Background
When you have a full-time career, running a vacation rental business on the side is difficult – plain and simple. But throw in the additional complications that your property is in a small town, in a foreign country, whose language you do not speak perfectly. Jeffrey Mark explains his learning curve as a Dutch homeowner in the small seaside town of Conil de la Frontera and how he succeeded in making his property lucrative despite its unique challenges.
“If you want to maximize your rental business and have truly happy guests, then managing a property is a lot of work. It is not just handing over a key and cleaning up after check-out. There was a learning curve!”
Challenge
After deciding to rent out one of his apartments in Conil de la Frontera, Jeffrey Mark was left to his own devices to manage this new source of income. As his day job is running his own company, Jeffrey quickly realized that responding to last-minute messages, confirming reservation details, calculating nightly rates and maintaining calendars was simply too time-consuming to manage on his own.
But in a small town with a strong sense of local identity, Jeffrey discovered that being an ‘outsider’ also posed its own additional challenges. He needed a trusted person who could step in to help communicate with handymen for urgent repairs and who could negotiate what “quickly” would really mean. With guests arriving soon and water leaking into his apartment from the neighbors, how could he deal with the delicate linguistic and social situation? Even more stressful, how could he best help when a guest is having a health emergency and he is put on the spot to communicate with local medical professionals for them?
“There is always a new surprise awaiting you. You think you have everything under control, but it can be the small details or completely unexpected issues that cause problems. You need processes in place to be able to react swiftly and consistently.”
Solution
Jeffrey needed something to alleviate both the amount of time he was pouring into his rental as well as the stress of being solely responsible for guests. This need was only amplified given the fact that Jeffrey was in a place where he himself was not an insider.
After joining Bookiply in December 2018, a few services in particular made Jeffrey’s life a lot simpler and allowed him to save his time and energy to focus on his company. One service was Bookiply’s Customer Happiness Team, which takes care of questions and reviews in more than five languages before, during and after guests’ stays. Another was Bookiply’s automated emails, which include confirmations, online check-ins, arrival information for guests and payment notifications. But it was also Bookiply’s personal account managers, who are experts of the local region, that gave Jeffrey useful insights into optimizing his listing in terms of price and presentation.
“Bookiply told me that I could charge 25% more for my nightly rate and still fill out my calendar – they were right! With their automatic calendar synchronization, I was also able to publish my property on more channels, which generated greater visibility and increased my target group.”
Perhaps above all, Bookiply’s services also relieved the burden of being a new vacation rental homeowner with little time and in a particularly difficult situation for rental management.
“Bookiply reduced the stress of being solely responsible for everything. With expert tips and customer service, you are never truly alone managing the property.”
Jeffrey’s Bookiply Favorites
Automated Messages
“I save a lot of time because I no longer have to personally send out confirmations, cancellations or emails with arrival information.”
Customer Happiness
“Bookiply’s Customer Happiness Team is available to respond to problems, complaints and questions related to bookings. I am no longer the only contact for guests.”
iCal
“The listings on multiple channels were kept organized using Bookiply’s iCal technology. I no longer had to check multiple places to see if I would overbook my property.”
If you are interested in booking Jeffrey’s property, click here.
