Hostaway is the most-recommended PMS for the 5–100 listing tier, and it earns it on the operations side. What it can't be is a marketing team — the work that actually fills the calendar.
Automation keeps your operation humming; it doesn't create a single new guest. Being found, being trusted, and booking direct is marketing work — and that's the layer Cavmir adds, as a done-for-you team on top of your Hostaway stack.
The operators who feel this most sit in the 20–80 door range: big enough that OTA commission is a five-figure line item, not yet big enough to staff a marketing department. Hiring one senior marketer means picking a single specialty — a writer who can't run paid media, an ads person who can't build a website. A short-term rental marketing agency exists for exactly this stretch of the curve. Cavmir gives a Hostaway operation the whole function at once — brand, website, SEO, paid, content — for less than the loaded cost of that one hire, and every piece of it reports to the same weekly number: direct-booking share.
Where Hostaway fits
Straight from our PMS directory — what Hostaway is strong at, and where the marketing gap opens up.
Hostaway
Mid-market PMS with strong automation and a friendly admin UI.
- Multi-calendar + channel manager
- Automated messaging + reviews
- Template booking pages (on their platform)
- Solid mobile app for ops
Cavmir take: The most-recommended PMS for the 5–50 listing tier, and genuinely good at operations. The booking pages it offers are generic templates on Hostaway's platform — not a branded website you own, and not marketing. That's Cavmir's job.
How Cavmir builds on top of Hostaway
Hostaway is a genuinely good mid-market PMS: multi-calendar sync, automated messaging and reviews, and a clean mobile app. For 5 to 100 listings, it does the operational job well.
What it doesn't give you is a website you own. The booking pages it offers are generic templates on Hostaway's own platform — you fill one in, you don't own it, and it arrives with zero traffic. No SEO, no brand, no paid media, no owner funnel. The listing still lives and dies on Airbnb.
Cavmir picks up exactly there. We build a real direct-booking website you own, run the SEO and paid programs that send it real traffic, and connect it to your Hostaway availability. You keep the ops. We own the brand and the demand.
Why Hostaway operators hire Cavmir
The pattern is consistent across Hostaway operators in the 5–100 door range.
A template page isn't a website you own
The booking page Hostaway hands you lives on their platform, carries no real brand, and gets no traffic. We build a real direct-booking website you own — and give it the SEO and campaigns that turn it into a channel, not a brochure.
Automation is dialed; demand is flat
Hostaway automates messaging, reviews, and calendars beautifully. None of that creates a new guest. Bookings still come from the OTAs, which means the 15–22% commission still comes out of every stay.
No one owns the brand
Great automation, generic brand. When an owner or a repeat guest compares you to a competitor, there's nothing that makes you the obvious choice. We build the brand that does.
The marketing to-do list never gets done
Between turnovers and guest issues, the SEO, content, ads, and owner outreach sit at the bottom of the list forever. Cavmir is the team that actually does them, every week.
How Cavmir works alongside Hostaway
We keep your Hostaway automations exactly as they are. Messaging, reviews, calendars, pricing rules — untouched. We work upstream of all of it, on the demand that fills the calendar in the first place.
We build a website you actually own. Not a template on someone else's platform — a real branded direct-booking site, connected to your Hostaway availability, that ranks and converts.
We run the whole marketing function. Technical and content SEO, Meta and Google ads, social, and the owner-acquisition funnel — as an outsourced team that reports weekly on direct-booking share and cost per acquired owner.
Flat retainer, no commission. Hostaway bills you monthly for software; we bill a flat retainer tiered to portfolio size. We never touch your booking revenue.
The first 90 days on top of Hostaway
Hostaway operators usually arrive with operations already dialed, which makes the rollout pure demand work. Ninety days in, every piece below is live. Your side of the lift is small: a listing export from Hostaway, access to the photo library, and an hour with whoever owns the calendar. Here's the order the work lands in.
Month 1 — The brand and the website your operation has earned
We start with the audit: brand, listings, direct-booking share, and where the 5–100 door portfolio actually makes its money. Then the foundation goes up — a real identity with positioning and voice, and a direct-booking website you own, connected to your Hostaway availability so calendars stay in sync without anyone touching your automations. Your messaging rules, review flows, and mobile ops keep running exactly as you built them; we're constructing the demand channel in front of them.
Month 2 — Listing rebuilds, the content engine, and local search
Month two goes wide across the portfolio. Listing copy gets rewritten unit by unit, photography gaps get flagged and prioritized, and amenities and positioning get tuned so every listing sells as hard as your best one. At the same time the content engine starts: destination pages, property-type pages, and the first long-form pieces — all feeding the SEO that ranks your brand for the searches guests in your markets actually make.
Month 3 — Paid media, AI search, and reviews that sell
With the site converting and the content indexing, we turn on paid: retargeting for the guests who looked and didn't book, prospecting on Meta and Google for the ones who haven't found you yet, and the owner-acquisition campaign if you manage for others. The site gets tuned for AI search, so assistants recommending stays in your market can actually read and cite you. And your review library — the one Hostaway's automations have been quietly building — finally goes to work on the site, in the listings, and in the ads.
