Key to Successful Letting Management
The key to Letting Management
You may own the most luxurious holiday property on the planet, but without the right approach to advertising and marketing that property, you simply will not get the bookings you require. Good marketing skills are the doorway to success in any business, and in the Letting Management business there is tough competition so it is essential that you get it right. The holiday rentals business gives you the opportunity to become involved with people from all over the world, and it is worth bearing in mind that people buy people before they buy products or services. Make friends with your potential clients and you’ve cracked it!
In brief, letting management and rental management involves: – Dealing with enquiries from clients, and vetting clients to make sure they are suitable. Handling client complaints/queries. keeping booking calendars and availability charts. You will need to keep spreadsheet records of all your rentals, and manage all bookings, taking deposits and payments and banking them, holding damage deposits and making relevant deductions if any damages. (A full property check should be made before releasing the damage deposits back to your clients). There is certainly plenty of paperwork to keep you occupied!
Advertising Methods for Holiday Letting
There are many forms of advertising – newspapers, magazines or brochures, but the cost of a reasonably sized advertisement with photographs of your property is way beyond the budget of most Spanish holiday home owners. Even if cost was not a major consideration, would these methods reach your target audience successfully anyway?
A box ad in the holiday property section of a daily newspaper would cost in the region of £200 for a one-day appearance! That same ad with colour photographs of your home would cost nearer £20,000!! By using newspapers and glossy magazines for your advertising, you are ignoring a much wider, highly targeted audience such as you will find with internet advertising for Spanish Holiday rentals. Effective advertising needs to reach as wide and as targeted an audience as possible.
Setting up a web site advertising your property or paying for space on a top internet villa rental site is the ideal advertising medium – a good web site will be attracting thousands of these potential clients each week The address can be included on all leaflets, flyers or business cards which then gives potential clients the ability to visit your site and get a general ideal of what you are offering. However, setting up your own site does not automatically mean visitors stopping by in their thousands. A badly promoted website will never be found – internet promotion is big business involving a lot of time and hard work!
Hot Tips for Holiday Villa Letting
Ever wondered why some villa owners manage to rake in a fortune from letting their holiday properties while others struggle to cover their running costs?
Top earning holiday property owners say good marketing and repeat business are the keys to their success. Here’s their advice:
- Invest sufficient time, money and effort in marketing your property to the right target audience. Decide who your potential customers are and make sure you reach them; either through a reputable agent, newspaper/magazine advertising or the Internet.
- If you are an absentee owner make sure you employ a totally reliable and trustworth on the spot property manager or property management company to deal with everything from key handovers and routine maintenance work to out-of-hours emergencies. Leaking taps, toilets that don’t flush and swimming pools topped with green slime all need to be sorted before your letting business takes a nose dive!
- Splash out on a few inexpensive extras which make a great impression on visitors and often lead to repeat business; a bottle of wine chilling in the fridge, some nice smellies in the bathroom and a few free loo rolls don’t cost much but can make all the difference in the world in terms of getting your guests off to a good start.
- Never try to cut corners when it comes to cleaning. There’s no greater turn-off for visitors than someone else’s hair in the plug holes and sticky sweet papers lurking under the beds.
- Provide a genuinely useful welcome pack with details of how everything works in the villa, emergency phone numbers (doctor, ambulance, police, fire brigade), maps and leaflets for recommended restaurants and local attractions etc.
Letting and Rental Management Companies
It is ideal for people who do not have the time or inclination to deal directly with their customers to hire a rental or letting management company to take care of the workload for you. It can be hard, time consuming work and it is important to be aware of the possible headaches it can involve. It is vital to respond quickly to rental enquiries and you should be contactable at all times. There is an amazing amount of choice for internet holiday hunters and they will just look elsewhere if you are not quick enough to respond!
A reputable rental management Company would take care of all your marketing, bookings and money handling, allowing you to sit back and enjoy your rental income. Bear in mind though that they will be handling your money, so choose wisely. Most of these companies also offer property management services, whereby they will also take care of your property undertaking all maintenance, gardening, pool cleaning and changeover cleans as well as being available for any visitors that may be in the property.
Category : Property News