My last episode was the intro to my Vacation Rental Entrepreneur Success course where I explained what the 3 p’s of a vacation rental business are.
Today I am going to start off with processes because it’s something almost everyone can work on today that will help improve their vacation rental income.
Why is this post important?
In your vacation rental business, you need to have processes for everything. You need to create email-marketing processes, sales processes, processes on how to collect reviews, blogging systems, system tools to make your life easier, social marketing procedures, a process for responding to inquiries, and quality control checks for housekeeping/property management.
If you don’t think you’re an entrepreneur, you need to read this. The Vacation Rental Entrepreneur’s #1 business rule
Create Systems
Make 2019 the best year of business for your guests and your vacation rental profits.
This is your guide on how to be a truly successful vacation rental entrepreneur – something I didn’t have the privilege of having when I started.
I will share more this year than ever before! I’ve been hard at work creating colorful, creative, and constructive content that will help you make more bookings, yes, but also help you to do more by doing less!
Ever feel like…
• You’re working too hard?
• You’re not as far ahead in your business as you’d like to be?
• There aren’t enough hours in the day to do all of your work?
• You aren’t making as much money as need or want?
• You don’t have the resources to operate as efficiently as you really want to?
If so, I want to help. If you haven’t yet done so, sign up for my newsletter today. Because 90% of the material I am providing is absolutely free.
Let’s get started.
Create Processes
Entrepreneurs are trying to do too much, with too little time, help, resources, and money. But nobody wants to talk about that.
Well, I do. How do we deal with this?
One core thing you can work on right now with very little money required for major results is your processes.
Everything you do has a process. Maybe you haven’t orchestrated your process and your processes are more like habits (maybe some bad), but no doubt you still have processes, even if they are unorganized unintentional broken processes.
Why DON’T Businesses Create Proper Systems and Processes?
Because it takes work and time. Entrepreneurs are visionaries, not managers or technicians, as I explain in Why 80% Of VR Business Owners Fail so they have a difficult time creating their Systems.
I will share with you from my first-hand experience that the time that it takes to set up your business process is 100% guaranteed to be worth the effort.
The way I see it, you have 2 choices: You can take the time to implement this strategy into your business now, or you can continue to experience the pains and time sinks that keep you from growing and becoming free from all the work required of you.
Why Do Businesses Create a Systems?
System setting helps new companies understand all the processes involved in running their business.
It helps existing vacation rental companies better understand how things run so they can correct errors, get new staff or employees trained, and improve their performance across the board.
What Processes Can Vacation Rental Owners and Property Managers Improve?
There are a few common places to look at, such as:
• Guest and Reservation Management
• Booking Processes
• Client Communications
• Marketing Procedures
• Housekeeping
• Accounting
• Property Maintenance
You’ll want to evaluate just about any process that is broken, unproductive, time-consuming, confusing, or that needs to be simplified and improved.
It’s amazing how small tweaks to your processes can shave off minutes, hours, or even days from the work you have to do. This piece of advice can be huge for a small vacation rental business.
In addition to saving you both time and money, working on your processes will also benefit you with improved efficiency, allowing you to work smarter not harder. I can hear a sigh of relief from the weight of all that extra work being lifted from your shoulders ?
Become More of a Competitor
Optimizing your processes will enable you to trim down costs and help you to become more competitive in the vacation rental market. And with the amount of competition entering the market, this is one way you can ensure you’re able to compete with what comes our way in 2019.
Improve Your Vacation Rental Profits
You may choose to offer some of the savings you’ve created by offering more competitive pricing. Or you can add it to your bottom line. Either way, it’s a good thing for more bookings and higher profits.
Create Consistency & Brand Loyalty
Think about the best brands out there. Take Coca-Cola, for example. They have a formula and a way they do things. Every time you open up that can of Coke, you know what it’s gonna taste like, right?
