0 Shares VRS002 – Getting Started in Vacation Rental with Mike Bayer In this episode of the Vacation Rental Success podcast my son, Mike Bayer, shares his experience of buying and setting up his Lake Ontario cottage for rental, and what he has learned in the first 18 months of business. Mike has been involved in vacation rentals for over ten years, from running a property management […]
0 Shares Why You Should Not Accept Pets At Your Vacation Rental Are you pet friendly? Or, are you pet tolerant? Or, do you begrudgingly accept a small, non-shedding, hypo-allergenic dog that doesn’t bark, never climbs on furniture, and then charge a fee for it? As a pet owner, my view on this is: If you are not 100% committed to welcoming pets at your […]
0 Shares How to Attract More Guests to your Vacation Rental with Beautiful Bedrooms If you want your vacation rental to appeal to potential guests, your bedrooms must look inviting and appealing. I’ve been blown away by the poor standard of bedrooms being offered in some listings and wish I could post the photos I have found online to demonstrate just how bad they are. An example I […]
0 Shares 10 Rules for Renting a Vacation Home Vacation rentals are hitting the media big time and owners need to be aware of what our prospective guests are being told in online and print publications. We’ve received a lot of requests for cottage previews recently and finally tracked down an article in a magazine that advised anyone thinking of renting a property for […]
0 Shares Save Time & Create Confidence with a Vacation Rental FAQ Page This week has been busy with the topic of vacation rentals when an article in the New York Times tweeted & retrweeted, reposted on Facebook and the subject of much forum discussion. “Questions to Ask About a Vacation Rental” was a response to a couple of earlier NY Times articles, one that discussed how vacation […]
0 Shares Free Internet Connectivity For Vacation Rentals Yesterday had a WiFi flavor on my Twitter stream as the argument against hotels charging for the service featured in a rant or two. This came at a time I am considering installing a satellite internet system in my rental cottage since there is no wireless or cell signal available for my guests. I’m not […]
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 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 Is Your Vacation Rental Home Family Friendly? This is a question we hear occasionally although it’s not one of the most common ones our rental agency receives. When I ask the potential renter what they mean by ‘family friendly’, there’s often a vague response asking about the waterfront and if it has shallow entry. We rarely get questions about safety issues or […]
