Key considerations when managing a holiday home

If you own an apartment:

You have probably considered turning it into a holiday let to welcome visitors exploring your city and earn a return. If that initial idea has led you to investigate the sector, you will need to make many decisions about how to improve the income it can generate.

Once the business is running, managing holiday accommodation takes considerable effort and, above all, daily time spent on its many tasks.

Before your holiday home can generate income, it needs to be ready to welcome guests. Preparation includes:

• Architectural plans designed to meet the relevant requirements.
• Checking planning feasibility, regional requirements and the documents or authorisations needed. Procedures depend on location, property and activity; one licence does not cover every requirement.
• Safety measures within the property, such as fire extinguishers and evacuation plans.

Once the appropriate permissions are in place, you will want to design your apartment so that it appeals to potential guests on the different platforms. Market research will help: understanding your target audience informs the interior design of your holiday let, since business travellers and families with young children have different requirements and tastes. A beach apartment and a city apartment are very different propositions.

When the time comes to list it on different platforms, you will need to define all the services you will offer visitors, both included and optional extras, together with their prices.

What should you consider if you go ahead?

Once your holiday home is operating, you will need to devote part of each day to managing it and carrying out the tasks involved:

• Managing incoming bookings.
• Cleaning between stays, changing sheets and towels, and general property cleaning.
• Ongoing maintenance. You do not want equipment to stop working while guests are staying, but faults can occur and should be resolved as quickly as possible to keep guests satisfied.
• Guest service: answering questions and responding to their needs.
• Handling check-in and check-out at the apartments. Consider flexibility here: some flights arrive at midday and others around midnight.
• Taxes, invoices and bookkeeping.
• Managing reviews and comments, and learning from them to improve.
• Revenue management.
• Activity on booking platforms to improve your apartment’s visibility.

You should also consider how the way you manage the property affects who is accountable to the tax authorities and the competent tourism authority. If you own the apartment and also operate the holiday letting business yourself, you will be responsible for the resulting obligations.

A contract can allocate tasks between owner and manager, but it does not, on its own, transfer obligations that legislation assigns to each party. Distinguish management on the owner’s behalf from letting the property to a company that operates it on its own account; the tax and administrative consequences may differ.

As this part of the tourism industry has grown, holiday accommodation managers have expanded their services. These companies manage the day-to-day operations of tourist accommodation, from optimising listings across platforms, promotion, cleaning and maintenance to guest communication, booking management, check-in, pricing, administration and advice on the steps required before starting.

There are different types of holiday property management service to suit owners’ needs, with the aim of improving the property’s performance.

 

Make responsibilities clear

• Who is named as the operator and who contracts with the guest.
• Who collects payment, issues invoices and submits returns.
• Who reports traveller information, retains documents and handles personal data.
• Who arranges cleaning and maintenance and authorises repairs.
• What information the owner receives and how the management arrangement ends.

Agreements must respect each party’s legal obligations. Compare full property management, remote rental management and letting your property to Alehost: these are different models.