Fully Managed Services

For small holiday property owners, keeping the booking calendar full whilst delivering a great customer experience to guests can be challenging. It demands ‘around the clock’ attention and constant focus. Attracting new customers and convincing them to book your property is particularly tough in a crowded holiday-let market. Increased competition forces holiday property owners to increase customer satisfaction and minimise costs to succeed. As well as enticing guests to stay at your property through compelling property listings and a great website, there are the logistical challenges of busy changeover days, lost keys and guests communication prior to their arrival. Keeping up with all of this can easily become overwhelming for holiday property owners, especially when they do not live locally.

Holiday rental owners can spend between 5-8 hours a day marketing and managing their holiday properties. It can be very cumbersome, on occasions stressful, and the work never stops. Nowadays, some of those painful tasks can be delegated to experts. We can free up your time by assisting with any and all aspects of your holiday let management. This would give you time to concentrate on things that really matter to you. Work smarter and not harder by outsourcing the holiday rental management tasks to the experts, South Devon Holidays. Our primary objective is to maximise your profit.

MANAGED SERVICE SET - UP

We look at your property as a business intended to bring profit. The good initial set-up of a holiday let bodes well for the future of your holiday let. The following needs to be considered early on:

How will your property be marketed/advertised?
Who are the potential customers (e.g. family of 4)?
How will they find you?
How much is it to stay with you?
Are you pet and child friendly?
How can they book?
Do you take credit/debit cards?
Who can clean and maintain your property?
Who can respond to emergencies at the property?

Initial set-up begins with getting your tailor-made holiday property website up and running. It will be fully Search Engine Optimised (SEO) and integrated with a hosted booking managed service.

Potential guests can easily view availability and pricing on the website, place a booking and pay online by Credit/Debit card (charged at 1% per transaction) or via bank transfer. Online payments offer guests additional security and reassurance. A social media presence (Facebook page, Instagram) is established during the initial set-up, and your property is added to Google Maps and Google Business. We need to make it easy for people to find your holiday let. A network of reliable subcontractors (cleaners, laundry, hot-tub maintenance, etc.) gets put in place and tested. But, of course, things need to run smoothly. One of the secrets of any successful holiday let is timely and efficient communication with guests. Any queries relating to potential bookings must be answered immediately before the potential guest moves on to the next holiday property. Holidaymakers who have already booked your property need to be contacted at multiple timepoints, e.g. upon booking, at arrival and upon departure, to make them feel cared for.

All of the above can easily be a full-time job! Well, for us, it is!

You can call upon our expert web developers, marketers, booking system administrators, customer and supplier relations specialists, as well as our trusted cleaning, laundry, hot tub maintenance and tradespeople from our personally vetted preferred supplier’s list.

THE SERVICE

Once the set-up phase has been completed, we start advertising your holiday property to attract potential guests and lead them to the booking page. The fully trained and experienced customer relations team will speak to potential guests, provide information and facilitate the booking. We pursue all possible leads. Being that we manage an array of properties, any dates that another property cannot accommodate are potential guests for yours. Your holiday let also gets added to our highly marketed Agency web page, where potential guests will be able to find it from its available search engine.

Once a guest has booked via the booking system, they are offered the opportunity to pay with a Credit/debit card* (1% WorldPay pass on charge) – or via bank transfer. Booking details and invoices are issued to the guests via email. We charge a 25% deposit to secure the booking, with the remaining payable six weeks before arrival. Chase up emails, and payment links are issued to the customer. Before their arrival, guests will receive a welcome email with directions, key save codes, etc. They will also receive an SMS with similar details. During guests’ stay at your property, regular communication is established to ensure the guests are happy and offering suggestions on day trips, restaurants, etc. Before your guest leaves, further communication is sent around the checkout process, suggesting the cheapest place to fill up with vehicle fuel before their trip home. Those little extra things mean a lot to guests and reaffirm to them that we care.

Once the guests have left, the cleaning and hot tub maintenance team set to work, setting the holiday property up for the next guests. But, first, the housekeeping team check things to ensure that there has been no damage to the property. Provided everything is in order, South Devon Holiday Lodges return the breakage deposit (taken upon booking) to the guests and request feedback on Facebook, Google or Trip Advisor. Good reviews boost the popularity of your holiday let and are important for the success of your property. Monthly reports are issued to property owners with completed bookings, a full breakdown of booking income, any expenditure (cleaning, laundry, commission, etc.) with outstanding sums paid into the owner account that same day. Therefore, you do not need to wait one year for the reconciliation of your income.

CREDIT / DEBIT CARD

South Devon Holiday Lodges is an established holiday rental property management company. As such, we have negotiated very low fees with online payment merchants for taking online credit and debit card payments. If your guests chose to pay via credit/debit card, you would be charged only 1% of the transaction fee (pass-through cost), which is highly competitive.

