With the New Year fast approaching, the time to start thinking about optimizing our RV rental listing(s) is upon all of us. The beauty of running our own businesses is that we can pull all kinds of levers to move the needle where we want it.
Check out these tips to rev up your rental(s) next year:
Add-On Tactics
Add-ons are a way for you to create a retail store (of sorts) within your RV rental listing. By creating a healthy slate of add-ons for your rental, you’ll give your renters more ways to choose the type of adventure they want. In turn, you’ll create more ways for you to make more money with your RV.
Add-ons like generators, bikes, and water sports are especially popular with guests. You can even charge daily fees for many add-on items, allowing your income to grow as the length of trip expands.
RV delivery is another add-on that many guests are searching for. You can customize your delivery radius and per-mile charges to make sure you make money with this offering.
Check out our host marketplace to save 10% on the most popular add-ons.
Tips to Earn More Money With Your RV Rental
Small things can add up in big ways with RV rentals. Here are our favorite ones:
Prep fee
Every time you turn over an RV rental, you (or someone you’ve hired) spends time and uses supplies to clean, re-stock, and recharge your rig.
That’s why many owners have added a prep fee. You can add a prep fee onto your listing directly in the host dashboard. Renters will see this as a separate line item in addition to nightly and insurance charges.
The vast majority of our owners who’ve opted to do this (and charged a reasonable price for it) have seen it add to their bottom line without impacting booking flow.
Competitive pricing
Double-check that you’re competitively priced against similar rigs in your area with a simple search on outdoorsy.com. If you find you’re priced too high or too low relative to other similar RVs, consider making a nightly price adjustment.
Dynamic pricing
One of the most powerful ways to make more money with your RV rental is via dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing happens when you keep a regular eye for demand surges in your area. For example, music festivals, summer holiday weekends, and sporting events are known to bring large numbers of RVing folk into an area.
Plan ahead by looking these events up now and pondering a price hike for those days.
Length of trip discounts
Longer RV rentals are usually better for your bottom line because you’re spending less time with turnovers and more time getting your nightly rate (plus any daily add-on fees).
That’s why it can make sense to incentivize this by customizing pricing rules in your hosting dashboard so guests get a discount when booking a certain number of days.
Minimum night rule
Most of us probably have a minimum night rule set up to prevent short booking. Take stock as you head into the new year to assess if you’ve got this right.
If you have it set too high, you might be turning away great renters — too low and you might be missing out on money.
Security Deposit Tips
We understand that setting your security deposit amount is a personal decision that depends on a number of factors. Your rig type, tolerance for risk, guest approval process, and more all factor into the price you’ll set for this.
That said, we know from our side that renters weigh the security deposit amount when choosing one rig over another. That’s why the average security deposit amount for your rig type is important info to ponder.
Here are the security deposit averages we calculated from our hosts:
- Campervan: $1000
- Class A: $2,200
- Class B: $1580
- Class C: $1530
- Fifth Wheel/Toy Hauler: $1100
- Other Trailers: $956
Consider all the factors you need to here — including if your security deposit amount might be scaring people away that you want to rent to.
Tips to Draw in More Renters
If your season didn’t see all the bookings you’d like, there are likely plenty of tweaks you could make to change this.
For starters, here’s a post we wrote up with 13 ways to get more people to rent your RV.
And here are more areas to tweak your listing:
Photos
We’ve been shouting from the mountaintops about photos because it’s proven that listings with 10+ high-quality photos significantly outperform listings without. It’s also critical that you take photos of the stuff that renters want to see.
Listing Title
Your listing title is another vital factor that’s always worthy of review during your shoulder season. We’ve found that listings with 6-10 words in the title significantly outperform listings with fewer than 6 words in the title.
We also found words like loaded, fully loaded, and unlimited to be attractive to renters. For example, “Unlimited Adventure with [Special Feature]” is a generally effective title format (provided your rig delivers on that promise 🙂
Beef Up Those Reviews
When faced with an otherwise equal listing, guests pick the better-reviewed rig all day long (and twice on Sundays).
We know it might feel a tad awkward to reach back out to your past guests and ask for reviews, but it really is worth its weight in gold to get some 5-Star reviews under your belt. You don’t need many — even a couple will do.
Here’s a tasteful way to ask your renters to leave positive reviews.
P.S. If your guest had a great trip, it’s really never too late to ask! Don’t be afraid to reach back out even if months have passed.
The best part about running your own RV rental business is that you can learn a ton as you go and make small adjustments along the way to keep getting better and better. As we head into the new year, take a look at the levers of your business and see what you can pull one way or another to help your guests spend more time outdoors.
