A First-Timer’s Guide to Owning a Vacation Rental
Your First Vacation Rental
Starting a vacation rental business can be an adventure, but first you have to know where to start. If you’re thinking about purchasing a property to turn into a vacation rental that will fulfill your passive income dreams, we’ve written a guide just for you.
In this blog, we’ll cover the broad strokes of what you should know and expect from owning your first vacation rental, including both the basics like cleaning and maintenance, as well as tips to ensure your first guests have the best experience possible during their first stay with you. While you won’t necessarily be an expert by the end of this guide, you’ll at least have a good overview of being a first-time vacation rental owner.
The Basics
Taking Care of Cleaning and Maintenance
The first task of every new vacation rental owner is to ensure that both cleaning and maintaining of the property will be taken care of, so your first order of business should be to research and hire maintenance and cleaning professionals to come in on a regular basis.
Some owners opt to take care of cleaning and maintenance themselves–this works out well if you live in the area, but can quickly become a bit of a hassle if you’re not local or if you own multiple properties. Other owners decide to hire a property management company, like LocalVR, to take care of these tasks for them. Many property management companies already have relationships with local cleaning companies and maintenance crews, meaning they’ll already know the best people for the job. However, if you want to keep your expenses down, hiring out for cleaning and maintenance can be done quickly and easily using the Internet or your local business connections.
Getting Started on AirBnB and Other Distribution Sites
The second order of business is to create a listing for your property on distribution channels such as AirBnB, Vrbo, Expedia, and the like.
In order to put your best foot forward and stand out from the competition, it’s important to hire a professional photographer to take pictures of your property. Another important aspect of creating your listing is your listing description. Other than your photos, your listing description is perhaps the important part of appealing to potential guests, and writing a good one is the job of many marketing professionals around the world.
To stand out against that stiff competition, you should put a great deal of effort into your description. Be sure to include not only what amenities your property offers, but also details like its proximity to local attractions. This will help your potential guests to better plan out their vacation and make the most of their vacation rental experience.
Your First Guests: How to Give Them the Best Experience Ever
Check-in and Check Out
Checking in and out of a vacation rental should be the easiest part of a guest experience, and one thing that will make it a cinch for your guests is using keyless entry. Even if you don’t have any other smart home features in your short-term rental, a smart lock will make it incredibly simple for guests to get in and out of your rental, plus you won’t have to worry about anyone you don’t know having a key to your property.
Another way to improve guest experience in this realm is to offer early check-ins and late check outs, which you can charge an extra fee for. Guests might have a flight that they need to accommodate or other plans that might delay them or cause them to show up early, and allowing them to still check into their accommodations is a simple way to enhance their experience, no extra effort required.
Communicating with Guests
To give your guests a five-star experience, communication is crucial. Being a self-managed short-term rental owner can be a bit like being a doctor–you’re always on call, no matter what. Whether guests have easy questions or there’s a huge emergency that has arisen, staying in touch with your guests is essential to ensuring that you provide the best experience possible as a host.
Staying in touch with your guests has a huge impact on your reviews, and can help you to prevent bad reviews from ever happening. When you take care of a guest’s concerns on the spot, rather than waiting until the right time, they’ll see the amount of effort put in and will typically respond in kind when it comes time to review your property. And preventing bad reviews is important, especially in the beginning of your short-term rental career, because guests won’t want to stay at your property if they see that other visitors have had issues in the past.
However, if you do get a bad review, we have the perfect game plan for you. Check out our blog on how to deal with bad reviews on your vacation rental.
Take Some of the Work Out Of Your Short-Term Rental
No one said that owning a vacation rental is easy, but it can certainly be a rewarding experience if you go about it with careful planning and organization. If you’d like to learn more about becoming a better short-term rental owner, check out more of our blogs, like our guide on ways to make your rental stand out from the competition.
Not sure if managing your vacation rental is the right move for you? Take a look into LocalVR’s expert property management services. Not only does our program help owners to preserve their property value for years to come, it also can help to skyrocket your revenue.