Travelling is blissful, people spend a lot of time planning, preparing, creating an itinerary, booking the stay, etc., and in the end, if something does not work out the way they expected, it becomes a disaster. If your stay is the problem, you are yet another vacation rental horror story. Most people have been subjected to vacation rental horror stories for various reasons, it could be leaky pipes, squeaky floors, loud neighbors, slow Wi-Fi or bad mobile reception, shaky beds or stained sheets, smelly rooms, lackluster service, glitchy room booking system, etc. These are largely due to poor rental property management.
If you own, manage or look to start a rental vacation business, you need to understand that there are so many things that could possibly go wrong and you could be the next vacation rental horror story waiting to happen. Therefore, it is imperative that several preemptive measures need to be taken to avoid becoming a vacation rental horror story.
How Wrong Could It Be?
Here are some of the horror stories, as narrated by some of the guests.
Our vacation home was located in the flight path of an Air Force base, with jet planes roaring overhead randomly. We couldn’t sleep, watch TV, speak, or hear each other. Sometimes, when the jets would fly low, we felt tremors!
The vacation home we stayed at required us to wash (and hang dry!) our own sheets before leaving — otherwise, we had to pay extra for laundry charges. It took us almost two hours to wash and hand dry them. We ended up hating that vacation altogether, though we had so many memorable moments apart from it.
The list could go on, but you get the idea, right? These are some of the extreme stories, but the intention is to learn from these business owners’ mistakes and avoid them, and improve the overall rental property management.
How Can You Avoid Becoming a Vacation Rental Horror Story?
One thing you, as business entrepreneurs, need to understand is that any property and not just vacation rental stays is prone to such incidents and inconsistencies, but it depends on how well and soon you can handle them. Having said that, it does not mean that you need not be prepared to avoid these things from happening.
- Preemptive Measures – This is a must-do for all businesses and particularly the hospitality industry. Regular inspection of the entire property and a comprehensive quality assessment report can help you identify those things that could go wrong and preemptively fix them before your next guest arrives. This will save you the trouble and embarrassment of a last-minute fix.
- Read Your Reviews – Customers or in this case, guests are the best critiques who can give you an honest and forthright insight into your business through online reviews. The guests, with their hawk eyes, can notice even the littlest of things that can actually help perfect and make your business successful. Therefore, pay careful attention to what your guests have to say about your business and make those changes that are plausible. Good rental management software like airbnb clone can help you with respect to this.
- Attention to Detail – To thrive in the hospitality industry one needs to have an eye for detail because it is the details that can make or break a rental vacation home. By detailing your rental vacation home, you are not only creating a great rental vacation home to stay in, but also ensuring a happy, satisfied and enjoyable stay for your guests. Happy guests can become repeat customers and great marketing agents for your business. In this case, it is a win-win scenario.
- Provide Concessions – Despite all the measures things can go wrong and this is a common factor among some of the established motels, inns, or even luxury hotels. In such occurrences make guests happy by giving them concessions for their stay and offers to encourage them to use your services again. Your guests can at least pay less for the trouble they had been through. In this case, less is more!
- Rental Management Software – Some of the established rental vacation businesses use robust rental management software. By integrating technology into your rental vacation property, rental property management is now more efficient with less effort. Also, a good and comprehensive rental management software needs less maintenance and supervision. Once installed, rental management software will promptly go about executing its task, which results in increased productivity, high levels of accuracy, and revenue generation.
It doesn’t matter where you are in your rental vacation business you can still make it big. By neglecting your business, you are headed down the slippery slope to failure and maybe even to the point of no return. So, take the necessary steps, make those changes, and transform your business right now and avoid yourself from becoming yet another vacation rental horror story.