Credit Cards Offer Increased Security

We all know that credit and debit card payments are much more secure than bank transfers. In addition, guests paying by card receive additional protection from their banks and/or card providers. Following the recent pandemic, holidaymakers have become more aware of the risks associated with booking holidays privately. Some holiday homeowners refused refunds for holidays cancelled due to the government lockdown, which was widely published in the press. As a result, many holidaymakers now look for accommodation accepting debit or credit card payments.

Since the #Staycation boom, also many scammers have been posing as holiday homeowners taking bookings and payments for fictitious properties. As a result, people lost thousands of pounds, and it has been widely publicised in the media. The main word of advice to holidaymakers is to always pay by credit or debit card via the property’s website. However, scammers are unable to offer this payment method due to the checks completed by card merchants. From our perspective, accepting card payments is the quickest way to secure a booking, as the payment is made instantly upon placing a booking. Booking is confirmed and paid at the same time. No chasing, no follow-up hassle.

An added benefit is that many credit/debit card providers offer zero per cent interest on spendings over a period of time, allowing the holiday owner to afford a breakaway. In addition, it improves the chances of your property remaining occupied throughout the year.

* 1% is charged by WorldPay per credit card transaction, this is cross-charged to property owners as a pass-through cost (South Devonshire Holidays Ltd do not charge for this service), we simply pass on our corporate savings from our merchant to the owners

IN A NUTSHELL

South Devonshire Holidays is an established holiday rental and property management company with a wealth of experience in web design, social media, digital design and marketing, customer and guest relationship management. We are also well versed in supplier relationship management. We are the ideal, trustworthy partner to manage the private subletting of your holiday property.

Holiday Property Set-Up

Obtain a suitable domain name for your website and email.
Obtain SSL certification needed to take digital payments.
Create a seductive SEO website to tempt the guests into buying a stay at your property.
Create your property branding logo.
Create and populate your booking system, with its availability, pricing, email templates etc.
Linking the booking system with the credit/debit card facilities and adding the booking system links this to all digital media, allowing guests to book a stay at your property easily.
Create your Privacy, Data Privacy, Cookies and Tracking Technologies Policies, as well as a guest’s Hot-Tub Disclaimer.
Create and Promote Social Media Presence.
Set-up supporting housekeeping and maintenance staff.
Adding the lodge to South Devon Holiday Lodges agency page.

On-Going Management Activities

Marketing and advertising your property, its website and its social media pages.
Speaking to potential guests, answering questions and encouraging booking your property.
Managing the guest lifecycle from placing a booking and pre/post-arrival. Also, speaking to them during and post- stay.
Adding all guests to guest register (if required by holiday park), enabling them to book activities within the park.
Issuing payment reminders. Dealing with payment queries.
Conveying feedback from guests via Facebook, Google and Trip Advisor.
Providing monthly account reconciliation of income and outgoings pertaining to your property; for completed bookings, monthly payments of funds are made to property owners.
Managing all supporting housekeeping and maintenance staff.

OUR SUCCESS IS YOUR SUCCESS !

CASE STUDIES

Property A - 3 Bed A-Frame lodge within a holiday resort

2017 – Resort subletting

Profit received £3,800 after resort fees and utilities.

2020 – Year 2 of Private Sublet (reduced due to Pandemic)

Profit received £3,800 after resort fees and utilities.
61 Bookings for a total of 251 nights
Total Revenue £42,869
South Devon Commission £8,573.80
£6,725 in Cleaning and Hot-Tub fees
Holiday Site + Utility Fees £7,171.05
£20,399.15 profit.

Property B - 2 Bed Luxury Cabin within a Spa Resort

2018 – Resort subletting

Profit received £2,100 after resort fees and utilities.

2020 – Year 2 of Private Sublet (reduced due to COVID-19)

50 Bookings, which was 193 nights
Total Revenue £34,016
South Devon 20% Commission £6,803.20
£5,100 in Cleaning and Hot-Tub fees
Holiday Site + Utility Fees £3,977.02
£15,880.22 profit.

IN SUMMARY

Managing a holiday let property is a full-time job. Marketing, sales, financial management, compliance, guest and supplier management take a lot of time and focus. South Devon Holiday Lodges offers a fully managed subletting service, where everything is taken care of for you. We create your website, advertise your property online, secure bookings, handle payments, manage cleaners, and, most importantly, keeping your investment safe. We follow national guidelines and regulations and keep you informed at all times. Our fully-managed subletting service offers property owners peace of mind and assurance that their property is looked after. As a result, you retain full control of your holiday property while we help you make your investment profitable.