Author:
Mimsy Angeles
A short-term rental virtual assistant job description should cover one role. The three roles STR operators hire most are:
Each template below includes the schedule, responsibilities, requirements, success measures, and a screening task. Smaller portfolios often combine guest communication and operations in one hire. Bookkeeping needs a different skill set and usually goes to a separate person. Delegate places dedicated STR assistants and bookkeepers starting at $13 an hour. Every candidate is vetted through paid work simulations.
A post titled “Airbnb VA Needed” will fill your inbox fast. Most applicants will say they can do everything. You’ll find out what they can’t do after they’ve started.
The fix is a job description written for one role. Below are three, one each for guest communication, operations, and bookkeeping. Copy the one you need, replace everything in [brackets], and cut what doesn’t fit your portfolio. If you’d rather start from a finished example, the editable kit has a filled-in sample for each role.
Seven pages, editable in Canva. Each role comes with a filled-in sample for a 14-property operator, followed by a blank template with every field to replace marked in [brackets].
Start with what’s falling behind right now.
What's slipping |
Use this template |
|---|---|
Guest messages wait hours for a reply, especially overnight
|
Guest Communication Assistant
|
Cleaners get double-booked, repairs sit for days, calendars drift out of sync
|
STR Operations Assistant
|
You can't say which property made money last month
|
STR Bookkeeper
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The first two, and your portfolio is still small
|
Guest Communication Assistant, with the operations tasks added
|
Keep bookkeeping as its own role. Someone who’s great at calming an upset guest at midnight is rarely the person you want reconciling payouts. They’re different skills. Here’s why property management bookkeeping falls behind when it’s treated as a side task.
Not sure which problem is costing you the most? These nine bottlenecks and ten admin tasks an STR assistant can take over will help you sort it out.
Job title: Guest Communication Assistant, Short-Term Rentals (Remote)
About us: [Company name] manages [number] short-term rentals in [city or region]. Our guests book through [booking channels]. [One line on what makes your stays different, such as family-friendly homes or pet-friendly cabins.]
About the role: You’ll be the first person our guests hear from, from booking to checkout. Your goal is fast, accurate, friendly replies that solve the guest’s problem the first time.
Schedule: [Number] hours per week, covering [start time] to [end time], [your time zone]. [If you need overnight coverage: This shift covers US overnight hours, when late arrivals and lockouts tend to happen.]
What you’ll do:
What you’ll need:
How we’ll measure success:
Screening task: Reply to these two messages as if you were on shift, and explain what you’d do after sending each one.
1. “Hi, our flight lands at midnight. Is late check-in okay, and where do we park?”
2. “The door code isn’t working and it’s raining. We have two kids with us.”
Before you post: The escalation line is the one most hosts leave vague. Name the person, and list what they decide. Without it, your assistant either escalates everything or makes calls you’d rather make yourself. For damage claims and guest disputes, spell out exactly what the assistant gathers and what you approve.
Set your response target with the platform’s rules in mind. Airbnb’s Superhost status requires answering 90% of new inquiries and booking requests within 24 hours, so your shift target should be much tighter. The first 24 hours of a stay are where most bad reviews start. Give the new hire ready-made guest message templates and crisis SOPs they can run on day one.
Job title: Operations Assistant, Short-Term Rentals (Remote)
About us: [Company name] operates [number] properties in [locations]. [One line about your on-the-ground team, such as two cleaning crews and a handyman.]
About the role: You’ll keep every property ready for the next guest: turnovers scheduled, repairs tracked, calendars accurate, and supplies stocked. Our local team does the physical work. You make sure it happens on time.
Schedule: [Number] hours per week, overlapping with [local business hours] so you can reach cleaners and vendors.
What you’ll do:
What you’ll need:
How we’ll measure success:
Screening task: Send a sample week with these details:
Ask the applicant to build the cleaning schedule and write the message they’d send the repair vendor.
Before you post: Put the spending limit in writing. A clear dollar amount for restocks and small repairs lets your assistant act without waiting on you, and bigger decisions stay with you. If cleaning quality is the biggest issue, add the checks from this guide to fixing cleaner problems to the task list.
