“So, if I understand you correctly you are not happy?”

Property managers and owners of vacation rentals and furnished vacation homes know that most reservations go off without a hitch. However, as the old saying goes “stuff happens.” That is the G rated version of course.

Why is it that while I am in traffic and someone cuts me off or pulls out and slows me down he is completely out of line and should be locked up as a reckless driver? But when I do the same thing to another driver I am just a better driver, or if only they knew how bad my day has been, etc. I think we need to extend a little grace and mercy to one another no matter if we are driving to and from work, handling complaints or working through issues with vacation renters and vacation landlords.

If you lease luxury, budget or really budget vacation rentals we need to show empathy to our visitors when problems arise. As a group, I think vacation managers and owners do a really good job of helping the customer. The breakdown occurs when our definition of a “problem” or “emergency” differs from that of the renter and the time it takes to respond and remedy the situation.

OK - take a deep breath because this one is a doozy and some may not agree. “The customer is always right” is not always right.” We need to make things right to be sure, however, a visitors expectations may be completely unrealistic or unfounded. Case in point - a visitor arrives to your vacation rental that you have accurately advertised as 3 bedrooms - one room with a king bed, one room with a queen bed and the third bedroom with a sofa sleeper and the association has 2 heated community pools. You receive a call from the visitor and you are totally taken aback when they inquire as to where the 4th bedroom is and they thought the pool was in a private backyard? Think it funny or not - I have had both of these occur. Not sure if the renter had buyers remorse, just wanted to get some money back or they truly believed they read 4 bedrooms and private pool. That is an extreme example, but like I said “Stuff Happens.”

This is an emergency! or is it? The visitor calls at 8 p.m. and states that the pull chain for one of three ceiling fans has broken and even though the air conditioner is ice cold they absolutely can’t sleep without a ceiling fan? To the guest this is an emergency! To the owner this is “are you kidding me.” A burst pipe, a fire, broken a/c unit that is an emergency. This is where the guest needs to extend some grace and mercy to the owners. Let’s get that pull chain fixed first thing in the morning.

This is a good time to talk about your rental agreements, arrival and departure instructions. I have found it helpful to spell out exactly what an emergency is and what non-emergencies are. Emergencies please contact us directly at our emergency line and we’ll fix the problem asap. Non-emergency (light bulb, out of trash bags, someone in my parking space) will be addressed within 24 hours. It needs to work both ways. I am the first to say that without the customer there is no vacation rental business, however, there are only so many hours in a day and we too as owners have to prioritize repairs or problems. Clarify in your agreements with your guests what an emergency is, what an emergency is not and response times.

Yep - qualifies as an emergency! Nope - Does not qualify.

“Stuff Happens” and we will all experience outage of services at our vacation rentals. Electric, phone, cable, or water can go out in a complex, in a zip code, in a city and so on. We are all at the mercy of the servicing companies to restore service. Again we need to extend some grace and mercy in instances where things are completely out of anybody’s control. The vacationer and the vacation homeowner did not plan for the technician digging a ditch 5 miles down the road to cut the fiber optic cable and strand 40,000 cable tv viewers. No planning was involved to have lightning strike the transformer and black out half of the city either (unless your are a conspiracy theorist) and certainly no one wanted the high speed internet modem to die in the middle of your surfing.

Let me clarify again that the vacationer is the life blood that allows owners to offset expenses and generate income from their vacation rental investment. “Stuff” is going to happen. If we can treat one another the way that we want to be treated (realistically - not a ceiling fan pull chain at midnight! and not responding to a burst pipe 2 days later) with grace and mercy we can all receive what we agreed upon.

To be sure there are horror stories from both sides. 99.99 percent of our visitors are fantastic and give us ample time to respond to their requests. It would pay dividends if owners/managers and travelers could walk in each others shoes for a few days! I am sure that it would teach all of us a thing or two about Grace and Mercy!

Vacation Rentals by Owner at Furnished Homes