Vacation Rental “Silent Killer”: Small Beds

In The Ideal Listing series, we discussed a number of ways to make your online vacation rental listing as effective as possible from a marketing perspective. But also important are the unnoticed pitfalls that can negate any of your wonderful marketing efforts and cause prospective vacationers to opt for another property over yours. I call them the Silent Killers because, most of the time, one never realizes why their listing has not received inquiries or bookings, often despite receiving many hits/views.

What beds do you offer?

One of the “deadliest” of the Silent Killers is the lack of a queen or king bed. The human body is considerably larger than it was a few generations ago, and couples these days are just not willing to spend an entire week sleeping in a double bed. Vacation is meant to be relaxing and rejuvenating, and a good night’s sleep is essential to that. My family house was filled with wonderful, old double beds – but they’re all gone, replaced by a queen and two sets of twins, one of which can be easily converted to a king.

Obviously, some cottages with small bedrooms cannot accommodate a large bed. But most can, and homeowners simply don’t realize the importance of offering at least one (if not more) queen or king beds. The twin-to-king converter is a simple, T-shaped piece of foam that costs a mere $12-$15. Large beds are becoming so necessary to vacationers that we have even considered adding this feature to our Power Search process on WeNeedaVacation.com.

Do you offer at least one queen or king size bed? Did you ever consider how detrimental NOT having a larger bed could be?