Buying a vacation rental with preexisting bookings

[Adrianne G.]

Can anyone provide their experience when buying a property that has been used for a vacation rental? I would like to keep the bookings after closing. The space with stay furnished as is. 

[Ken Boone]

I did this and it worked great.  Basically once I set up my listing, pre-closing, the seller contacted all of their future guests and let them know they were selling their cabin and that we were buying it.  They also gave them our listing number and contact information and let them know that we would continue to honor whatever prices they booked at.  These guests were given 2 weeks, to cancel and then re-book with us.  The seller provided us with a list of all of their bookings so we knew the who and when for each future booking.  We then blocked those dates on the calendar to ensure no one else could book those dates for those first 2 weeks.  Once the guests would contact us, we would unblock the calendar and let them book with us.  I can't remember how many bookings we had but they spanned over several months.  We only lost 2 of those bookings and that was because the one thing we did change was to not allow pets.  The previous owner allowed pets and we don't.  Everything worked very smoothly for us - mainly because the seller was helpful and did not want to disrupt the future guests' vacation.  Now if you purchase a cabin that is in a rental program with a management company forget it.  They will not work with you on this, they will simply try to offer a different cabin in their program to the affected guests.

The one thing we learned after the fact - is if you follow VRBO's process on this - which you will have to talk to them - you can have all of their reviews moved to your listing.  

Hope that helps.