Are rising costs affecting your short let business?

Are rising costs affecting your short lets?

Businesses and individuals across the UK, America and Europe are being affected by rising inflation and business costs.

What prices are increasing for the holiday rentals industry?

The raised prices of particular interest to the self-catering industry include:

• Cost of food and non-alcoholic drinks
• Cost of fuel
• Cost of National Insurance payments
• Costs of energy prices.

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How have increased costs impacted self-catering businesses?

Increased fuel costs.

If you undertake cleaning, maintenance, and meet and greet tasks yourself, then you will see an increased cost to your fuel costs as you travel to and from your properties.

If you employ an external team, they may pass these charges onto you.

Raised costs of your Welcome Basket.

Food and other goods may now cost more, increasing the price of providing your Welcome Basket.

If you charge for your Welcome Basket, the charge may not cover the cost.

Higher UK National Insurance payments for your staff.

If you employ staff in the UK, you may be obliged to pay a higher National Insurance payment, depending on your staffs’ circumstances.

Higher UK National Insurance payments for you.

If you have a UK self-employed status there will be a rise in the National Insurance payments you make for yourself.

Increased energy prices in the holiday let properties.

As energy bills rise, the day-to-day costs of heating, cooling, protecting, and running a holiday rental property will rise.

Guests looking to escape the stresses of day-to-day problems may not be as conscious of the fuel bills.

This could lead to turning up the heating, leaving the lights on, and wasting energy in your holiday homes.

This will lead to increased costs for the property owners, reducing the profit made from each booking.

How to reduce costs in self-catering properties?

Reduce fuel spend

• Reduce your processes that require visits to the property.
  Make a list of all visits to the property, to identify which trips can be consolidated or omitted.
• Review check-out times to enable cleaners to clean properties that are in close vicinity to each other.
• Review opportunities for cleaning teams to be located closer to the properties.
• Discuss with your cleaning team how they could reduce fuel costs. It is in their interest to work with you to find solutions.
• Look at technology to help. Keyless technology has taken off and offers a reduced need to check-in and check-out guests face-to-face.

Lower Welcome Basket costs

• Review the contents of your Welcome Basket. Which products have been affected by price rises?
• Look at your target guests. This is a good opportunity to rethink what will appeal to them and add value to your services.
• Are there alternative options that are attractive to your guests at a lower cost?
• Could you negotiate a bulk purchase of a favourite item for a lower price?
• Speak with local providers to discuss the options available that will fit your budget.

Minimise National Insurance payments

There may be opportunities to reduce National Insurance payable by you and your employees.

Speak with your Accountant to discuss the options available to your business.

Get smarter with energy prices

• SMART Tech

Add SMART technology to monitor, warn and change the energy usage within your properties.

The options are evolving but can add a level of management to important electrical aspects of your holiday home.

This provides warnings and control when there are:

• significant temperature changes using a SMART Thermostat,
• windows open + heating / air-conditioning using a SMART window sensors,
• lights on during the day using SMART lights.
  
  
• Communicate

Communicate to your guests the importance of reducing energy consumption within the properties.

This could be on your website, or you can use Bookster Email Marketing to automatically send messages to your guests prior to arrival and a reminder post arrival.

• Replace and Review

Review the energy levels consumed by items in your property.

High energy consumables can be removed, maintained, or upgraded with a lower energy alternative.

This can range from upgrading to low energy bulbs, to replacing low-performing fridges.

Done that. What else?

The next option is to increase the value of your bookings.

This could be done in a number of ways:

• Increase daily or weekly prices.
  How: In Bookster this can be increased in the Rates Management tool.
• Add an obligatory surcharge for new additional costs.
• Increase the cleaning fee.
• Adjust concierge meet and greets to be a chargeable option.
• Charge for your Welcome Basket.
• Increase prices if you already charge for the Welcome Basket.
• Charge for high energy-consuming products, eg the Hot tub.
  How: In Bookster these can all be added in the Add Ons tool.

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We can help you.

Bookster is a property management system designed to help you manage your holiday let business. 

Attracting bookings for your holiday lets at a time of high inflation requires careful analysis of your costs and flexible software to help you achieve your goals.

For more information on how Bookster can help your business grow, book a demo.