Managing Your Vacation Rental

Guest Complaints – When Should You Refund Or Compensate?

No matter how well you prepare for your guests there will come a time when someone makes a complaint.  Causes for this are varied – it could be a breakdown in an appliance or amenity, a misunderstanding over an expectation or simply a disgruntled guest who transfers disappointment over poor weather to a complaint about the property.  Whatever the nature of the grievance it’s worthwhile being ready for it to happen and have some solutions in place. [...]

Tips & Recipes for Green Cleaning & Stain Removal

Most vacation home owners I've met seem to be environmentally conscious and enthusiastic about sharing this with their guests. It's great to see property welcome books that ask guests to conserve water and electricity, recycle garbage, and offer tips on shopping locally. So, it was not difficult to come across suggestions for stain removal using natural products and recipes for cleaning fluids. Here's a few of my favorites: [...]

What Your Guests are Saying - Read Between the Lines

Your major goal with rentals is to fill your available weeks and maximize your occupancy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to accept every booking that comes your way.  Occasionally you’ll get that gut feeling that something is not quite right; a potential guest will say something that makes you feel uncomfortable or just doesn’t ring true.  These are the times you need to have a good conversation with the potential guest and make sure they are the right match for your property.  The clues you may need to do a little extra screening are often in the things people say and here’s some examples that might ring a few alarm bells: [...]

Getting Your Guests to Go Green

It would be great if all our guests were motivated towards eco-friendly behavior on vacation.  In a perfect world, they would always turn lights and ceiling fans off in rooms when they were not in use; would raise the A/C thermostat levels so it didn’t come on as often; would only use the washing machine with a full load, and would be diligent at recycling.  [...]

Cancellation Without Tears

Sooner or later every owner will have to deal with a cancellation.  Mostly this will be a straightforward request for a return of deposit or a final payment, but occasionally there’s an emotional call involving a death or illness in the guests’ family that is more difficult to handle. [...]

Converting Inquiries the Easy Way

A perennial concern of vacation rental owners is how to convert inquiries to bookings.  It’s not enough any longer to just have a great looking listing and enticing photographs – the competition is tightening all the time.  From the moment of the first inquiry, your job is to create a relationship and draw the potential guest into additional correspondence.  Getting your customers to choose your place over your neighbors’ is key in many areas, and you may have to put more effort into conversion than ever before. [...]

8 Ways to Create Happy Guests

Happy guests are the key to great reviews, and great reviews mean higher occupancy.  It’s a bit of a no-brainer, but amazing how many reviews I see that point to owners not respecting their guests sufficiently to make them 100% satisfied with their vacation choice.  Here’s 8 ways you can drive up your guests satisfaction level [...]

What Guests Really Want

Guest expectations are changing.  They are becoming more sophisticated, demanding and harder to please and as owners, we need to be consistently upgrading, improving and one step ahead of the competition to keep occupancy up and reviews positive.  From communicating in a very timely fashion to ensuring the place is always spotlessly clean, it’s a tough job being a proactive owner but there’s a few things you can do to reduce the risk of disappointing your guests. [...]

Happy Arrivals – Getting Your Guests to Their Destination

What does this quote in a Washington Post article have to do with vacation rental owners? “Studies over the past decade have shown that women are likelier to rely on landmarks and visual cues, and men on maps, cardinal directions (such as north and south) and gauges of distance.” [...]

Are Your Guests Down in the Dumps?

Your vacation rental guests will create lots of garbage and they don’t want any hassle disposing of it. After all, the vacation rental industry goes to great lengths to persuade potential vacationers that this is better than a hotel or resort, but have you ever been to one of those and had to take your garbage home with you? Very unlikely. Nor would you expect to arrive at a resort or hotel to find bags of rubbish left behind by previous guests and be asked to put them out on garbage day. Yet, I still hear from guests that the owners of their rental homes have failed to make it clear how their domestic waste should be handled. [...]

10 Fall Tasks

There’s just something about the leaves falling and the winter approaching that motivates me to spend a couple of days down at the cottage tidying up after a long summer of rentals, and preparing it for the next season.  Even if your location doesn’t have distinct seasons, schedule a complete audit a couple of times a year to ensure the property is in tip-top shape and never gets that ‘used’ or ‘run-down’ feel.  [...]

Lost and Found – What to do With Left Items

In a single season of rental it’s quite easy to amass a pile of left items – whether it’s pairs of shoes from the back of a closet; forgotten swimwear from a dresser drawer, or a much loved soft toy retrieved from the dryer where it had gotten tangled with the bed sheets when the guests were packing up.  What to do with the things can create a bit of a dilemma so here’s a few tips on how to handle the inevitable forgotten stuff. [...]

