A Guide to Scaling Your Holiday Rental Business
As a holiday rental owner, you’ll likely have experienced a range of different challenges and successes within your time in the industry. But if you’ve been seeing back-to-back bookings and plenty of additional interest in your property, you might be considering scaling your business to include more places to stay.
Scaling a business can be an incredibly fruitful endeavour, but it can also present a range of challenges that you’ll want to prepare for and navigate as you go through the process. If you’re considering growing your collection of rental properties then this article takes you through the key things you need to know about scaling your holiday property business.
Review and Refine Existing Processes
The first stage of scaling a business no matter the industry or the overall plan is to audit all of the existing procedures and systems that you use in your current operations. For business owners who only have one or a handful of rental properties at present, this might just be assessing the booking and communications systems you use, reviewing any cleaning or property management companies you work with, or reflecting on any significant challenges or successes you’ve experienced so far.
As you review, and potentially refine, your internal processes, you should get a clever idea of whether you’ll be able to use the same systems when your business is scaled, as well as identify where you may need additional resources and support. This is an important step in scaling a business because it ensures that your current way of working can handle a large business and that there won’t be any internal process issues that hinder your growth.
Make Use of Technology
Another valuable piece of advice when you’re scaling your holiday rental business is to make use of technology and software where you can. This can be a great way to free up more of your time so that you can focus on tasks that need a personal touch, whilst repetitive and administrative jobs can be done by a digital tool.
One example of this is guest communication, which can be managed when you use an email platform that sends automated emails when guests make a booking, in the lead-up to their stay and then afterwards. Plenty of online booking systems also include other features that can save you time, and if you’re already paying for them then you might as well make the most out of everything they offer!
Outsource Property Management
If you’re growing your business from a small number of properties to include a lot more, then the management of each of these can become a significant time drain and leave you chasing your tail to keep everything in order. A solution that allows you to spend a lot more of your time on handling the growth of your business is outsourcing the management of your properties to a company that specialises in short-let rental management and will be able to take care of things like cleaning and check-ins for you.
Outsourcing can be especially useful if you have properties in different locations, as you’ll gain a contact who can check on your rentals and deal with any immediate issues that crop up. If you’re expanding your business from a single property to multiple places, it can also be useful to work with a company that specialises in property management, as they’ll also be able to offer advice and support as you scale.
Cater to a Certain Traveller
Something you need to consider as you’re scaling your holiday rental company is the type of traveller that you’re going to be advertising your properties to. You might think that pitching to as many different demographics as possible will bring you the most business, but it will actually make it much harder to produce advertising content that gets noticed by and converts guests, because it won’t be tailored to them.
Decide on your target audience before you scale and then make sure that you’re thinking of this group of customers as you make your plans and expand your business. This is important for success because, even though your target group of guests is smaller, you’ll be offering them places to stay that cater to their specific needs and preferences, so you’re more likely to get bookings.
Establish Partnerships
Our final piece of advice for holiday rental business owners is to look for partnership opportunities that can help to drive more interest in your properties as you scale. This can be a great way to support your income and your brand image as you grow, driving more potential guests to your business and creating another marketing channel.
Partnerships for rental properties often involve working with nearby local businesses, where you’ll typically recommend places to eat and drink or visit in exchange for these places to recommend your properties as somewhere to stay. But you could also consider partnering with local events where your holiday homes are suggested as accomodation for people attending, which is a seasonal occurrence but can generate a lot of interest.
Conclusion
Scaling a business is incredibly rewarding, and when you’re growing your collection of rental properties you stand to see a significant increase in your revenue as well. As long as you’re aware of the challenges of growing your company and have not only prepared for these but also put other measures in place to support any wobbles, you should ensure that the process happens without too much stress.