When friends find out we own a Vacation Rental, there are always a lot of questions. One of the first questions is how much do you make, off of the rental. Many of our friends are real estate investors, and they are always looking for new opportunities. One of the things we help them
with is where to buy and what to buy. If you buy in the wrong place you will not make the money needed to run a successful Vacation Rental business. If you buy too high that will also limited your profitability.
One thing that rarely gets asked, is how do I outfit the Vacation Rental. What things will make for a comfortable stay. What kinds of things will a guest remember and want to return. Here are some of the things we suggest.
- Stock your bathrooms with toilet bowl cleaner, toilet bowl brush, tub and shower cleaner. Remember, your vacation rental does not have daily maid service. So if some one has diarrhea, the toilet will need to be cleaned by the guest. As for the tub, no one wants to shower after some one, when the tub has not been cleaned. Small things like these will set you apart from other Vacation Rentals. You also want to buy regular size shampoo and regular size body wash. You do not have to spend a lot of money. There are some well know brands, found at the dollar store. Once the guest has departed, for sanitary reasons, trash the shampoo and body wash.
- When buying appliances, buy a washer with a quick wash settings. Your house keeper can not change the laws of physics and make your machine go faster. The longer they stay the more the cleaning will cost.
- Buy lots of white sheet sets, neutral colored blankets and 2 bedspreads per bed. Just because a bed spread looks clean doesn’t mean it is clean. When we pull out the black light, we see all sorts of things on bedspreads and surfaces. That’s why we like to wash everything. Remember you only have one washer and dryer, so you will need that second bedspread. Instead of white towels, consider grey towels. It doesn’t take much use to make a white towel unusable. Grey towels get the job done and work better with make-up
- Make sure you have games, books and local magazines for your guest. To help them have a pleasant stay.
- Any finally, provide a welcome gift that is branded. We always provided a gift box with our properties name, address and phone. The guest were appreciative and we received repeat bookings that came straight to us.
Now that you have followed the directions above, lets talk about reviews. If you can’t get 5 star reviews each and every time, you might as well sell that vacation rental or go buy a mutual fund and hope for massive growth. Every week I get a call from a frantic vacation rental owner or upset vacation renter guest, needing emergency cleans. This past week it was a guest who was staying at a rental for 2 weeks. The place she was staying at was very dirty. She complained to the owner to no avail. I can only imagine what that review is going to look like. If you take care of your guest, they will take care of you with great reviews. If you use a company that is not focused on excellence you get what you get. Because we are growing, we interview people monthly looking for that unicorn, that is focused on excellence. It takes us 30 to 40 interviews to come up with our ideal employee. That’s our commitment to providing a quality clean and not settling.
I have pulled some of the reviews from one of our larger clients Sky Run Vacation Rental in Galveston, TX, https://galveston.skyrun.com/properties/1-asher-house They get 5 stars all the time because the home is beautiful and very clean, thanks to our team.