Rinse and Repeat - How to Make Guests want to Return

There is no doubt that the best guests are the repeats – the ones that come back over and over again and tell all their friends about ‘their special vacation place’.  Of course there are a lot of people who will never come back again, not because they didn’t like it, but because they are more adventurous and will always choose a new experience over a tried and trusted vacation choice, simply because they can.  These folks may never be converted to repeaters, but you never know so treat every guest as a potential for becoming a loyal visitor. [...]

Under-Promise and Over-Deliver: 3 Ways to Delight Your Guests

Have you ever lined up for a ride at a theme park and seen the sign that tells you there is a 30 minute wait, only to find out when you get to the end of the line that it only took 15 minutes?  You feel great don’t you?  You had an expectation and then it was exceeded, which is a ploy created by Disney to improve customer satisfaction, and is now used extensively in marketing strategies across a wide range of products. [...]

How to 'Handle' Best Price Requests

People are looking for the best deal possible for their vacations so it is likely you will be asked at some time for "your best price" or “what is the best deal you can give me?” In areas where there are a lot of properties for rent and changing levels of demand depending on season, you’re likely to hear more of these requests so it’s a good idea to take a pragmatic approach to pricing particularly in periods of rental ‘drought’ – the low and shoulder periods where demand is lower. [...]

Live Like a Local Guide

Good local information can make a vacation so much better for your guests.  It saves them time researching things to see and do, and makes it so much easier for them to plan their trip.  You can include the information in your Welcome Book and send them a PDF version in advance so they can make reservations if required. [...]

Renting to Friends and Family

When you purchase a vacation home it can be quite amazing how many ‘friends’ contact you to congratulate you on the purchase; offer all sorts of advice and ideas on how to manage it, and suggest how much they would love to stay, in exchange for some work on the property.  Of course, this advice and offers of help may be very welcome, but it is worthwhile being professional about renting the property from the start, and that includes how you let friends and family use it, particularly if you accept money in the exchange [...]

How to Avoid Service Calls


The best rental guests are those that arrive after check in time, enjoy their vacation, write wonderful comments in your guest book, depart before check out time leaving the property in great condition, and recommend you to their friends.  Perfect guests like these are not hard to find if you make the whole process easy for them.  Good pre-arrival information, a comprehensive Welcome Book, and a clear check-out list will go a long way to achieve this, however it’s easy to be caught out by the lack of something your guests need, or a minor breakdown that could be resolved with some forward planning. [...]

Managing Your Hot Tub

Having a hot tub at a vacation rental property can help achieve significantly higher occupancy than those without, and with good marketing and promotion, the cost of purchase, installation and maintenance can be recovered over a relatively short period of time.  However, installing a hot tub brings additional responsibilities and commitment to maintain the quality of the spa water. [...]

Bedroom Quality Counts

We spend a third of our lives in bed and this is the same for our vacations.  In fact, for many people, a holiday is a time for spending even more time catching up on sleep, having lie-ins, and hopefully luxuriating in comfort with a morning coffee or a good book last thing at night.  If your beds don’t measure up to these expectations, guests will be unhappy and this can result in negative feedback and complaints. [...]

Managing Guest Expectations

As vacation rentals grow in popularity, your guests’ expectations are rising and it’s important to meet and exceed those expectations wherever possible. Your listing is your primary showcase and with great photos and appealing text, you should be able to attract good quality guests to reserve their vacation weeks with you. The next step is to make sure what you provide matches up with the anticipation you’ve created, because if you disappoint your guests they will deliver negative feedback in return. [...]

Property Management

When it comes to managing your vacation rental, you have several options. There are likely factors that will determine your preferred method of management, such as budget and proximity. [...]

Pet Friendly Policies

One of the benefits for vacationers of renting a vacation home over traditional hotel or resort style accommodation is the ability to take their pet along with them as part of the family holiday; however the percentage of properties that accept pets remains low. This puts owners who welcome pets at a great advantage, but before you rush to add a pet icon, make sure you are fully prepared and ready for all eventualities. [...]

Handling Inquiries & Bookings

Inquiries and Bookings are the focus of your efforts. It's important to be prepared to best handle inquiries and bookings. A little attention in advance will certainly pay dividends down the road. [...]

Dealing with Damage

Although we would all love our rental guests to treat our properties with the utmost respect, damage of some sort will undoubtedly occur. If you have ensured a good match of client for your property by talking with them and creating a relationship, it is rare that you will encounter anything other than accidental damage. However, spills, stains and accidental breakage are a part of the risk you need to accept before taking on rentals. It’s also a good idea to have a plan for how you will deal with damage and/or any other incidents. [...]

Sign Up for Newsletter

Get the latest expert tips, opinions and news that will help you maximize your property's renting potential

Latest on Bayer's Blog