With the popularity of staycations and workcations on the rise, you’ll need to consider which amenities will help guests create the perfect home away from home if they plan to book for a longer time.
Continue reading to find out how to decorate your vacation rental house in just 12 easy steps.
What is the cost of furnishing a Vacation Rental?
Let’s start with the financial side of your furniture and design project. If you want to make your holiday rental more upscale, you may spend anywhere between $25,000 and $100,000 on furnishings.
You might spend less than $10,000 if you already have a few things and are willing to settle for something less fancy but still comfy. Finally, hosts must keep in mind that, while there are some large purchases, there is also a long list of smaller purchases that can quickly add up. You’ll also need to consider yearly operational costs to maintain your home in tip-top shape.
1. Determine the Type of Visitor you Want to Attract
Finally, the furnishings of your residence will be determined by the sort of visitors you want to attract. You may, for instance, target the following sorts of travelers:
Children’s families
Snowbirds Millennials Generation Z Workaholics
When furnishing your vacation rental house, keep your target demographic in mind. If you cater your short-term rental to families, they will appreciate features like plastic cutlery and outlet guards. On the other hand, Millennials are less concerned with silverware and more concerned with Wi-Fi speed and other automated features.
2. Make a Checklist
You must make sure each room is adequately equipped. While you do not need to provide every cooking equipment in the main house, your property should be completely functioning.
Before you make any purchases, it’s a good idea to walk room by room and prepare a checklist that you can use for each one. This way, you’ll ensure you don’t forget anything important while avoiding buying unnecessary duplicates. So, if you have a piece of almost new and gently used furniture, you may also cross it off this list.
It’s even better if you have two different checklists for the essentials and the extras. The essentials are the stuff you’ll need before renting out your vacation rental home. Extras are nice-to-have goods such as artwork or board games that you can add later when you have more money.
3. Decide on a Design Theme For your Rental Home
It is necessary to choose a style before purchasing any furniture. Fortunately, there are several free materials accessible on the internet! You may get ideas from Instagram, Pinterest, vacation rental blogs, and interior design studio websites.
Whatever your style is, you shouldn’t allow it to guide your decision-making. It is preferable to choose a design that will appeal to most passengers. However, make an effort to fit your style to your surroundings. Rustic furnishings would be more appropriate than a nautical motif if you had a mountain cottage.
It’s also important to keep things simple by limiting the number of accessories you use. The number of items that may be harmed is reduced. It also makes cleaning much simpler, particularly important during the COVID-19 epidemic. Stick to neutral hues for the basis, and add accent colors with a colorful fruit dish.
4. Select Furnishings that Will Last the Duration of your Vacation Rental
When it comes to outfitting their residences, one of the most frequent errors that hosts make is to choose furniture that satisfies their standards. When it comes to holiday rental homes, the furnishings should be more than enough.
Furthermore, since your vacation rental property will see more traffic than a regular home, it is even more critical that everything is durable and simple to operate. Most renters understand the fundamentals of Airbnb etiquette and will handle your home with the greatest care most of the time. Accidents do, however, occur in the actual world. So, hard-wearing furniture will make more sense to reduce the damage in the long term.
Lacquered furniture, for example, might be difficult to maintain in excellent shape. Instead, you may produce aged effects that will enhance with age and give character to your home.
5. Have Plenty of Lighting
Hosts sometimes ignore the importance of good lighting. Well-planned lighting may help you create the ideal mood for your holiday rental. It may also aid in the prevention of potentially fatal mishaps. Keep in mind that your visitors are unfamiliar with your property. As a result, make sure that the living room, dining room, kitchen, bathrooms, hallways, entryways, and outdoor spaces are all well-lit.
Also, remember to strategically install lighting. Table lights are a must-have accessory next to all of your beds! They’re not only useful, but they may also be attractive.
It is preferable to use energy-saving lighting, such as L.E.D. Lights. These will endure longer, and your visitors will be grateful for your efforts to save the environment.
6. Make a Storage Area
Even people who travel light will require storage. Who wants to live in a suitcase?
