Building a New STR Amenity Concept—Would You Offer This to Your Guests?

[Craig Jones]

Hey folks—

I'm in the early stages of launching a pilot in Tahoe and exploring potential expansion into other STR-heavy markets. I'd love some honest feedback from fellow hosts and investors as we fine-tune the offering.

The concept:
A regionally tailored, standalone "amenity club" that STR guests can access. Hosts subscribe monthly, with pricing based on their property's guest capacity. Guests then get unlimited access during their stay, no tracking or per-use billing.

Each location’s amenity mix is custom to the market. For example, the Tahoe pilot includes:

• Swim-spa hot tubs

• Saunas

• Showers + changing area

• Free espresso + hot chocolate lounge

• Cozy movie nook

• Small gym

• Arcade corner 

The idea:
Hosts increase booking conversion, get better reviews, and offer the kind of shared experiences most homes can’t provide. Guests get spa-level perks without the hotel setting. Lightly staffed, mostly self-service.

My ask:

1. Would you subscribe to something like this for your property?

2. What’s your max guest occupancy?

3. What monthly price would feel like a no-brainer?

4. At what price would you say no way?

Bonus Qs:

• What amenities do guests ask about that your property doesn’t (or can't) offer?

• What’s the max drive time (in minutes) before this starts to feel irrelevant to your guests?

Appreciate your time—and happy to DM the concept deck to anyone seriously curious or interested in bringing something like this to your market.

[Ken Boone]

So if I am understanding you right it's like a gym membership for your guests. We use something similar to this. At one of our cabins we lost our resort pool amenity. There is an RV park down the road that offers yearly membership for cabin owners which allows their guests unlimited access to their olympic size pool and catch and release fishing pond. We pay around $300/yr for this access for our guests. The pool is only open form Memorial Day to Labor Day. At that price point it is worth it for us and our guests definitely go use their pool.

So I'll answer your questions and give you my thoughts.

1. Yes as long as there is a pool - indoor for year round use would be best. Would be willing to pay more for year round use of a heated indoor pool for sure.

2. My max occupancy at all my properties is 8.

3. Again, if there is a pool and it is in close proximity to my properties, I would have to understand the value add and understand if it helps to increase my ADR, or rather just gives me a competitive advantage giving me a higher occupancy rate. So for the pool service we get now, I would probably end up paying up to $600/yr for this with its limited 3 month time frame it is available. I can tell you my ADR went down when we lost the pool amenity in the resort. The off site pool does not increase my ADR, but rather adds to my package.
4. Again it depends on everything I mentioned in #3

Bonus Q #2 - 10 minutes.  More than that IMO is too far.

Bonus - my thoughts on your plan.

Before I go there let me explain my properties, 3 of my properties have private indoor heated pools, all of my properties have hot tubs, arcades, theater space, etc.. 1 of my properties has a sauna. 2 of them have coffee bars. Soon to be all 4.  I'm in the Smokies market.

In my market, which is really all I can talk about - I think the hosts that would be interested would be hosts that have very few to no amenities. Unfortunately these hosts are going to be the ones that are not going to want to pay much for what you have to offer because they are most likely not doing well. The hosts that would be in the position to pay premium won't need your service as they have plenty of amenities.

I don't think you will get many people to your place to use a public hot tub.  Just don't see it happening. People love my hot tubs, but they like the privacy factor and being at home if you will. 

I think the only thing that will draw the business will be a pool, a large indoor heated year round pool. That would be the driver that would draw people. If you had the pool, then the small gym, arcade corner, coffee bar you could throw in there, but IMO, the guests will not be coming for those things, those are small nice extras. The pool would be the driver.

I guess what I am saying is unless you are doing a large indoor heated pool open year round, you are not going to have a big driver for what you offer. If you had the pool everything else would be great add ons.. drop the hot tubs.

The reason the pool is the driver is because you can have hosts then who have tons of amenities, but everyone doesn't have a pool and that is probably one of the top amenities anywhere.

That's my 2 cents and that is about all that's worth.