Cottage Calendar

Cottage rental industry is very unique. One of the the uniqueness lies in the complexity of price calculations. The complexity is caused by the fact that each cottage or cabin can have different price rules defined for different periods of time.

For example, cottage owner can establish low price for early-spring late-fall seasons, mid-range price for winter and high price for summer.

On top of this, cottage owner can have different rates depending from the duration of the stay. Daily price is usually higher than pro-rated weekend price, and weekend price is higher than pro-rated whole week price.

On top of this, different seasons can have only certain duration available. For example, chalet owner can rent only on weekly basis during winter and summer, and have flexibility to rent by day, weekend or week during spring and fall. There are some additional rules when it comes to Canadian long weekends.

On top of this, some owners charge GST and/or PST, some don't.


Historically, there were two ways to handle this complexity by the websites which publish cottage profiles:

1. Just write the rules in words or in some form of table and let user to figure out the final price based on their needs. The advantage of such method is ease of implementation. The drawback -calculations are passed to the end-user, which can cause the frustration (especially when user needs to compare dozen or more cottages based on the price).

2. Make cottage owner fit the website rules. For example, some websites force cottage owners to rent only on weekly basis and each rental should start on the certain day of the week. Such rules make it easy to compare the prices between different cottages. But from the other side, it removes the flexibility from the cottage owner. Using such approach, cottage owner cannot provide daily or weekend price and cannot use non-standard rental starting day of the week.


Our website, FindCottage.ca, implements new generation of Calendar management tool. We give the cottage owner the flexibility to define different seasons (using fancy colors), with rich flexibility in choices: starting day, mid-week daily, weekend daily price, 2-nights weekend, 3-nights weekend, weekly and custom prices.


Our advanced software package will pre-calculate all the prices based on your definition and will present them in user-friendly format.

Creating calendar can take some attention during the first usage, but there is no other way to handle the variety of options available for calendar creation.

Here is the screenshot of our Calendar web interface:


We think that the time has come for better website and more intelligent ways of doing business.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments related to Cottage Calendar.

And as always, I will be more than happy to hear your questions or comments regarding any aspect of renting a cottage, cabin or chalet in Ontario.

Thanks!

Truly yours,
Max Trenton
http://www.findcottage.ca

Rent options availabe to cottage owners

So, you got your vacation home and now it is time to get some value out of it by renting it to other people. In this article we going to go through three basic options for renting your cottage, chalet or cabin.

First option - do everything yourself. By everything I mean:
1. Advertising. There are multiple options for advertising your cottage - newspapers, magazines, websites (like http://www.findcottage.ca/).
2. Taking calls and email from potential customers. You would also want to perform some screening procedures. For example, you don't want bachelor party taking place at your cottage.
3. Process booking and damage deposits. If you have only 1 cottage for rent, it does not make sense to run Visa processing. So, most likely you would need to deal with personal checks.
4. Greeting the guests. Some owners try to give the keys in person, just to check if people who are renting the cottage have good intentions. Otherwise you can leave the keys in lock box and give the code to your customers.
5. Saying goodbye to the guests. At this point you need to make sure that no damage is made to your cottage during the visit. Usually you would have $500 damage deposit taken, so if any repairs are needed - you can take these money. If the damage is more than $500 - your insurance should cover the difference.
6. Cleaning the cottage. Some owners take cleaning deposit and if cottage needs cleanup - you do it yourself and take cleaning deposit as extra income.

Second option - let others manage the advertising and payments. In some cases it will be more convenient just to manage "Greeting", "Goodbye" and "Cleaning" part, and let somebody else find customers and get the payments. Nowadays customers want to book the cottage online using credit cards.
However, there are not too many companies that provide such package. Advertising/payment services cost around 15%-30% of your rental revenue.

Third option - give the keys to company which provides full cottage management including advertising, payment processing, cleaning, security, etc. Usually such companies are managing only certain areas, like Muskoka or Bruce Peninsula. You can also book your own usage of the cottage, but you can have some limitations. The downside of such option is that it costs a lot of money. It starts from 18% and goes up to 30%. In some extreme cases (like Intrawest resort) it can eat up to 50% of your rental income, but it is rather exception than the rule.

Now it is your turn to decide!

Truly yours,
Max Trenton from FindCottage.ca