How to Manage Your Vacation Rental Business Properly
Renting out your vacation home and unused property can generate significant revenue, if you know how to manage your vacation rental business properly.
In fact, more and more people are looking to sites like Airbnb, HomeAway, Wimdu or somewhere else to rent out a spare room, apartment or an entire house to make some extra cash. However, before you jump on the vacation rental bandwagon, there are some important considerations. To properly manage your vacation rental business, remember these tips from the booking experts at BookingTeam.com.
1. Get the proper insurance.
Like any business, it is important to make sure that you have all the necessary paperwork and take property legal and security measures. One key to doing that is to get the right property insurance. Most homeowner policies will not cover damage or other incidents for vacation rental properties. Make sure to do your research, get the proper insurance, and keep your paperwork up-to-date.
2. Get professional photos.
High-quality photos of your property are critical to attracting guests. When people browse for lodgings online, the first thing they look for is images. To get more bookings, clear, professional photos are a must.
3. Establish efficient procedures and policies.
How will guests get into your property? Chances are you won’t be able to greet them personally every time. If you are, then great, but prepare for the chance that you might not. You could use key exchange services like City CoPilot, or a luggage storage service like CityStasher, (a service that BookingTeam.com can arrange), but there are many more considerations.
What amenities will you offer? What information will you collect and what will be the procedure for check-in and check-out? What will you do if you need to relocate a guest? All these questions and more need to be addressed, with clearly outlined procedures for you and anyone else on your team to access.
4. Set ground rules.
Establishing a clear set of rules is essential to running a successful vacation rental business. This way guests know exactly what they are receiving and what behavior is accepted from the start. It is much easier to do this at the beginning than try to form rules later on. A copy of your house rules should be visible on all your listings as well as any marketing. You should also give a reminder at check-in.
5. Don’t try to do everything yourself.
Keep in mind that there are a lot of moving parts to run a vacation rental business. It may seem simple at first, but between managing booking dates, keeping up on property maintenance and repair, dealing with guests and making sure you’re meeting all the regulations and paperwork, it can get hectic fast. If you try to do everything yourself, you will likely burn out quickly.
If you plan to do it on your own, expect to dedicate a lot of time and effort into managing it. Even then, there will be times when you are not instantly available to deal with an issue. Unless you are an expert in the vacation rental business, it can be hard to keep up.
To optimize your properties, many successful vacation rental businesses, not only hire a property manager but utilize booking platforms like BookingTeam.com. With our technology and team of booking professionals available 24/7, you have more time to focus on growing your business and improving the guest experience.
Running a vacation rental property can produce significant financial benefits, but only if you do it properly. With these tips and BookingTeam.com, you can maximize the performance of your vacation rentals while taking some of the pressure off of yourself.
In addition, put up some security camera on the perimeter. In fact security is a must for us.
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Always great to see and read your post, thanks for the tips , upped. Keep up the good work.
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Great advice @bookingteam.com. I also rely a lot on the fulltime neighbors nearby. Nice to get a phone call if there is a concern with either the property or the customers. I give them a spare key and always remember them at Christmas time with a small gift card to show my appreciation. Thanks for the excellent posts.
nice, I like it the your post thanks, up voted and resteem
I agree with taking good photos. Sometimes photos are better that real place
Thanks for posting this. Many people are going to benefit from this. In South Africa many people have beach homes that just stand empty for most of the year. But you also get people, often older people who may be retired already, who go and live there during the year.
Rust is a major issue here, because many of the people with beach homes live in highlying areas (high above sea level) where rust is never a problem). They may neglect using aluminium for window frames and so forth. Thanks again and have a great day. Following you!
The first part is so true, as far as I know, there's no such thing as insurance for homesharing business although sometimes guess of homesharing property can be rowdy. Perhaps you should diversify on that niche @bookingteam.com :D
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thanks fro sharing ,,,,,,