From the moment Luz wakes up right up until she goes to bed, her days are all about providing the best stay for guests. At first glance, this comes as no surprise; after all, doesn’t every host want happy guests? But a closer look reveals just how much Luz lives and breathes the overall guest experience in her vacation home.
Background
Luz, who has been renting out her vacation home via Bookiply since June 2019, is a full-time receptionist at the front desk of a 5-star luxury hotel in Gran Canaria.
However, the balancing act between providing excellent service to the guests of “Lucys Home” and being a receptionist full-time can be quite demanding. During a personal interview, she lets us in on the secrets of how working in the hotel industry has influenced her into becoming the vacation rental host she is today.
Only the Best is Good Enough
For Luz, the best customer experience clearly includes open, honest and cordial communication with the guests. With a guest rating of 4.7 stars on Bookiply, you quickly realize that her guests loved their stay at this beautiful property in the south of Gran Canaria.
Before the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, the host made a point of personally welcoming all guests to the accommodation.
Now, unfortunately, she doesn’t manage to do that as often as she would like, but she has a solution for that too:
“If I can’t be there in person, I contact them a day before their check-in and tell them that I am not able to do it personally, unfortunately. But I give them all the directions and I make myself available to them 24 hours a day by WhatsApp.”
Luz is also very keen to stay in touch with the guests of her vacation accommodation while they are enjoying their stay at “Lucys Home”. In doing so, she does not hesitate to proactively approach her guests:
“I always contact them in the middle of their stay to know how they are and if they are satisfied with the house. Sometimes they contact me to ask me for information about restaurants, food, and other recommendations in the area. I also had a client coming and he asked me for hiking trails.”
While we all hope that everything runs smoothly, there was once a problematic situation in which her guests were particularly grateful and happy for Luz’s communication skills and hospitality:
“The dishwasher broke down and I immediately told the guest that we were going to repair it. So I bought a little bottle of wine, I left it with a note on the door. Then the customer immediately called me and asked why I hadn’t rung the bell and why I hadn’t come in. I didn’t want to bother them. The customer was super surprised and grateful.”
Her aim is to exceed the guests’ expectations. In order to surprise her guests in a positive way, Luz goes the extra mile, just as she is used to doing in her job at the luxury hotel:
“I especially like to make the customer feel like they’re at home. And better. I come from the hotel business. You know what the customer wants. It doesn’t matter what the client pays, whether it’s a lot or a little, it depends on the season. They have the right to always receive the same and the same is the best.”
The Name Keeps its Promise
Luz’s pride in the experience she offers her guests at “Lucys Home” really comes through when we meet her in person at the property. Before the house became a vacation home, it was just that – a home for Luz and her family.
When her daughters moved out, she decorated the house according to her own personal taste and transformed it into her own place of well-being.
As beautiful as the house was, due to all the effort and love she had put into every little detail, eventually, Luz realized that the house was too big for just her. Therefore, in June 2019, she decided to make her home a vacation rental.
Luz knows what her guests appreciate about her accommodation and what makes her vacation rental stand out from the rest:
“The communication, the cleanliness and that the house has details. There are very nice houses, but also most of them are, like, very basic. Here at the end you find a high-quality couch than a normal sofa and very good quality bedding.”
“Lucys Home” does not exude the atmosphere of a “white canvas.” Her guests get an idea of Luz’s personal taste: the accommodation is kept stylish, doesn’t feel cluttered and boasts high-quality furniture.
The Maintenance of Excellence
However, maintaining these high-quality features and restoring the accommodation to its original clean condition after each stay can be quite challenging.
Even after the hundredth guest, the house should still feel fresh and not appear worn out. This requires efficient organization, some external support, and a few handy touches that Luz has picked up from working in the hotel industry.
- Luz works with a cleaning agency. She sends the booking schedules of the accommodation to the service company on a monthly basis. The precise coordination means that the guests always have it fresh and clean when they enter the holiday home.
- She does not use the towel and linen changes that some cleaning companies offer. She rather provides towels and linen herself to be in control of the quality of these amenities.
- Besides cleaning and changing all textiles regularly, she has another little trick: Her textiles are exchanged annually for brand new ones, so that they are always soft and fluffy – only the best quality for the guests. She chooses the bed linen herself and attaches great importance to the quality and sustainability of the fabrics.
Luz’s Tip for New Hosts
Finally, Luz shares what she would like all vacation rental homeowners and hosts to take away with them:
“I tell you, I definitely recommend Bookiply, because it’s just the easiest, most convenient thing to manage a vacation rental. I think it’s the same for someone who is experienced as it is for someone who is clueless like when I started. With Bookiply you can forget about everything. It’s just a little bit of being aware of the client when they arrive and that’s it. Because the most important thing I can tell you, with the app you get the bookings, they send you the invoicing, the tax invoicing, the payments, it’s perfect.”
As someone who often has to work with Excel spreadsheets and performs a lot of manual processing in the hotel industry, she particularly appreciates the service that Bookiply offers her.
If you would like to experience the wonderful hospitality that Luz provides to all her guests, you can book your stay at Lucys Home in Gran Canaria.
