Why vacation rental pass automation exists
Short-term rentals are the hardest traffic a gate handles. Turnover is constant, most of a week's arrivals land on Saturday, and every one of those drivers is at the gate for the first time. The usual arrangement — a rental company emails a guest list, someone at the gate keys it in, and the list is already out of date when the cars start showing up — fails in both directions. Guests wait for a pass that isn't there, and the community loses track of who is actually behind the gate.
Automation removes the list entirely. The rental company's booking or property-management software sends each reservation to Palmetto Guard as it is made, and the rental pass is created on the spot. Nobody re-keys anything, nothing is stale, and the pass is waiting when the guest arrives.
The reason boards hesitate is that this sounds like handing the gate to a third party. It isn't, and the section below on control is the important half of this page: scoped tokens, unit-level limits, community-set pricing, and a report the community can invoice from.
Passes From Bookings
Created automatically
Your booking or property-management software sends each reservation and the rental pass is created immediately — nobody re-keys a guest list at the gate.
A single API endpoint
One authenticated HTTPS endpoint accepts a single reservation or a batch of up to 200. Any system that can send a webhook can connect to it.
Safe retries, no duplicates
Send your own reservation ID and the same booking will never issue two passes, however many times your system retries or reconnects.
One pass per vehicle
A single reservation can issue up to 50 passes, each with its own serial number, for groups arriving in more than one car.
Printed or scanned
Rental passes print at the gate or redeem at the community kiosk exactly like any other pass — no separate process for staff to learn.
Per-item results
A batch response tells you exactly what happened to each reservation, so a single bad passcode does not silently take the rest of the batch down with it.
The Community Stays In Control
The reason boards hesitate to let a rental company issue passes is that it feels like handing over the gate. It isn't.
Scoped, revocable tokens
Each rental company gets its own token, tied to one community, which an administrator can revoke or regenerate at any time.
Only your own units
A token can only issue passes for units that company actually manages. A passcode for anything else is rejected with a clear error.
Rates set by the community
Nights and charges come from the community's own pricing model — per-week or tiered flat rate. Rental companies never set their own prices.
Billing you can reconcile
A rental passes report groups every pass by management company with nights and charge totals, filterable by stay date and billing status.
Connecting Your System
The integration is one endpoint and a bearer token. Most booking platforms can be pointed at it without custom development.
Get a token
The community administrator issues your company a token from inside Palmetto Guard. Tokens are shown once, and you get a separate one per community you manage units in.
Send reservations
POST the passcode, renter name, and stay dates. Nights, pricing, and serial numbers are all computed server-side — you never send them.
Handle the response
A 200 means everything landed; a 207 means some items failed validation and tells you which. Retry 5xx with backoff, fix 4xx before resending.
Full technical detail — authentication, request and response shapes, the error reference, and working examples — is in the Rental Pass API guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is vacation rental pass automation?
Letting the booking system issue the gate pass. Instead of a rental company emailing a weekly guest list to the gate — or a guest arriving with nothing at all — each reservation is pushed to the community's pass system as it is booked, and the pass exists before the car does.
How does a booking become a gate pass?
Your booking or property-management software sends the reservation to a single authenticated HTTPS endpoint, and Palmetto Guard creates the rental pass immediately. The pass can then be printed or redeemed at the community kiosk like any other pass.
What stops a retried webhook creating duplicate passes?
Send your own reservation ID with each request. If a reservation with that ID has already produced a pass, Palmetto Guard returns the existing pass rather than creating a second one, so retries and reconnects are safe.
What if a group arrives in more than one car?
A single reservation can issue up to 50 passes, each with its own serial number, so every vehicle in a party carries its own credential.
Who controls pricing — the community or the rental company?
The community. Nights and charges are calculated from the community's own pricing model. Rental companies never set their own rates, and each company's token can only issue passes for the units it actually manages.
How many reservations can one request carry?
Up to 200 in a single batch. The response reports per-item results, so one bad passcode tells you exactly which reservation failed instead of silently taking the rest of the batch down with it.
What does a rental company have to build?
Usually nothing. The integration is one endpoint and a bearer token — any system that can send a webhook can connect. You POST the passcode, renter name, and stay dates; nights, pricing, and serial numbers are all computed server-side.
Can a community revoke a rental company's access?
At any time. Each company has its own token, tied to one community, that an administrator can revoke or regenerate from inside Palmetto Guard. Revoking it stops new passes immediately without touching passes already issued.
What if a rental company manages units in several communities?
They get a separate token per community. A token can only issue passes for the units that company actually manages in that community, and a passcode for anything else is rejected with a clear error.
How does billing between the community and the rental company work?
A rental passes report groups every pass by management company with nights and charge totals, filterable by stay date and billing status — so the monthly invoice comes off a report rather than out of someone's spreadsheet.
Do rental guests get the same pass experience as other guests?
Yes. Rental passes print at the gate or redeem at the community kiosk exactly like any other pass, so staff have no separate process to learn and no separate system to check.
What if a reservation is canceled or the dates change?
Send the update through the same endpoint against the same reservation ID. Because the ID is what identifies the booking, the community's record follows the booking rather than drifting away from it.
Managing rentals in a community that doesn't use Palmetto Guard yet?
We're happy to talk to the community on your behalf — the pitch is usually easier coming from the company that would be using it daily.
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