Within the hospitality industry, the phrase guest experience is commonly used, and it refers to the various interactions between guests and management that dictate how they experience their stay. From communicating with staff and support to their experiences with checking in and checking out, there are many different factors that can both positively and negatively affect the experience of a guest.
Why is it Important?
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How guests experience a vacation rental can affect a business. Guest experience is one of the most important aspects of the hospitality industry because a negative experience can have many different consequences.
For one, the guest can leave a bad review, which can influence potential guests and turn them away. This can affect vacation rental profits and ultimately lead to its downfall.
The vacation rental industry is a large one, and there are hundreds of thousands, if not more, of other rental properties for guests to choose from. It’s important that yours stands out, and the best way for it to do so is to ensure a positive guest experience for all guests.
As a vacation rental owner, there are many different things you can do to improve the experience of your guests. Below, five are outlined, but the list is much more expensive.
Warmly Welcome Your Guests
When your guest stays at your vacation rental, you want them to remember you fondly; this is not only how you will get a positive review from them, but it will also encourage them to return for their next vacation. One way to do this is to warmly welcome your guest.
Their opinion of the rental and the rental owner begins once they arrive. Whether you are meeting them when they arrive or performing a contactless check-in, you want the process to be smooth for the guest. Once the guests have checked in, you can use vacation rental software and apps to send them a push notification with a message that is warmly welcoming them.
And if you’re looking to go above and beyond for your guest, consider having some form of welcoming gift waiting for them in their unit. This doesn’t have to be extravagant or expensive, but it can be something as simple as a small welcome basket, perhaps with small items that are local to the area, or a sweet treat. You can engage in partnerships with local shops and restaurants to provide you with products while you promote them.
Recommend Places
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When guests are vacationing in a rental, they likely don’t know the area very well. For the rental owner, this is a great opportunity to recommend the guest to the best restaurants, entertainment, and shops in the area. Not only will this inspire the guest to try out your recommendations, but it will show them that you are being considerate of them and that you care about their experience.
This is also a great opportunity to highlight the local culture in the area, which many tourists may find interesting.
Do the Basics
There are a few basic things that vacation rental owners should be doing, and some owners lack the basics. Something like an unclean room or double-booked unit can absolutely ruin a guest experience, so it’s crucial that vacation rental owners stay on top of these basic tasks and not only perform them but perform them well.
Some of the basic duties that vacation rental owners have are:
- Making sure availability calendars are up to date.
- Responding to questions from guests and inquiries.
- Ensuring that any digital locks have extended battery lives so that they don’t die on a guest midday and prevent them from entering the unit.
- Having a unique code for guests and third-party vendors, like housekeeping, so you can keep track of who was in a unit last.
- Providing guests with a clean, sanitized unit, with supplies that are restocked.
- Have accurate images of each booking online so guests are not surprised when they arrive.
These are small, simple tasks that rental owners should be up to date on, and having them complete can provide the guest with a good experience.
Automate Management Tasks
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Rental owners want to provide the best experience for their guests, but it can be challenging to do when their attention is diverted to a variety of other management tasks. This may include managing other bookings, scheduling cleaning, etc.; there are many different aspects of vacation rentals that owners must tend to, which can take their attention away from their guests.
However, by using rental apps and software, rental owners can automate many of the different management tasks they have to perform, like check-ins and check-outs, checking in with current guests, managing various listings, and creating reports. By automating these tasks, vacation rental owners can dedicate more of their time to improving the experience of their guests.
Convenience
If there’s one thing that people love, it’s convenience, and it’s one of the ways a vacation rental owner can improve their guests’ experience. Guests want things to be easy and convenient for them, which is understandable; they are on vacation, and they don’t want to have to perform any work. So, for rental owners, one of the easiest things they can do to make things more convenient for their guests is to invest in high-tech technology.
Rental owners can do this in a multitude of ways. They can have faster internet so that their guest does not have to deal with slow internet speeds and delays in their searches. There is also the option of smart locks, where guests can lock and unlock the doors to the units with an app, eliminating their need for a key. And there is also smart lighting, which also can be accessed through an app.
Through the usage of vacation rental management software and apps like DACK, rental owners can also provide detailed information in guides about how to use appliances and other technology within the units so that the guests don’t have to struggle to figure it out for themselves.
