Owning a vacation rental does not mean that you are straight away successful in the vacation rental business. It is the goal of every owner to be progressive and to gain satisfactory results, each with its performance standards, each with its objectives and evaluation of achievements. However, the road to success depends on many things present there for you to implement, monitor, and use effectively. But some things are basic, necessary, and simple—without them, great achievements would never be reached.

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, yeah, yeah. This is a boring, cliche subject; there is nothing new in this post, nothing special or interesting. But I feel the need to mention again one of the most important moments, one of the key factors that plays a crucial role in our lives. I will mention some standards that need to be met if you are willing to point yourself on the road that leads to a successful vacation rental business. Cleanliness!!!

This is a pretty popular subject to discuss, as each vacation rental owner is already sufficiently dedicated to it, but maybe it is time to finally realize the seriousness of this fundamental component in order to raise the cleanliness standards and to think a little deeper about it and its essential role in the vacation rental business.

Inspired but at the same time stunned by recent experiences of people with whom I am close, people who were willing to spend over 90 € / day for a rental in London, I would like to ask you just a few questions:

1) Do you really think that the dust and hairs clearly visible all over the toilet are part of one’s high standards of cleanliness?

2) Is it normal to say that the toilet bowl is clean if there are rust and other stains in it?

3) Does it meet the standards for clean if the closet shelves in the bedroom are so dusty that it takes you plenty of time to clean them, make them ready for use?

4) Is it a high standard of cleanliness if the shelf has scattered remnants of cosmetic products? (Here is another question for you: Do you really think that someone would use half-emptied mouthwash or almost-wasted body lotion?)

5) Do you consider it nicely cleaned if the fridge contains rotten food leftovers, or do you maybe actually think that someone would eat them?

With an affirmative answer to the questions, it is not nice to welcome someone for free into a home with these things—not to mention someone who is actually paying for it...

Nobody likes disappointed, disgusted guests—especially not those with a revoked smile and who feel deeply inspired to write negative feedback about their stay.

Whether you will decide to clean by yourself, employ cleaning staff, or use a cleaning company, the choice is yours, and the cleanliness standards will be determined by your guests. You should never use the term “different cleanliness standards” as an excuse for your dirt (yes, yes, you read it well—there are some vacation rental owners with such responses).

They say that “cleanliness is half of health.” But when it comes to your vacation rental, I would say that the cleanliness is the base for the full health of your vacation rental business.

As a vacation rental industry analyst, I recently wrote in a HomeAway column that I believe 2014 will be all about creating optimal experiences.
I was led to this conclusion because of two trends that have been made abundantly clear over the past decade:

First, vacation rentals represent the most sustainable travel movement that has (and will) come along in a very long time.
And second, perhaps the biggest hurdle that exists in this nascent industry is to streamline the way guests experience rentals as a whole.

When I say streamline, I’m not talking about adopting the generic nature of chain hotels like Hilton or Marriott…
Nor am I referring to the human-less void of airline ticket kiosks or automated customer service phone calls (I absolutely hate talking to a computer).
 
Instead, to me, streamlining the vacation rental industry means the challenge of forming a universal set of expectations for travelers…

…Expectations that can then be met (or in the case of my subscribers, superseded) by property owners and managers around the world.
 
Establishing these expectations will benefit all of us.

And in very much the same way that BookingSync has set out to make the managing your vacation rental easy, I believe that the largest opportunity in the vacation rental niche, for owners and managers -- the way to make the most money and to conquer the most market share -- is to discover your own optimal processes on an even greater scale.

This could range from an optimal correspondence method: a sequence of questions or emails or actions that you find converts the most inquiries to bookings…

It could mean finding the most optimal bed linens: the ones that cost the least but feel the softest…

It could even mean picking the optimal property (yes, many of my subscribers are now going on to purchase second, third, and in one case NINTH vacation homes due to their success).

The point is this:

Vacation rentals evolved organically to make life easier for travelers.
Now, it’s our job to make the experiences surrounding those properties as optimal as possible as well.
This means testing, prodding, researching, learning, failing, improving and doing it all over again.
2014 will be an extremely influential year for vacation rental owners and managers.
 
How optimal can your business be?