0 Shares Just Cheesed Off with the Changeover! I spend a lot of time on this blog, and in my day job as a vacation rental manager, talking about the ‘cost of doing business’, and have referred occasionally to that cost being emotional at times as well as monetary. So….yesterday…I had cause to experience that for myself for the first time this year […]
0 Shares Rising Expectations of Vacation Rental Guests I’m curious to hear how many owners have experienced requests, or even demands from their guests for services that we would not expect to be provided in a vacation rental. I recently heard of a few incidents of guests seeming to believe they were in a resort or hotel, asking for items to be delivered […]
0 Shares What’s Under the Bed? When was the last time you checked under the beds in your vacation rental home or cottage? Did you check the bathroom cabinet; the dresser drawers and the shelf in the nightstand? I hope it was on the last changeover day. If not, how do you know what your last guests left behind. Dust bunnies […]
0 Shares When Pets go Missing at a Vacation Rental My son & his wife just spend a sleepless night as their beloved Beagle took off for a walkabout yesterday while they were both at work, and didn’t come home until the early hours of this morning. It brought to mind a frantic phone call we had one Saturday morning last year, from a renter […]
0 Shares Changeover Without Tears – An Owner’s Guide to Changeover Day With the vacation rental season in full swing most owners, myself included, approach changeover day with a mixture of trepidation, anticipation and sometimes, confidence. Whatever we expect, there are times when we’re surprised, either by the pristine way in which the property has been left by the outgoing guests, or by an ungodly mess. When […]
0 Shares 8 final checks before the vacation rental season starts For many of us the high season is already in full swing but I had a few days with vacancies at Osprey Cottage this week so used them to do some final checks and make sure everything is spotless for the next 12 weeks of back-to-back rentals. We’ll be there for changeovers of course, but […]
0 Shares Will Your Guests Love Your Kitchen? With thanks to Marcia of the food blog , ‘The Aperitif’, I am able to illustrate one of my own pet peeves about cottage or vacation rental – the underwhelming kitchen. Here’s just a short excerpt from her latest post, Vacation Rental Blues: “It never fails…one can always expect to find a trusty cast iron […]
0 Shares Who should not be in the vacation rental business? There are two distinct types of vacation rental properties, each with their own drawbacks from a rental guest perspective. The cottage or holiday home that has been bought for investment and is solely used for rental purposes can sometimes lack ambience and charm while, on the other side of the spectrum is the property that […]
0 Shares Vacation Renters Speak Out And Owners Need To Listen Following on from my post yesterday about renter feedback on finding a property to rent, the other question we were asking people at the Cottage Show in Mississauga was about their past experience of vacation rental. We wanted to know what they liked and what a turn was off. The responses weren’t surprising and mostly […]
0 Shares Cottage for Rent But Bring Your Own Pillows & Toilet Paper Sometimes I despair of getting the message across, particularly in my part of the world. Traditionally, cottage rental was simply an alternative to camping – with walls and a roof being the difference, and an inside toilet an absolute luxury. Over the past 5 years, it’s been a slow move to the realisation that ‘renters’ […]
