Beginner's Guides
OTAs
Self-Catering Accommodation: A Quick Guide for New Hosts
Over recent years, self-catering houses and apartments have become increasingly popular among travelers because they provide more space, privacy, and flexibility than hotels or traditional B&Bs.
Over recent years, self-catering houses and apartments have become increasingly popular among travelers because they provide more space, privacy, and flexibility than hotels or traditional B&Bs. So, if you are considering starting a vacation rental business, operating a self-catering accommodation can be a viable option.
What Is Self-Catering Accommodation?
Self-catering accommodation is a type of lodging where guests have the facilities to prepare and cook their own meals, rather than relying on a restaurant or room service. Self-catering properties are rented out to guests for short-term stays ranging from a few days to several weeks.
These are usually comfortable, fully furnished houses, apartments, villas, or cottages. But it can also be a cabin, a chalet, a luxury tent, or something a little more quirky, like a yurt, treehouse, or boat rental.
Although self-catering accommodations vary in size, style, and amenities, they often offer more space, multiple bedrooms, and separate living areas. That makes self-catering apartments, cottages, and cabins suitable for longer stays or group trips.
Self-Catering Apartments: What Should You Provide to Guests?
Self-catering properties typically come with a kitchen or kitchenette. They are usually equipped with essential kitchen amenities, such as a fridge, oven, coffee maker, microwave, and other kitchen appliances, utensils, and cookware. The dining area should have a table and enough chairs so all guests can comfortably eat together. Travelers also expect you to provide bedding, towels, toiletries, and free WiFi to ensure a pleasant stay.
How to Manage a Self-Catering Accommodation Business Efficiently
If you own a property in a popular tourist destination, running a self-catering accommodation business can be very profitable. Aside from the financial benefits, many property owners also enjoy meeting new people and welcoming guests from all over the world.
However, being an STR host also entails significant responsibilities. You must list your property on major OTAs, update the calendar and prices on all your channels, communicate with guests, and manage bookings and cancellations. You must also handle cleaning and maintenance, check-ins and checkouts, restocking necessary supplies, etc.
Managing self-catering accommodation can be time-consuming, so savvy hosts use short-term rental software like Hospitable to streamline business operations. With Hospitable, you can automate 90% of repetitive daily tasks and put your business on autopilot.
By automating various aspects of your hosting routine, you’ll have more time to create an inviting atmosphere that ensures a memorable experience for your guests and makes them happy with their stay. This way, you can get more positive reviews that win you more bookings. Here’s what you can automate to save time and make your self-catering accommodation business more efficient.
Guest communication
Communication with guests is one of the most time-consuming aspects of running a short-term rental business. You need to quickly respond to inquiries from potential guests and proactively message your current guests at every stage of the customer journey to provide them with the necessary information.
That’s why it makes sense to streamline this process with vacation rental software that includes a guest communication feature. For example, Hospitable allows you to automate guest messaging from booking inquiries to checkout. You just need to create a list of message templates, personalize them with shortcodes, and set up message rules.
With Hospitable's AI Inbox feature, you can have our system generate response drafts to any guest question based on your previous messages, listing, and booking details. You can even opt in for full automation so that we send AI-generated responses without your review.
You can help the Inbox AI write better messages by uploading your guidebooks to the Knowledge Hub to teach the AI about your property and policies. Our AI will use these details to generate personalized answer specific guest questions.
Check-ins and checkouts
If you live far from your self-catering house or apartment, meeting all your guests and handing over the key can be very challenging. But you can automate your check-ins and checkouts by installing a smart lock that connects to your property’s Wi-Fi network.
Each guest can access your property using a unique code that expires after they check out. Then, you won’t have to drive to your short-term rental, and your guests will enjoy smooth check-ins and checkouts.
Managing smart locks is easy because they integrate with vacation rental software. For example, Hospitable has direct integrations with many popular smart lock systems, including Schlage, August, Yale, Igloohome, SmartThings, Nuki, Key Nest, and Kwikset. If you connect supported smart locks to Hospitable, our system will automatically create a unique door code for each reservation and share it with your guests.
Hospitable also integrates with smart thermostats and can help you automate temperature control at your rental. You can connect supported thermostat models to your Hospitable account, and our system will sync them with bookings and automatically update temperature settings, helping you optimize energy use and save on utility bills.
It’s important that Hospitable includes smart device management in the Professional and Mogul subscription plans.
Pricing
Setting the right nightly rates to stay competitive and maximize your profits is not easy. Your prices should be based on market trends in supply and demand, seasonality, and other vital data. However, manually analyzing relevant market data to optimize your daily rates requires much time and effort.
Fortunately, there’s an easier way to get your pricing right. You can use a dynamic pricing tool for vacation rentals to automate the entire pricing process. Hospitable integrates with advanced dynamic pricing tools that analyze market data and recommend the best price for your bookings, helping you generate higher revenue.
Hospitable also includes a built-in dynamic pricing solution, available at no extra cost on the Host, Professional, and Mogul plans. If you activate Hospitable’s Dynamic Pricing for your property, our proprietary pricing engine will automatically adjust your rates in response to demand fluctuations, competition, seasonality, and other factors to help maximize revenue while maintaining healthy occupancy.
Cleaning
Modern travelers prioritize cleanliness, so you must ensure your rental space looks spotless before welcoming new guests. Cleaning a self-catering accommodation requires attention to detail and can be highly time-consuming. That’s why it’s always better to outsource this task to professional cleaners who can do the job quickly and thoroughly. If you opt for Hospitable, you can create rules, and our system will assign tasks to your team automatically based on booking information.
You can take this automation one step further with the Marketplace Cleanings feature. Opt it to let our system search for a reliable cleaner based on your cleaning checklist. Watch the interactive demo to learn how the feature works.
Noise monitoring
Unauthorized parties and excessive noise can make your neighbors unhappy and cause serious obstacles to your self-catering accommodation business. Parties also increase the risk of property damage, so the best strategy is to prevent them from happening.
Installing a noise-monitoring system is an effective way to monitor activity on your property. Such devices are perfectly legal because they only measure decibel levels and duration of the noise and send you automated alerts if the noise levels inside your home exceed the threshold for a set amount of time. However, guests can still maintain their privacy, as noise-monitoring tools don’t identify or record specific sounds.
Upselling
Upseling is a strategic approach that allows you to boost your STR income without adding more bookings or properties. It involves offering guests additional services or amenities that can enhance their stay for an additional fee. When done right, upsells can make a big difference to your bottom line.
Upselling options can range from simple add-ons like early check-ins, late checkouts, gourmet food baskets, on-site amenities like firewood or bicycles, to more curated experiences like local tours, spa services, and photography sessions.
Hospitable makes it easy to offer your guests paid upsells in the Guest Portal—you don’t need any additional third-party tools for that. Just create a catalog of your offerings and add a smart code to a welcome message. Hospitable will share your offerings list with your guest at the right time. When your guests purchase anything, Hospitable handles payments, payouts, and taxes.
Hospitable users also have an opportunity to increase their income by offering their guests Trip Insurance as an automatically enabled upsell, and by offering private chef experiences—you earn commission on every policy sold and on every booking.
