The UK's holiday rental market now includes an estimated 168,000 different properties across the country. As more and more homeowners consider letting out their property for short-term holidays, the demand for properties that are successfully managed continues to rise.
Not everyone has holiday cottage management experience. If you're letting out a holiday home, you need to find the right people to manage your property for you.
This is what's known as soliciting a holiday cottage management service. Sounds complicated, but we're going to clearly outline what you need to look for when it comes to holiday let management providers.
That way, you can guarantee your property is managed by a provider with your best interests at heart.
Any holiday let company will tell you that rental property management is no easy task. Managing a holiday cottage involves a huge number of tasks that cycle regularly alongside your guests.
Firstly, and most importantly, you need to think about your guests themselves.
That means finding a provider with comprehensive guest assistance, including check-ins, and 24/7 guest support services. But it also includes managing your property itself.
That means cleaning and laundry logistics, property maintenance, and communication with you as the homeowner. We don't just mean haphazard cleaning, we mean high-quality cleaning by vetted, local providers.
In today's day and age, it also means a detailed understanding of Airbnb hosting.
You need to find a company that can promise all of these aspects of holiday cottage management are covered by their services. If anything here is missing, it means your property is being managed by a company that simply isn't providing the extent of support that you deserve.
Holiday property management isn't quite as simple as handing over the keys to somebody else and forgetting about it. As a holiday cottage owner, you need to know what's happening with your property at all times.
That means having access to listings data, so you know when your property is booked out. It also means having the ability to easily book out your own property for personal stays.
We have our own dedicated Host Portal, which allows holiday cottage owners to do all this and more. Through our Host Portal, owners are able to book an unlimited number of personal stays at their own property with a few simple clicks.
We also upload photos of your cottage to our portal, meaning you can keep track of your property every single time it's cleaned. Our Host Portal also allows you to access guest reviews, so you can see what your average rating is from guests.
Finally, it also includes advanced tracking features for your rental income. That means you can see exactly how much your property is earning each month, whilst also tracking occupancy rates.
This level of visibility can help you stay in the know, whilst we handle all the trickier sides of property management.
A holiday let management company shouldn't leave listing management to you. Attaining listings for your property is the main way of making sure you're able to receive the maximum amount of rental income possible on your property.
A holiday let company should take control of your listings for you. At Pass the Keys, we do just that to help you aim to receive the maximum occupancy possible on your property.
By maximising your listings for you, you're given peace of mind. You can rest assured we're always working to make sure your property is rarely empty.
Holiday cottage letting can be a challenging experience at times. It can be troubling for some homeowners to let strangers rent out their homes without the right kind of support in place.
An experienced holiday let agency should be helping you with this. Your holiday cottage management provider should be able to screen all of your guests for you before they rent your property.
This provides an added layer of security for you, to make sure all your guests will behave appropriately.
You should also be able to sleep at night without worrying that your belongings could get damaged. At Pass the Keys, we offer accidental damage insurance to everyone whose property we manage.
That means you don't have to worry about your belongings, or the people renting out your holiday home.
Letting a company manage your property is a major decision. It should always be made with terms that are transparent and easy to understand from day one.
Whenever you sign a contract with a holiday let agency, you need to make sure it's flexible. That means that you should be able to part ways at short notice if that's required.
It also means you shouldn't have to pay any huge termination fees to do so; after all, it's your property that's being managed.
To support that flexibility, you need to find a company that's both locally minded, and backed by infrastructure on a national scale. That means they're able to dedicate time and care to you and your local area, whilst still being large enough to solve any problems that may arise.
All of our contracts here at Pass the Keys are flexible, with no onerous intricacies for you to worry about. We're happy for you to leave with no termination fees if you're not happy with us.
But we're both local and national and will do everything we can to make sure you'll never even consider that option.
Finding the right holiday cottage management service is never an easy task. But here at Pass the Keys, we work to make sure the keys to your property are safe in our hands.
To find out more about our services, please book a call with one of our experienced holiday cottage managers today.