How to Prepare Your Home Rental Guest Room for Tourist Season

If you’ve some extra space, renting out a room to vacation-goers is a great way to earn some extra income and give a boost to your community. Today, monetizing your property is easier than ever before thanks to services like AirBnB, Vrbo, Booking.com, and various others. Indeed, there are currently millions of hosts around the world, and many of them are in the U.S. Areas like Nashville, Franklin, and Brentwood, TN, are among these U.S. hotspots, offering delicious eats, endless entertainment, rich history, and plenty of sights to see. Just because it’s easy to become a host these days, however, doesn’t mean it’s easy to provide a stellar experience. With so much competition and tourist season right around the corner, you must do your best to make your guest space enticing, memorable, and reasonably affordable. So, if you’re among the millions of hosts out there, here’s how to prepare your home rental guest room for tourist season.

Set Clear Expectations for all Guests

Proper arrangements between hosts and guests are built on a strong foundation of trust, and this trust can only be achieved with clear communication. As a host, it’s your job to lay out what your guests can expect from you and what you expect from them. Tourist season will likely increase the number of guests that will stay at your place, and you don’t want one guest to ruin the experience for another, whether accidentally or intentionally. Generally speaking, the services mentioned earlier make it easy to break down these expectations, ground rules (i.e., cleaning, noise, extra guests, etc.), scheduling, and everything else. That said, the more detailed you are, the better, both online and in-person -- even if you never come face to face with your guests, leaving notes in a visible area with additional instructions and reminders is helpful. When your guests know what they should and shouldn’t do during their stay, everyone will have greater peace of mind, and you’ll have a much easier time transitioning between visitors.

Make It Accessible

As a host, you’re bound to attract guests of various backgrounds. With this in mind, it’s important to optimize your rental room for as wide an audience as possible. In other words, your guest space should be easy to find and check into, highly accommodating, and accessible to those with different levels of mobility. Prior to the start of the tourist season, make an effort to improve your rental property in each of these regards. For instance, you might install a ramp for wheelchair accessibility, re-pave your walkway, set up a keyless entry door and provide the passcode to guests before they arrive, trim and prune any obstructive trees to increase visibility, and so on. The easier it is for tourists to make their way inside, the less involved you’ll need to be during their stay.

Do a Deep Cleaning

Whether you’re setting up a guest room for the first time or simply getting it ready for a busy summer, you’ll want to deeply clean this space before letting anyone in. Carpeting and upholstery should be vacuumed, shampooed, and steam cleaned, hardwood floors should be swept, mopped, and polished, walls and ceilings should be dusted and scrubbed, etc. After you’ve performed this initial thorough cleaning, you must establish a cleaning regimen that you can efficiently execute during tourist season, so every guest enters a spotless and sanitary space. Maintaining a clean guest room will keep your visitors happy and keep you compliant with any regulations put forth by the company for whom you’re contracting -- these cleaning and disinfection guidelines have become even stricter amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, so it’s important to cover all your bases.

Commit to a Suitable Interior Design

You don’t just want to provide four walls and a roof for your guests -- you want to provide a memorable local experience that everyone can appreciate. As you get ready for the tourist season, think about the atmosphere you wish to create with your guest space. Different hosts have widely different ideas in this regard -- some might try to appeal to the widest audience possible by keeping things neutral and neat, while others might go with showy interior house paint, unique accessories, local artwork, etc. -- others may fall somewhere in between these extremes. Whatever the case, however, stick to a certain design scheme and run with it. The more cohesive your guest room is, the more attractive and memorable it will be, no matter who your guests are.

Freshen Up Walls, Ceilings, and Trim

Regardless of your particular interior design plan, every interior space could use some freshening up, especially if it’s been several years since you last painted its walls, ceilings, and trim. Getting a head start on interior painting will allow you to take enticing pictures to show off online and ensure that guests won’t encounter any wet paint or fumes when they arrive. For the best and fastest results, seek professional interior painting services this spring. These experts can also help you make color choices if you’re struggling with how to select interior paint colors for your guest space (read our blog, “Choosing a Perfect Color Scheme for Your Busy Airbnb” for more on this topic).

Repair and Touch Up Surfaces

A fresh paint job can’t conceal certain interior issues, of course. If your home rental guest room features some cracks, holes, dings, and other forms of damage, you must amend these problems prior to tourist season. In some cases, your interior renovations may create problems, too -- for instance, you may need help figuring out how to repair drywall after removing wallpaper. Specifics aside, take care of any minor issues on your own if possible (i.e., drywall patching, loose nails, etc.) and hire professionals to address more severe concerns (i.e., water damage, uneven floors, large holes in drywall, etc.).

Fill the Room with Useful Items and Information

Finally, make sure your guest room is filled with all the things you would want present if you were staying there: informational brochures (it is tourist season, after all), local reading material, TV (with access to streaming services), Wi-Fi (with password), snacks and drinks, cleaning/sanitary supplies, blankets and towels, and so on. Your guests should already be made aware of the basics before agreeing to stay at your place, but providing some additional surprises can sweeten the deal upon arrival.

Give Your Guests a Great Place to Stay This Summer

After over a year of lockdowns and restrictions, this summer is expected to see an explosion in travel and tourist activity. If you’re the host of a home rental property, Nash Painting can help you make the most out of this impending boom. We offer premium renovation services, including residential interior painting, exterior painting, wallpaper removal, drywall repair, color consultations, door refinishing, pressure washing, and much more. To learn more about us, our services, and our values, call us at 615-829-6858 today!