Deal Breakers for Vacationers

One of the many fun things about working for WeNeedaVacation.com is that friends and family ask me to help them find vacation homes. I enjoy using our site to search through listings, look at pictures, and narrow choices for them. Lots of eye candy on our site, and many homes that make me dream and fantasize.

Recently, I was looking for a 3 bedroom home for three couples, my husband’s cousins, and I encountered some things that I realized would be “deal breakers” for them. And I thought maybe it would be helpful to share these deal breakers with our homeowners as part of a blog series designed to help you avoid them, if possible, so that you are more successful in booking your home.

So, off I went, browsing through the list of search results. I chose to search by the location, price, number of bedrooms, and a few amenities.

Want to know how I initially separated the “no ways” from the “maybes”?

1. Bad pictures – No thanks! Even if your house looks nice through the bad pictures, I’m not interested. Marketing 101 – take the time to take good pictures.
2. Bed configuration – Got at least one queen or king sized bed?  Or will I need to squeeze a couple into a full bed? No thanks. This is a deal breaker and a back breaker!

I’m a broken record (remember those?) when it comes to talking about good pictures, so I’ll leave that alone.

But bed configuration….let me tell you how discouraged I was. I travel with kids, so I certainly appreciate twin beds. Perhaps I would even put one adult or 1-2 little kids in a full bed. In my mind, that is where the functionality of a full bed stops.

Honestly, I would never (again) rent a house where I or a couple I am with would sleep in a full bed. I hope that doesn’t sound snooty, but I venture to say that the majority of couples don’t want double beds. It is a deal breaker.

I had a heck of a time finding a house with three large beds – queens or kings. Egads, do I recommend a hotel?

Solution?  Invest in bigger beds.

If that’s not feasible, market your double/full bed for one person only or 1-2 kids instead of a couple.

Or, buy the gizmo that connects two twin beds to make a king ($15 at Bed, Bath & Beyond), and market the option for a king.  Having the ability to convert two twins to a king, and vice versa, is a valuable option to offer.

At the end of the day, it may be better to have six happy guests than eight guests, two of whom will not return.

To read more about the importance of bed configuration, please read our blog Vacation Rental “Silent Killer”: Small Beds  And stay tuned for the next post alerting you to other deal breakers that might be affecting your booking results.