Job title: Bookkeeper, Short-Term Rental Portfolio (Remote)
About us: [Company name] [owns / manages on behalf of owners] [number] properties. We use [your accounting software] and [your PMS].
About the role: You’ll keep our books accurate and current, property by property, so we always know what each listing earns and costs. You’ll work alongside our CPA, who handles tax filing and tax advice.
Schedule: [Number] hours per week, with the monthly close finished by [day of the month].
What you’ll do:
What you’ll need:
How we’ll measure success:
Screening task: Send these files with two planted errors, and ask for a reconciliation with notes:
Make one payout missing and assign one expense to the wrong property. Ask the applicant to reconcile the month and note what they found and how they’d fix it.
Before you post: Write down what the bookkeeper doesn’t do. Tax advice and filing stay with your CPA, and the job description should say so. Applicants know exactly what they’re signing up for, and you avoid gray areas later. See how to keep property management books accurate for the monthly routine, and compare virtual bookkeeping services for STR hosts if you’d rather not hire directly.
Some phrases show up in almost every STR job post. Each one tells applicants something you didn’t mean to say.
If your post says |
Applicants read it as |
Write this instead |
|---|---|---|
"Must be a self-starter"
|
Nothing. Every applicant claims it.
|
"You'll handle [specific tasks] without daily check-ins."
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"Other duties as assigned"
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The job has no limits
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A full task list, plus who approves new tasks
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"Airbnb experience required"
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Any host-related work counts
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The exact work: "guest messaging for 10 or more listings"
|
"Flexible hours"
|
Work whenever you like
|
The exact hours, in your time zone
|
"Competitive pay"
|
You haven't decided yet
|
A pay range
|
"A rockstar who thrives in a fast-paced environment"
|
A chaotic job
|
What a normal busy day looks like
|
If you’re unsure what range to post, see how much to pay a Filipino VA and this 2026 breakdown of VA costs by role and hiring model.
A clear post brings better applicants. The screening task shows you which of them can do the work.
Resumes and interviews reward people who present well. A short task built from your own operations shows how someone thinks under the conditions they’ll actually face. That’s why gut feeling fails in remote vetting.
Before you read a single response, write down what a good answer looks like. On the door code task, a strong reply does four things:
Score every applicant against that note. A strong reply on that task tells you more than a polished cover letter does.
Delegate vets candidates the same way, through paid work simulations, and only the top 1% of applicants get through. For the interview stage, use these 8 questions to ask before hiring an STR VA and check for the 8 skills that matter most.
Once someone’s hired, the job description becomes the start of onboarding. The task list becomes your SOP list. Start with these five STR SOP templates and onboard with SOPs from the first week.
A clear job title and a short company description. Then the schedule with your time zone, a specific task list, the skills required, how success is measured, and a screening task. For guest communication roles, include who handles escalations.
Guest communication and operations often combine well for smaller portfolios, since both involve coordinating guests, cleaners, and vendors. Bookkeeping needs different skills and is usually better as a separate role.
Use a real situation from your own properties. For guest communication, have applicants reply to a late-arrival question and a lockout message. For operations, have them build a cleaning schedule from a sample week. For bookkeeping, have them reconcile a sample month that has a few errors in it.
Match the shift to when your guests need answers. For US properties, many operators want overnight coverage, which a Philippines-based assistant covers on a normal daytime shift.
It helps. With Delegate, the discovery and kickoff calls cover the role’s tasks, hours, and tools. Arriving with a filled-in template makes those calls faster and the candidate match more precise.
Writing the post takes an afternoon. Sorting through applicants, running screening tasks, and checking backgrounds can take weeks.
Delegate takes that part off your plate. Bring the template you filled in, and it becomes the starting point for scoping the role. Delegate recruits and vets candidates through paid work simulations, and you choose from up to 5 candidates within 7 to 14 days. Pay, benefits, and replacement hiring are handled for you. Pricing starts at $13 an hour, month to month, and larger portfolios can get a discounted per-property rate. See full STR pricing and vetting details.
Book a strategy call with your filled-in template, and we’ll tell you whether it’s one hire or two.
