Privately hiring/subletting your caravan or lodge holiday home.

Each year more and more caravan and lodge owners are turning to private subletting in order to generate a greater income and maximise the profits from hiring their holiday homes. Privately letting your static caravan or lodge holiday home allows you a much greater control such as overseeing who is hiring/renting your caravan or lodge and it can help you generate a greater financial return then park managed schemes as you get to keep more of the money.

The down side is that it will entail more work and time from you. The harder you work at it the more income you will generate.

Below we have outlined a brief guide of things to consider and put in place before you can consider welcoming your first paying guest.

1. Check if you are allowed to sublet.

First of all double check that you are allowed to sublet your caravan or lodge with your parks management team. Some parks rules and/or site licenses don’t allow owners to hire/sublet their holiday homes. In some cases parks may restrict caravan subletting/hire to a certain specific areas of the park. In other cases we have heard of a park may only let you hire your caravan out via their managed subletting scheme.

If you are permitted to privately sublet your home then you may have to purchase a subletting licence from the park. In most circumstance this is normally billed at 10% of your caravan or lodge annual site fee per year.

If subletting is an important factor in making static caravan and lodge holiday home ownership affordable for you and the family then the park operator’s position on subletting should be the first question that you ask before you purchase your caravan holiday home.

2. Prepare you home ready for subletting.

Most reputable holiday parks will be able to assist you with this. If they offer a managed subletting scheme then ask for details on it (even if you have no intention of utilising their service). Setting your caravan up to at least their company mandatory requirements/expectations will help save you a great deal of time.
The health and safety checks are obligatory from both a legal and moral standpoint. Again your park should also be able to provide you with the legal requirements that you need to put in place before you receive your first paying guest. Amongst other thing, these should and will include:

• An up to date annual gas landlord’s safety certificate.
• Annual PAT test certificate for all electrical appliances older then 12mths.
• A fixed electrical installation certificate (this is normally valid for 3 years).
• Fire extinguisher.
• Smoke alarm.
• Carbon Monoxide detector.
• TV Licence - Although you don’t need an additional TV licence for your static caravan or lodge holiday home when you use the home solely for yourself and you have one at your fixed abode home you will need to purchase an additional one if you are subletting.
• Public Liability Insurance. Speak to your caravan insurance provider for details on this.

We would recommend that you inform your caravan insurance company that you are planning on subletting your holiday home. Make sure you don’t invalidate your cover by renting your caravan out. They may ask you to pay a premium on top of your regular policy for you to be covered for any damaged caused by holiday makers/families who haven't respected your home.

You can review and get insurance quotes by visiting our CARAVAN INSURANCE QUOTES page on our sister website, www.ukcaravansforsale.co.uk

3. Cleaning your caravan between holiday guests.

It is obviously imperative that customers check into clean accommodation. This can be your biggest problem. If you live in Birmingham and your static caravan is on a holiday park in Cornwall then the feasibility of cleaning it yourself is just out of the question. For most customers it’s quiet acceptable to rent your caravan without bed linen and towels. By providing duvets and pillows and asking your guest to bring their own sheets, covers and towels can solve one big problem/expense; just make sure that your holiday guests know this at the time of making a booking with you.

With the general cleaning of your static caravan/lodge you might find that the park itself may be willing to assist (at a cost) by using their in-house team. What I personally have done in the past is to befriend one of the parks own cleaners/housekeepers and come to some personal arrangement with them directly. If they can’t oblige then the chances are they may know a friend or family member who can help. Failing that you need to advertise locally for a cleaner or approach a local cleaning agency.

Sourcing a good reliable cleaning service can solve problems throughout the season.

4. Key Handovers.

If you are unable to meet and greet each of your customers on check in/check out days you’ll need to implement a system for your holiday makers to collect and hand in keys to your holiday home. Speak to your parks management team. You’ll most probably find that your park will be able to help you with this (be prepared to expect to pay a small fee for this service). If not then maybe utilise your appointed cleaner to fulfil this roll within his/her cleaning duties.

5. What price should I be charging?

You need to decide which weeks you want to make your caravan/lodge for hire available. Peak times that generate the greatest income are always during school holidays. When it comes to pricing your caravan for hire, again, ask your parks management team. If the park offers a managed subletting scheme find out what they would sell your caravan/lodge holiday for during the relevant weeks when you plan on marketing your caravan for hire. Use these prices as a guide and maybe look at offering your caravan/lodge for hire at 10% less than the parks prices. This makes your holiday home look attractive to potential guests and this can be used with marketing your caravan. i.e. “Save 10% on brochure prices this summer by booking direct!”

Another way is to do some research and find out what other private Sublette’s are charging for their holiday home by browsing through some of the adverts on our website. Find a caravan of a similar specification that is sited on a park in the same area that offers similar facilities. The great benefit from privately subletting you caravan is that YOU set the price.

*Caravan Pricing Tips. Don’t rule out the prospect for letting your caravan for short breaks (Fri-Mon and Mon-Fri), especially in off peak periods in order to maximise your income. Although we only publish weekly prices in your advert don’t forget to mention the availability of short breaks in your caravans full property description and have prices ready for when we the enquires start to come in.

• Short Breaks off season for approx 2/3 of the weekly price.
• Charge a supplement if you are allowing a pet dog (approx £50 per week)

Create a calendar and added the relevant prices to it. To help you can download a couple of PDF calendar by clicking on the links below. Use whichever you find the easiest, print it off and keep it next to the telephone so that you have it to hand when those customer telephone to book.

CLICK FOR CALENDAR 1
CLICK FOR CALENDAR 2

6. Finding your customers.

This is where we can help. Now that you’ve got everything in place, your holiday home is all set up and you’ve created your pricing structure, finding the right place to advertise your caravan or lodge for hire should be your next major priority.

• Advertising in local newspapers is one way of going about it, although this can be very time consuming and costly.
• Getting your own website is good too, but takes time and knowledge. You not only have to build it (or pay somebody to build it), you also need to spend time and money in order to get listed with search engines and get found by the public.

• Advertising on a high profile website like ourselves at “UK Caravans For Hire” will help you create a much greater internet presence that will enable more people to find your holiday home for hire and hence we help you generate/receive a greater number of enquiries all year round for one small fee.

We have already spent the time and money optimising our website to make sure it appears high up on search engine results from web surfs looking for caravans and lodges for hire/rent. As well as advertising our website in local newspaper throughout the UK, we are constantly continually re-optimising our website and we pay to advertise online to attract more visitors.

The monies that you pay to us aren’t all profit. The majority of the funds are spent on marketing and running the site. By offering customer a great choice we generate a great number of return users.

Once you have listed your caravan or lodge for hire with our service all enquires come directly through to you via email and/or telephone. We recommend that you screen all enquires by asking your potential customer certain question over the telephone.

Screening all phone calls and asking 'certain questions' may help you choose families who will treat your caravan with the respect it deserves. Being selective will help you to avoid any bad incident, you can help put off many undesirables by higher prices balanced with higher specifications and service.

CLICK HERE TO CREATE A FREE ACCOUNT

Private Subletting Advantages

• You decide who stays in your caravan.
• You can screen your holiday makers at the initial point of contact.
• You decide the rate you charge.
• You keep a larger percent of the income.
• You decide which and how many weeks to let until your costs are covered.
• You know which weeks are available for the rest of the year for yourself.

So why not give it a try. We're confindent you won't be disapointed.

*please note the information provided in these articles are for information purposes only and represent the views of only one of our users. Please take independent legal advice before purchasing/implementing.