Beulah, MI · Member since 2016 · 41 posts · 7 votes
On one of our vacation rentals, we offer the opportunity to also rent out our pontoon boat for an extra $400. This has worked out very well for us with 95% of our rentals paying extra for the pontoon boat as well.
On my house hack vacation rental (different property) I am playing with the idea of adding other recreational opportunities as options for my rentals. I have some ideas but I wanted to see if there is anyone that offers other options for their vacation rentals to bring in extra income. Does anyone do anything like this?
@Dan Stewart How do you handle insuring the pontoon for rentals? Will your insurance pay if a guest rents your pontoon in a commercial setting and they run into another boat and someone is hurt?
That is what would scare me about renting a boat.
Also if they don't fill up the gas tank how do you deal with this?
Does your cleaning person also clean the boat after each use?
I saw where someone got a bad review because the boat they were renting was left dirty by previous renter.
Whenever my friends come over to shoot sporting clays at my house, I invite some of my better tenants to shoot also. There is also food and 2 different beers in my kegorator. Some tenants also like to hunt deer and coyotes.
@Dan Stewart How do you handle insuring the pontoon for rentals? Will your insurance pay if a guest rents your pontoon in a commercial setting and they run into another boat and someone is hurt?
That is what would scare me about renting a boat.
Also if they don't fill up the gas tank how do you deal with this?
Does your cleaning person also clean the boat after each use?
I saw where someone got a bad review because the boat they were renting was left dirty by previous renter.
We do have commercial insurance on the pontoon boat. It is pretty high and we don't make to much extra money off of it in the end. However, I think it is what draws people to our cottage and makes it rent as well as it does. We use to charge a daily rate but we decided after looking at the rental cost in the area we were way to cheap so we raised it to $250 buck no matter how many nights you rent our place. If you rent a week which most of our rentals are we then get $400 for the boat. We also charge a $500 security deposit for the boat in case of damage or insurance claims. We also make everyone sign a term and agreement that they are responsible if something happens.
Our cleaning lady does do the boat. She did a poor job one time and we did get a lower rating because of it whichw as only a 4 out of 5. The cleaning lady definitely heard about it. Since then we have had no problems. The renters that did have a dirty boat have been back every year since.
Everyone who rents the boat is responsible for the gas that they use. We have spliced the gas with a 3-way switch so people can take the tank up to the gas station after their rental and fill it up. This can be confusing and probably the toughest thing to deal with. Luckily, that is my parent's responsibility and I don't deal with it. Our process seems very easy but nonboaters it seems to be complicated. However, we can't make it any easier for them.
I would encourage you to have a completely separate contract for the boat, and use a different company/entity to handle the boat rental. At least it's a start when it comes to the numerous liability issues.
We offer concierge services (private chef, on-site yoga, on-site massage, etc). and while it doesn't make us a lot of money, our markup is slim to none, it does seem to make our guests really excited and benefit us when it comes to reviews. Also it's nice to have our vendors on site keeping an eye on things.
There are so many opportunities for this, however it is difficult to manage from far away. Interestingly, Airbnb wants you to sell "experiences", and of course they have their own to profit from, but it would be nice if they provided Hosts the ability to manage these on behalf of the guest. (Same goes for HomeAway). At this juncture I make recommendations to my guests in my Welcome Guide.