description - There are many possibilities for giving a complete description of the property. You can show off your writing skills, let your imagination run wild, and use the space to describe the property accurately and attractively. If you don’t have the description already written, just ready to cut-and-paste, then after you’ve spent a lot of time on it and still don't have the description ready, you promise yourself that you will go back to it another day and re-edit it, but usually that day never comes...

You move on to the next level...

Level 2 - Intermediate

After you've successfully passed the first level, you don't expect to spend much time at this level:

• Address - Yes, it sounds simple, there’s only one, just enter it and you’re done. But usually you need to pin your property on the map. You will not waste a lot of time if you discover the trick so that even after refreshing the page you don’t lose what you entered before (please note, refreshing the page is not recommended on some portals). Not to mention forgetting to click the save button.
• Details - In this part of the game a lot of time can be wasted, since the property might need to be described in detail, from the roof to the last tile of the outside swimming pool. You may need to add the most basic, important details, but you may find yourself with the tape measure in your hand working out the size of each of the beds (it’s not good enough to say they are single, double or king size) or how big the frying pan in the kitchen is. Oh, yes, and what it’s made of…

If you are very fast, very skilful and still have some of the time left that is allowed for the game, you move on to the next level...

Level 3 - Advanced

Plain and simple:

• Photos - You know that they are quite important in giving an initial impression to potential clients, so once you have them ready, you go at full speed to upload them. At the same time you realize why this level is for advanced players. The photos must be of high quality, a certain size and even with superfast internet the upload goes on and on. You edit all the photos one by one, you upload them and then you see that only some of them are visible. You try to sort them so that the best ones can be seen and wait another eternity because of the too many page refreshes. After all your trouble and time spent, the property might not be published straight away, because the photos don’t show the right number of beds.

But, the game time expired a time long ago...

Level 4 - Professional

This is the level for the real professionals. This level is for those of you who still have some of the allotted time left for the game called Portal.
Now you work on:

• Calendars and rates - Every vacation rental owner knows what it means to keep the calendar always up to date and to maintain the price of the properties. Importing all the different prices for the different seasons, continually updating the availability, the discounts depending on the number of days booked, early bookings, last minute bookings and so on...

This level is not easy at all. It takes so much time and after completing the previous levels, not much time remains.

Any owner who has started the game called Portal wishes to complete it successfully in the time scheduled for it. But, as we have seen, it is not that simple. One thing is certain, if you are successful the reward is there - guaranteed visibility of your property by a huge number of potential clients in the shortest time.

The reward is a huge challenge and every owner would like to get it. That would mean every player would be a winner. That would mean completing all the levels in a short time. It would mean finding the best strategy to play efficiently, e.g. automatically updating the calendars in level 4, automatically updating the availability no matter how often it changes...

That strategy is known, and you can implement it. That strategy is called: Vacation Rental Software.