JOBS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

This section will introduce you to the tasks and responsibilities you should assign to people working for you, from gardening to accounts.

SKILLS: Jobs are often split into soft and hard skills.

Soft Skills Examples:

Interior design and marketing.

Hard Skills Examples:

Maintenance and tax returns

Table of Jobs:

For each job, you need to define who is responsible for it and who is going to be carrying it out: You, Partner, Outside staff (Name) or a company or agency. Here are some examples of the jobs you should be considering and how you should plan out assigning them:

• Renovation, maintenance and gardening

• Marketing (split this into sections)

• Customer Support / Bookings

• Cleaning and washing

• Check in / Check out

• Accounts / Book Keeping

• Legal, Admin & Tax

AGENCY OR SELF MANAGED?

Traditional agencies:

• A traditional agency (e.g. https://www.bramleyandteal.co.uk/) is a smaller team where you'd have personal & direct contact with them.

• Reach can be smaller than an OTA but then the management process is often more personal.

• If you feel you need a hand, talk to at least one agency. They often have extensive knowledge of the local area and holiday rentals. Get a list from other owners nearby, either directly or through a search engine

OTA (Online Travel Agents):

• An OTA, like Booking.com, or AirBnB is a website with a much larger reach

• The holiday maker has little or no personal contact with the agency. This DIY approach is carried across to the property owners.

• Won't insist on an exclusivity deal, so it's possible to have a mix of solutions / agencies to market your property.

Traditional OTA

Fees 20-30% 3-20%

Personal Contact It depends on the size of the agency but is generally higher.

Marketing Reach Variable but as a whole tends to be more local

Risk Agency going out of business.

Biased treatment of other clients, smaller reach.

Some agencies focus on selling the easy dates but don’t have a strategy for the more difficult periods of rental.

Options:

Email only. Contact via a team.

Some OTA’s are worth billions and this is reflected in their marketing spend.

They set the rules for us to follow. For example, Booking. com started at a 5% commission and now charge 20%.

An over-reliance on one particular OTA is a large risk as they will be setting the terms of your business.

• You do everything from marketing, customer service through to tax returns.

• You do everything operational and but use a combo of advertising and OTAs to market your property.

• You hand over everything to an agency.