Start here if you manage your own vacation rentals

This guide is for someone who subscribes to the Owner plan and administers their own vacation rentals. You decide how they are configured, distributed, and operated. This is not the journey for a property owner invited by an agency to view specific rentals, or for someone working inside an agency.

Complete the journey in order. Adding a rental does not automatically put it on sale, and creating a connection does not mean that the channel is already active.

This journey starts after Holidario has provisioned your Owner workspace and an active trial or subscription. If you have no Owner team, see Create team, or see Choose plan, provisioning is still an assisted gate. Do not create an Agency workspace or use another team's records to continue.

Which device to use first#

Complete initial property, pricing, channel, and any assisted legal or billing setup on a computer with a wide screen. Each operational form still needs separate mobile or tablet acceptance; readable documentation on a phone does not prove that the product screen is accepted. Then test the compact daily tasks you intend to use on the real device. If a field, confirmation, or result is hidden, do not save: complete that action on the computer and record the affected screen.

1. Sign in and confirm where you are working#

1. Sign in and verify your email with a personal account; do not share credentials.
2. Follow the first-session orientation to recognize the dashboard, menu, and active team.
3. Open the user menu and confirm that the displayed team is your owner account.
4. Review your plan, its limits, and billing status before loading your full portfolio.
5. Open the Owner Pending Tasks checklist and use it as the source of truth for setup order and assisted gates.
6. Configure how you want to receive and review notifications.
7. Configure the operational language and, if any rental does not use mainland Spain time, check time-based workflows.

If you also belong to an agency, switch teams before opening properties or reservations. The same user can see different data and features in each team.

2. Achieve the first useful result#

Your first objective is not to configure every module. It is to leave one real property and its rental operation in a controlled preparation state, without claiming that a channel or calendar is live.

1. Create your first property manually. This is the default path for a new external Owner account.
2. Verify its name, owner, address, map position, physical details, and photographs.
3. Create its vacation-rental operation.
4. Prepare the operation and complete the relevant commercial, operational, and legal information.
5. Return to Pending Tasks and confirm which property and operation rows Holidario has detected.

Use the Booking.com or Airbnb URL importer only when that workflow has been explicitly accepted for your account. A visible import field is not proof that it is the supported external path.

This first phase is complete when you can identify the property and its operation without ambiguity and their saved information is accurate. It does not require an existing or test reservation, and it does not prove calendar or channel readiness.

3. Prepare pricing before opening availability#

Pricing follows a sequence: global settings, rate plan, monthly assignments, and final review.

1. Define the global pricing baseline.
2. Create a rate plan with complete prices and rules.
3. Assign the plan to every month that you intend to sell, including changes of season and year.
4. Review prices and availability on ordinary dates, high-demand dates, and season boundaries.

Do not assume a rate is correct because a month displays a plan name. Check the resulting price and minimum stay on specific dates.

4. Prepare each channel without relying on external tools#

Holidario Channel Manager is a managed integration. You do not need to subscribe to Channex, sign in to its platform, or request technical keys.

For each rental and platform:

1. Add and verify the OTA listing details: platform, name, identifier, and public URL.
2. Prepare the Channel Manager infrastructure and wait for the background job to finish.
3. Confirm that all future reservations, blocks, and owner stays are present in Holidario.
4. Complete the pre-activation checklist.
5. Stop at the assisted gate. OTA authentication, listing mapping, migration sequencing, and final activation need an agreed responsible person and onboarding channel.
6. After you receive explicit confirmation that the correct listing is active and Holidario is the intended calendar authority, compare at least one occupied, one blocked, and one available date against the correct listing.

Start with one property. Do not migrate every listing until the first connection receives reservations and reflects prices and availability as expected.

If no onboarding contact or channel has been assigned, activation is not ready. Do not enter provider credentials, guess a private route, or change the previous calendar authority.

Stop before activation if#

• a future reservation is missing;
• an occupied date appears available;
• you do not know which system currently controls the calendar;
• the previous PMS or channel manager can still write availability;
• the listing identifier or mapped rental is not confirmed;
• a price or minimum stay has no clear source.

Do not test activation, disconnect, or create another property to see whether the issue disappears. Follow Troubleshoot channel setup and preserve the previous state until the difference is reconciled.

5. Learn the daily routine#

Begin this circuit only after the first channel is explicitly accepted and the first real reservation exists. Do not create a reservation merely to satisfy the setup guide.

1. Use Calendar only if that entry is visible and has been accepted for your account. If it is missing, treat calendar review as an outstanding assisted gate; do not guess a URL.
2. Find and verify the real reservation before contacting the guest or changing data.
3. Work with reservation conversations in the correct thread.
4. Use guest data and check-in links only after Holidario explicitly confirms that the public guest journey is accepted for your account. After that acceptance, share the private guest check-in link when appropriate and review registered travellers. An existing reservation or visible button does not replace that acceptance for a new external account.
5. Physically confirm each departure and leave every issue with a verifiable next step.
6. End the day by reviewing pending notifications and leaving every exception with a next step.

The guest count entered at booking time is indicative. Confirm the actual group when you need to know whether any travellers remain to be registered.

6. Recover from a block without creating another problem#

• A module or button is missing: review why an option can be unavailable or denied. It may depend on the plan, resource state, or a permission.
• You have reached a limit: review usage and the plan; do not delete properties or reservations to bypass the warning.
• An OTA reservation is missing or differs: follow the channel-manager reconciliation. Do not create a manual copy.
• The check-in link fails after acceptance: use the link recovery guide; do not request identity documents through an unauthorized channel. If the journey was not yet accepted for the account, do not use it as a test.
• A message does not confirm delivery: review its delivery status before sending it again.
• You see another account's data: stop viewing it and report it immediately.

7. Escalate with useful information#

Ask for help when there is an overbooking risk, exposure of unrelated data, a missing reservation, contradictory states, or an external process that still fails after one controlled retry. Follow How to ask for help and include the team, property or reservation, screen, time, and exact error text.

Do not send passwords, verification codes, signed guest links, identity documents, or provider keys.

Your staged readiness criteria#

Do not use one completed task or percentage as proof that the account is ready for every workflow. Pass the gates in order:

1. Account ready: the correct Owner workspace, active plan, billing identity, and recovery path are confirmed.
2. Property ready: one accurate property and one complete rental operation are unambiguous.
3. Pricing ready: the price and minimum stay are verified on representative dates.
4. Channel preparation ready: listing data, future reservations and blocks, and infrastructure are reconciled.
5. Channel live: authentication, mapping, calendar authority, and activation have explicit acceptance.
6. Daily operation ready: a real reservation can be found and verified, and exceptions have an agreed escalation path.

Direct-booking, analytics, and other capabilities not exercised by these gates are not proven ready merely because they appear in a plan or menu. After the first property passes its applicable gates, onboard the next one by repeating the same sequence.