Setting Up a Holiday Let: What You Need to Think About Before Your First Guests Arrive

Buying or converting a property for holiday letting is exciting. At first, the to-do list can seem fairly straightforward: decorate, buy some furniture, find a cleaner, take some photographs and you are ready to welcome your first guests.

But once you actually start putting everything in place, the to do list has a habit of growing. Does the boiler need servicing? Are the windows in good condition? What fire safety measures do you need? Who is going to cut the grass? Where will the cleaner store spare linen? Is the Wi-Fi good enough throughout the property? When should the furniture arrive, and who will be there to receive it?

Setting up a holiday let isn't simply an interiors project. There is the property itself to consider, alongside compliance, maintenance, cleaning, furnishing and all the practical arrangements needed to make the place work for guests. It is often the sheer number of different things that need to come together that owners find most surprising.

We see this particularly with owners who have bought a property in the Cotswolds or Cheltenham but don't necessarily live nearby. There may be builders, decorators and other trades involved, while cleaners and perhaps a holiday let management company also need to be brought into the picture. At the same time, the owner is making decisions about furniture, budgets and how the property should look, sometimes from several hours away.

It is all manageable, but it helps enormously to look at the property as a whole and work through what needs to happen in a sensible order.

Bringing the practical and the creative together

There are some fabulous interior designers who create beautiful and highly practical schemes for holiday properties, and holiday let management companies can be invaluable when it comes to bookings, changeovers and looking after guests once a property is up and running. Depending on your project, you may also have builders and tradespeople involved, a cleaner lined up and perhaps someone looking after the garden or general maintenance.

The difficulty is that there can still be quite a gap between all these different areas. Who is thinking about what needs to go in the kitchen, where the spare linen will be stored, whether there are enough sockets beside the beds or who is going to be at the property when the furniture arrives? There are often dozens of relatively small decisions and jobs that don't obviously belong to any one person, but still need to be dealt with before the property is genuinely ready for guests.

This is often where owners find the set-up more time-consuming than they expected. Each individual task may be quite manageable, but keeping track of everything, making decisions in the right order and making sure nothing has fallen through the gaps can become a project in itself.

This is the space we tend to work in, bringing together the practical side of getting a holiday let ready with the interiors and final presentation. We can work alongside the people you already have involved and provide as much or as little help as you need to get the property to the point where it is ready to photograph, market and welcome its first guests.

Start with the property itself

It is tempting to start looking at sofas, paint colours and bed linen as soon as you get the keys, but before doing that it is worth taking a really good look at the property itself.

Some properties need very little work, particularly if they have recently been renovated. Others may have been perfectly adequate as someone's home but need some attention before they are ready to cope with a regular turnover of paying guests.

Look at the condition of the decoration, carpets and flooring, doors and windows, as well as the kitchen and bathrooms. Check the heating and hot water, lighting, locks and outside areas. There may be small repairs that have been lived with for years but which are likely to be immediately noticeable, or irritating, to somebody who has paid to stay there.

This doesn't necessarily mean embarking on an expensive refurbishment. Part of planning the set-up properly is deciding where money genuinely needs to be spent and where it doesn't. A perfectly serviceable kitchen might simply need some updating, while a good quality carpet may respond well to professional cleaning rather than replacement. An unreliable shower, leaking window or front door that is difficult to lock is a different matter and is much better sorted before guests arrive.

Think about compliance early in the process

There is also the less interesting, but very important, side of running a holiday let to consider, which is your legal responsibilities.

Holiday let owners have to meet various requirements around areas such as fire safety, gas and electrical safety, alarms and insurance. These can vary depending on the property and the way it is being let, and regulations can change, so owners should always check the current rules and take specialist advice where it is needed.

From a set-up point of view, the important thing is to consider compliance early rather than treating it as something to sort out once everything else is finished. If work is required, it is usually much easier to deal with while tradespeople are already involved and before rooms have been completely decorated and furnished.

For an owner trying to coordinate several different people, having someone keeping track of what has been arranged and what is still outstanding can be a real help, and this is something we can assist with if you wish.

Think about who is likely to stay

Once you have a good understanding of the property and any work it needs, you can start thinking about the people who will eventually stay there.

A one-bedroom cottage aimed primarily at couples coming to the Cotswolds for a weekend needs something different from a four-bedroom house intended for extended family holidays. A Cheltenham apartment may attract racegoers, festival visitors and people staying for work, while a rural cottage might need to cater particularly well for walkers or guests bringing dogs.

You don't need to define your market so tightly that you exclude everyone else, but having a likely guest in mind makes many of the decisions that follow easier. It can influence how rooms are used, the furniture you choose and how much storage is needed. In some properties a proper workspace may be useful, while elsewhere somewhere to leave muddy boots, secure cycle storage or an enclosed garden may be much more valuable.

When we're helping with the design of a holiday let, this is where we like to start. Rather than simply asking an owner what colours or styles they like, we look at the property, its location and how guests are actually likely to use it. The interior can then develop from there.

Furnishing a holiday let is about more than making it look good

This is the part most people imagine when they think about setting up a holiday let, and which many property owners will enjoy. Of course this is a very important part of the set up - guests will often make their initial choice from photographs online, so the property needs to look appealing, but it also has to work when they arrive.

Furniture needs to be the right scale for the rooms and comfortable enough to live with rather than simply looking good in a photograph. Beds and mattresses deserve careful thought, as does lighting, particularly in older Cotswold properties where some rooms may not have abundant natural light. Guests also need sensible places for clothes, luggage, coats and all the other things they bring with them.

