HOLIDAY LETTING
How to get your glamping business up and running?
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First you need to decide upon how and where you want your new shepherd hut to be advertised and bookable. Do you want to create a website solely for your business or would you prefer to advertise via a third party such as AirBnB or booking.com.
If your adding your new shepherd hut to an already established glamping business then expanding your website to incorporate the new hut will be rather easy, if however this is your first time our advice would be start with a third party platform as they will make it easy for you to manage bookings, communicate with potential guests, deal with all the fees and payouts plus help with insurance cover, once your established enough or would like to expand your business after experiencing the holiday letting lifestyle you could then go on to create your own website and take bookings directly or stay with the third party platform and just create multiple listings on your profile.
Getting started on Booking.com
Great, so you’ve decided on the third party platform for now we will use Booking.com as an example. Booking.com are very well established in the holiday lettings world and make booking easy for both the host and the guest, with an inbox for messaging, private notes that can be added to bookings, easy pricing adjustments and rule setting plus editable listings its the simplest way to list a property and start taking bookings.
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To get started you will need to create a Booking.com business account, once created and verified you can switch to hosting, and start to create your new listing.
Top 5 things to do before you start hosting
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Book yourself a photographer to take photos of the hut once it’s in situ and styled, professional photos will appeal to potential guests much more.
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Find your niche – what can you offer your guests that others can’t, what makes you stand out from the crowd, find that special offering!
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Pricing – Use the platform to search the local area for other similar properties and get an idea off what they are charging, use smart pricing whilst you’re starting up or even run a special offer to entice customers.
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Don’t hold back on the small touches – try to imagine yourself as a guest and what facilities or amenities would make your stay extra special, could it be a particular brand of wash products, robes & slippers, access to bikes or sports equipment, maybe a breakfast hamper or fresh milk and water in the fridge, those little touches go along way with guests and if you want.
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Find your suppliers – Housekeeper & laundry service, linens and towels, consumables (tea, coffee, toilet rolls) etc. Work out the most cost effective way of providing your guests with these items without it costing you your profit. Make sure you get a fixed price for the cleaning and set this charge up as an additional charge on your listings prices.
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Once you are live
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After you have set up your listing, it would be recommended to create a guidebook and attach it to your listing, this will give potential guests a further insight into the local area and what they can do whilst staying with you. Fill this with great places to eat, drink and local attractions.
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We would also recommend offering a discounted price for the first few weeks of the listing being advertised this will again entice potential guests, once you start having bookings and guests have stayed with you make sure to follow up and request reviews, the more 5* reviews the more likely your hut is to get booked! You can set up scheduled messages asking for these reviews so you don’t forget.