One of the easiest ways to insure success in the villa rental business is to make your customers so happy that they return again and again. In this way one success echoes on and on and brings in a regular income.
It is a complex mix of things that make people like or dislike a villa in Thailand – the location, the beach, the nearby facilities and amenities, the weather, the prices are just a few of the variables that affect people’s perception of a holiday destination and a holiday rental.
The thing to remember as the owner of the Thai property for rent is that you know better than your prospective guests what will make their holiday a memorable one. You know better than them what is important and what is not.
It is for this reason that I entitled this piece ‘making customers happy by giving them less choice’. Often the temptation is to focus on giving value for money by offering a cheap price for a ‘bare bones’ rental. The thinking is that the renter can opt to pay for services that they value, and that will enhance their enjoyment of the holiday by making good choices.
This is frequently a mistaken modus operandi because often the renter is new to the area and to villa rental. They might not realize that it is going to be much more convenient to have maid service, wifi broadband, shopping service etc. They might shy away from car rental but if your villa is a hot walk from the beach then the answer is to include either vehicle hire in the rental package or a taxi service. You can build these expenses into the rental cost. The customer will never know this; indeed, they will be so busy having a good time that they will not question how the rental fee is broken down.
You don’t have to provide a ‘turn-key’ holiday experience necessarily to make customers happy, but you have to anticipate where they might make bad choices and take those choices away to give yourself the best chance of having a successful rental; a rental so successful that it repeats in the future and makes you good money.
That is what I mean by saying that less choice can be a better thing. People aren’t going to remember that the villa cost $30 more a night than other comparable places, but they will remember the wonderful home cooked Thai food that they experienced.