Kitchens are an area where it is easy either to provide far too much or discover too late that something fairly basic has been forgotten. What is appropriate will depend on the property and the kind of stay you expect. A small apartment used mainly for weekends doesn't necessarily need the same equipment as a large country house where a family group might spend Christmas.

There are then all the things that give a property some personality: curtains and blinds, mirrors, artwork, lamps, cushions and accessories. We don't use a standard furniture package because we would much rather work with the character of the individual property and the owner's budget. Sometimes we are starting with empty rooms, while other properties already have furniture worth keeping and simply need help bringing everything together.

Owners don't have to hand over the entire project to us either. Some want advice on layout, colours or furniture choices and are happy to do much of the sourcing themselves. Others want us to take on the purchasing and much more of the practical set-up. We can adapt our involvement according to what is actually useful.

Plan how the property will work between guests

Cleaning and maintenance can sometimes feel like something to think about once bookings start coming in, but decisions made during the set-up can make the property much easier to run later.

Someone will need to clean between guests and deal with laundry and linen. There may be a garden to maintain, bins to manage and everyday supplies to replenish. It is worth thinking about where clean linen will be kept, where cleaning products and replacement items can be stored and whether you need a lockable owner's cupboard.

Access needs thinking through too. You may use a key safe, smart lock or another arrangement, but there needs to be a plan for what happens when somebody loses a key or cannot get in. Similarly, if the heating stops working or something breaks during a weekend stay, it is useful to know in advance who can deal with it.

Broadband is another job that can easily slip down the list. Reliable Wi-Fi is something most guests now expect, and in rural parts of the Cotswolds it can be worth investigating the available options well before the first booking.

If you choose to work with a holiday let company, check what they will and won't be responsible for. Some will be more focussed on the marketing side of things while others will get involved in the day-to-day management of the property. Of course some owners prefer to manage the property themselves and put together their own team of local people. Either approach can work well, but thinking about how the property will actually operate while it is being set up can prevent a lot of awkward fixes later.

Sourcing and deliveries can become a job of their own

Even once all the decisions have been made, somebody still has to buy everything and get it into the property.

Furniture and furnishings rarely come from one supplier, particularly when you are trying to create a property with some individuality. Different items have different lead times, deliveries need coordinating and somebody may need to be at the property to receive them. Some furniture needs assembling, packaging needs removing and occasionally something arrives damaged, incomplete or simply not looking quite as expected.

This part of the project can be particularly difficult for owners who don't live locally. A delivery window of 8am to 6pm is inconvenient enough when the property is around the corner, but rather more so when you have driven two hours to get there.

Budgeting also needs some discipline. There are lots of individual purchases and it is easy to spend more than intended, particularly if the overall budget hasn't allowed enough for the practical things that aren't especially exciting to buy.

Cleaning, snagging and those last few jobs

However carefully a project has been planned, there is nearly always a final list.

Before the photographer arrives or the first guests are booked, it is worth spending some time actually using the property. Run the shower and hot water, turn on the lamps, open the windows and cupboards, try the locks and connect to the Wi-Fi. Check that the heating is easy to operate and that appliances work as expected.

This is often when you notice that a bedside socket is hidden behind the bed, a curtain catches on a window handle or the lovely new lamp doesn't have a bulb in it. These are small things and generally easy to put right, but it is much better for you to discover them than your first guest.

There will also need to be a proper clean once tradespeople, deliveries and furniture installation are finished. Even a newly decorated property can accumulate a remarkable amount of dust, packaging and general mess during the final stages of a set-up.

Getting the property ready for photography and guests

Once the practical work is complete, the final photo shoot styling can begin. This is where can help style the rooms, position furniture properly and add the finishing touches that make rooms feel welcoming and considered rather than simply furnished.

The professional photography should be the final step once all the preparation is done. Good photography is hugely important when guests are choosing between properties online, but the photographer can only work with what is actually there. It is worth getting the property properly finished before the shoot rather than trying to photograph around unfinished areas or things that haven't yet arrived.

We want the photographs to show the property at its best without creating an unrealistic impression. When guests eventually walk through the door, the place they have booked should feel every bit as good as the one they saw online.

How much help do you actually need?

There is no set amount of help that an owner needs when setting up a holiday let. You may enjoy doing much of it yourself and simply want some advice at the beginning, help with the interiors or another pair of eyes before you launch.

At the other end of the scale, you may have bought a property some distance from home and have neither the time nor the inclination to spend your weeks chasing tradespeople and waiting for furniture deliveries. In that situation, we can take on much more of the set-up and help move the property from the initial planning stage through to being ready for photography and guests.

We're based in the Cotswolds and work with holiday let owners across the area and in Cheltenham. Our approach is deliberately personal. We don't arrive with a predetermined furniture package or a formula for how a holiday let ought to look, and the amount of support we provide can vary considerably from one project to another.

Setting up a holiday let is perfectly manageable, but there is often far more involved than owners expect at the outset. Having somebody who can see the whole picture, keep track of the details and bring the practicalities and presentation together can make the process considerably easier. The end result should not only look good in the photographs, but work properly behind the scenes and be genuinely ready to welcome its first guests.

  If this sounds like something that would be helpful to you, feel free to get in touch for a free, no obligation consultation. We're very happy to come and meet you at the property for a chat about what you are looking to achieve and discuss how we might be able to help. We look forward to speaking to you. Claire & Sue

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Based in the Cotswolds, New Leaves offers property staging and styling services to homeowners and property investors.

www.newleaves.info 

enquiries@newleaves.info 

Tel Claire on +44 7720887205 Tel Sue on +44 7989 693263