That’s consistency, and it’s crucial to your brand’s development. There is no better way to achieve consistency than by setting up proper business systems and processes to act as your guiding light.
With more vacation rental companies and hotel agencies like Wyndham moving more into the vacation rental marketplace and partnering with the major distribution channels like Booking.com and Expedia, brand predictability or brand consistency will affect travelers’ purchasing behavior in our market like it has never done before.
All the big hotel chains have processes in place to help them run a streamlined hospitality business. We should, too. Just because you are a small business owner or a “one man band,” it doesn’t mean that you’re too small for these best business practices.
Reduce the Amount of Helping Hands Needed
Because you are short-handed and maybe don’t have the resources of these larger vacation rental brands, that is exactly why you have to implement a highly optimized business process: so your vacation rental company can run more like a well-oiled machine.
Step Up Your Game
Have your bookings declined? Are you not getting as many as you’d like? The problem might just be that you do not have a proper vacation rental business plan/system.
If you’re a vacation rental owner with just one or two properties, you’ll need to step up your game. Why?
Vacation rental owners need to consider the travel and technology trends happening around us.
Today, the consumer is in just about total control of the market and they’re pretty demanding folks. Technology is empowering consumers, proving to shape the new world of business, which is geared toward consumer wants more than ever before.
Both consumer preferences and technology are breaking down some of the oldest business models, forcing entire industries to comply with their wants and needs.
Look at Uber, for example. They’ve totally changed the game for taxi services and the transportation industry. Why? Because the service Uber offers is what people really want!
Provide Guests Professional Customer Experience – or Else!
Customer Relations. Professional brands do it better and travelers know they do!
The statistics reveal that up to 31% of guests are now wanting to deal with professional vacation rental managers, but why?
The research tells us that the word-of-mouth factor is the reason for the increased awareness of the benefits of professional hospitality services and organizations. This is the type of stuff you’ll be up against. Be prepared, and become a true professional!
Setting up a system on how you’ll operate your vacation rental business will aid you in providing your guests with a better, more professional customer service experience.
And in today’s consumer-focused market, this is especially important to your success in the future of the world of travel.
This means it’s no longer okay to treat your vacation rental business like a second home and expect to pay the bills. You’re going to have to develop a professional business model and hospitality practices.
Tips for Creating Your System
Setting up your systems may seem overwhelming for you, but it doesn’t have to be a marathon.
• Start with some small changes.
• Taking it slow is okay, especially for businesses that have already established systems and considerable workloads.
• No improvement is too small. Small changes implemented over a period will result in big improvements
• Do not seek perfection.
• Make continued improvements to the system every so often to evaluate areas for further progress.
• Keep things simple! Don’t over complicate the process.
• Concentrate first on the parts of your system that will have the greatest impact on your business.
• Understand it’s a process! Be patient with the process and people, including yourself.
• Don’t be too rigid. Know that there will be instances where you will have to come out of your process to get the job done or satisfy a guest. Get an idea upfront of when that might be and how you’ll handle it.
• It’ll be hard to create a system if you don’t know ALL the ins and outs. If you have employees or staff, get them involved in helping you to understand the process they go through on a daily basis.
For example, if you would like to create a better system for your housekeepers, ask them for feedback.
Getting your team involved early and allowing them to participate, will not only help you create better systems for each area or department of your business it will also make your people less resistant to the change when it comes into effect.
Are Your Systems Working?
You should begin to feel these changes in the form of less handling, smoother transactions, less money wasted and lighter workloads. And it is a truly gratifying feeling to know you’ve made a substantial improvement, be it financial or other for your business.
If the process or procedure seems difficult – you’ve gone too far. The changes should be to make the overall process easier, not harder. Be realistic of what you can provide and contribute reliably to your system.
So where do you start? You’ll have to wait till next for the next one!
In my next post, I’ll begin to shed light on where to start and share some tools and resources that will help you set up your profit-churning processes.
Have questions or comments? Please share them below.
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