Having enough storage for your visitors is a must, particularly if you offer prolonged stays. Furthermore, with prolonged stays becoming more common, innovative storage solutions are increasingly important for providing the best possible guest experience.
There are several methods that any property (regardless of size) that may provide enough storage space, ranging from bedside tables with drawers to floating shelves. You have to look at the storage options available in compact houses.
7. Create a Relaxing Work Environment
While your property should provide a gathering spot for visitors, it should also provide a discreet area where guests may relax and work. According to Jasper Ribbers, co-founder of STR Legends, more workers will book short-term rental houses for workstations in 2021. These visitors will need high-speed Internet access and a comfortable work environment.
Vrbo’s findings on new travel trends corroborated this information. Two-thirds of tourists who mixed work and a family holiday in 2017 will do so again in 2021, according to Vrbo. As a result, having a comfortable location for your visitors to work will be beneficial.
8. Decorate your Outside Space (or balcony)
If you do have access to a patio or balcony, set up a table and chairs there. Not only can you advertise it as a feature, but it will also keep your inside furniture from being moved (only to forget it there overnight).
9. Add Finishing Touches
Small details might assist in giving your holiday rental a more homey feel. Here are some suggestions for making your stay a home away from home:
- At the foot of the bed, there’s a quilt.
- On the coffee table, there’s a book.
- The walls are covered with art.
- On the dining table, there are fresh flowers.
- On a wooden floor, a rug,
- Hooks for hanging coats near a door
- On the kitchen counter, there’s a notebook and a pen.
- A few popular board games and children’s toys
- A thorough welcome book, as well as water and food dishes for cuddly four-legged pals (if your home is pet-friendly).
10. Take All of Your Personal Belongings With You
Personal stuff should be kept in your own home, just as your eccentric personal style should be reserved for outfitting your dwelling. Family pictures, personal healthcare and cosmetic goods, apparel, and technology equipment are examples of these objects.
For starters, if you outfit your vacation rental home with personal emotional objects, you face the danger of them being destroyed, lost, or stolen. It might also give the impression that your visitors are invading your personal space (which is no longer is).
If you don’t have enough storage space, you may store these personal belongings in a closed closet designated for personal use. It’s also a good option if you want to utilize your home for personal use on occasion.
11. Consider Hiring a Professional Designer
If you’re short on time and need to get your listing out there as soon as possible, hiring an interior designer might be a good option. As previously said, you should choose a design that would appeal to most passengers. Who better to consult than a professional interior designer who has worked on vacation rental homes before?
Hiring a competent designer can save you time and transform your holiday house into something that will appeal to your target guests. You may target more high-end customers and improve your nightly fee by ensuring your home looks good and delivers a higher degree of comfort.
12. Use Your Listing to Highlight Your Property Upgrades.
Take some time to emphasize improvements to your property in your vacation rental ad to make all of your hard work come together. Here are some helpful ideas for presenting these modifications in your listing:
Take some fantastic pictures of your newly renovated home.
In your property description, make a note of any new features. If your home has been remodeled, be sure to include it in the listing description.
Refresh your title by mentioning that your home has been “recently refurbished” or by focusing on a brand-new perk that will help you differentiate your vacation rental.
Make a walk-through video of your whole property and upload it to YouTube.
Use Lodgable to Set up your Company for Success
The first step toward a faultless guest experience is a nicely designed house. Now that you’ve spent a lot of time and money furnishing your vacation rental house, make sure other areas, such as guest communication, are in good working order. After all, you don’t want your visitor to blow a fuse because they could not contact you when electrical equipment failed.
Software like Lodgable can help you provide the best possible guest experience while saving you time on common tasks like messaging and posting reviews.Â
Lodgable can also assist you with a variety of other tasks. These are some of them:
- Manage several accounts and listings on the most popular vacation rental networks from a single interface.
- Syncing bookings across several platforms to reduce the chance of a double-booking
- Connecting your Stripe account to Lodgable allows you to receive payments and create invoices.
- Automating the process of sending out guest reviews
- Using our free direct booking websites to handle direct bookings
- Integrated dynamic pricing
- Real market research available at your fingertips