From day 91 it's a steady monthly rhythm: content shipping, campaigns compounding, and a weekly report on direct-booking share and cost per acquired owner — the two numbers this whole layer exists to move.
See what working together looks like.
A 30-minute strategy call. No deck, no pitch — just a look at your current direct-booking percentage and where the leverage is.
Book a Strategy CallPrograms by Portfolio Size
Most Hostaway operators start on Foundation or Operator. Here's how the programs map to door count — quoted to your actual portfolio.
5–25 doors
Foundation
- Brand audit + listing copy refresh (all units)
- Distribution audit across 60+ channels
- Listing photography QA + replacement priorities
- Monthly social content cadence (2 posts/week)
- Monthly performance reporting
- Email support, 48-hour response
25–100 doors
Operator
- Everything in Foundation
- Direct-booking website (built, not templated)
- Technical + content SEO (12 long-form posts/yr)
- Owner-acquisition campaign (paid + landing page)
- Paid ads management (Meta + Google)
- Quarterly strategy calls with founder
100–500 doors
Portfolio
- Everything in Operator
- Dedicated account team (3 named operators)
- Multi-location SEO (per-market landing pages)
- Influencer + creator partnership program
- Custom CRM + owner-acquisition pipeline
- Monthly executive call + quarterly board-ready report
500+ doors
Enterprise
- Multi-brand structure (parent + sub-brands)
- White-label option (we operate as your in-house team)
- M&A marketing support (acquired-property integration)
- Multi-region content + paid programs
- Annual on-site planning
All tiers are month-to-month after a 90-day initial engagement. No long-term contracts. No revenue share. No booking commissions.
A direct-booking website you own
A template booking page from a PMS rarely moves the needle — it carries no brand and no traffic. We build a real direct-booking website you own, then give it the SEO, brand, past-guest email, and retargeting it needs to convert — so the 15–22% you'd have paid Airbnb stays with you. On a mid-size portfolio, moving direct-booking share up ten points is usually the single cheapest revenue lift available. And it's durable: rankings, content, and a past-guest email list keep producing after any given campaign stops, which is what makes the direct channel an asset rather than an expense. The OTAs stay in the mix — they're just no longer the whole mix.
Owner acquisition for Hostaway managers
If you manage for owners, adding doors is the fastest way to grow — and Hostaway does nothing to help you win them. We build the owner-facing landing page, run targeted paid media at STR-owning investors, and produce the case studies and comparisons that rank for owner-intent searches, so qualified owners come to you. It's the growth lever with the shortest payback in this tier — one signed owner can cover months of the program, and the assets keep working after any given campaign rests.
Hostaway operators ask us these
What operators want to know before signing.
Do we have to leave Hostaway?
No. We work on top of Hostaway. Your channel manager, automations, and mobile ops stay exactly as they are. Cavmir adds the marketing layer — brand, SEO, paid media, a website you own, and owner acquisition.
We use the booking page Hostaway gave us. Isn't that enough?
That page is a generic template on Hostaway's platform — you don't own it, it carries no real brand, and it gets no traffic on its own. We build a direct-booking website you own and drive SEO, paid, email, and retargeting traffic to it, connected to your Hostaway availability.
Isn't Hostaway's marketing enough?
Hostaway is excellent at operations — messaging, calendars, reviews. None of that creates a new guest or acquires a new owner. That upstream demand work is exactly what Cavmir does.
Do you take a cut of bookings?
No. Flat monthly retainer, tiered to the size of your portfolio. No revenue share, no per-booking fees, no cut of owner commissions. Your booking revenue is yours.
How fast do results show?
Listing optimization and distribution show in 30–60 days. The direct-booking site and SEO compound over 90–180 days. Owner-acquisition campaigns usually deliver qualified inbound owners in 60–90 days. We report weekly.
What size portfolio do you work with?
From about 5 doors up. Hostaway operators most often land on our Foundation or Operator program — request a quote and we'll scope it to your portfolio.
What do the first 90 days with Cavmir look like for a Hostaway operation?
Month one: brand foundation and a direct-booking website connected to your Hostaway availability. Month two: listing rebuilds across the portfolio, the content engine, and local SEO. Month three: paid media, AI-search optimization, and putting your review library to work. Operations stay untouched the whole way — the 90-day playbook on this page walks through it.
Can you use the reviews Hostaway already collects?
Yes — automated review collection is one of Hostaway's genuinely good features, and most operators sit on a library of five-star proof almost nobody sees. We put it to work: on the direct-booking site, in listing copy, in ads, and in the owner pitch.
Let's look at your numbers together.
30 minutes. Bring your last quarter's direct-booking percentage and a door count. We'll show you the two or three highest-leverage moves for your portfolio. Free, no pitch deck, no follow-up sequence.
Book Your Strategy Call