As you get your vacation rental set up for your first few sets of guests, you want every furnishing to be part of the marketing plan. Each item in the space helps you tell a story, the story that this is a great place to make memories, relax and spend time with the people your renters love.
The easiest way to do this is to get to know a few different vacation rentals on your chosen vacation rental websites and use those to help you get the space just right; you also might get the insight of your real estate agent who helped you buy this vacation rental. However, you should also use your own experience traveling as a family and think about what made your experience particularly good.
Consider Your Demographics
While certain areas appeal to, for instance, mostly retired couples and other places where most of the vacation rentals are for families with young children, you can make your decorations cast the widest possible net. If you opt for glass art, for instance, you can place it so high that no children can access it, reducing the chances of a broken glass item ruining a family’s day. In general, durability is going to be a virtue no matter who is going to come to your property, but you have more leeway to choose and more inspiration if you know some facts about the people who shop vacation rentals in your area.
Opt for Simple and Easy to Clean Furnishings Whenever Possible
For your own sake, picking items that are easy to clean and quite durable will make your space much easier to turn over for the next guests. Expensive rugs, bright white upholstery, and other hard-to-maintain furnishings will add stress without adding excessive amounts of value.
Instead, look up what textiles and brands people tend to enjoy using in their rental properties, both because of their durability and because they look good to the guests.
Timeless and Neutral Furnishings Tend to Appeal Wider Than Eclectic Ones
Upfront, we’ll say that you should absolutely decorate based on your own desires. If you’ve always wanted to display your beloved art collections, your rental will be one-of-a-kind and will often find a perfect audience. However, not every vacation rental owner is born with a decorator’s eye, and if you want to make a comfortable, beautiful space, it doesn’t have to have a totally unique theme to work well.
You can opt for regional decor (mountain scenes or seashell prints work for a reason!), or you can opt for a variety of calm neutral, or earth-tone items, making it easy to bring in something new if you ever have to replace an item. Opting for one-of-a-kind furniture or decorations can be heartbreaking if something is ruined and then cannot be returned, so ideally, a vacation rental should be focused on decor that allows each guest to feel at home and comfortable. But, again, it doesn’t have to be a unique space they’ve ever seen to work well.
That being said, many people will remember unique functionality forever, sharing with people in reviews that you had a great travel crib for families to use or you were happy to provide additional beds for a family reunion, allowing all the young cousins to share a room and stay up chatting. A great way to make a good impression is to make the decor so harmonious that it blends into the background, giving off a clean, polished look without having to draw a lot of attention to itself. That being said, you can disregard this and make your rental your own artistic canvas instead – this may actually be what makes it that much more fun to share with guests.
