You can attract your ideal customer and make the income you want at your Bed and Breakfast or vacation rental with home staging!

As both a home stager/designer and an owner of a Bed and Breakfast I have had the unique opportunity to use my home staging skills to increase my bed and breakfast income and attract my ideal customers! I used the same concepts that I use to help home owners sell their houses fast and for more.

When I first started my Bed and Breakfast, I was not a home stager yet, and I used different methods to try to increase my business. Later, when I tried home staging and social media marketing like I use with my staging clients selling their homes, it made a huge difference! How and why did it work?

Home staging highlights the positive and downplays the negative aspects of homes for sale. A professional stager creates a look and atmosphere that buyers make an emotional connection with and they want to buy through decorating and market research. It’s the emotional connection that cinches the deal. Sellers then market their properties to attract buyers online with great photos of their beautifully staged home.

The same principles work with vacation rentals. Here are some tips to consider to get the customers and income you want from your vacation rental.

Who are you?

Figuring out what makes you and your rental unique and what you have to offer is the key. This is called “branding”. In home staging, we try to do this with the house…figure out what is special and unique about it and highlight that for buyers. So consider:
• What makes you special?
• What makes your rental special?
• What are the things that only you and your rental can offer?
• Write a statement that shows the unique character of you and your vacation rental.

Your ideal customer will be attracted to you and your rental if you let them know who you really are and what you offer.
Figuring out your “brand: will help direct the way you update the look of your property, how you portray what you are offering on your website and in your advertising and help your Ideal Customer find you.

What do you want?

• How much do you want to make and how much do you want to work?
Answering this will help you determine your prices and what you need to do to justify those prices. Do you want to be the “Walmart of Bed and Breakfasts”, competing with others because you have the lowest price? Would you rather charge more and work less because you are offering a higher quality experience?

Who is your Ideal Customer and what do they want?

Specific customers are going to be attracted to the brand you project. Is your brand attracting your ideal customer?
1. Who is your ideal customer? Fishermen? Families? Adventure travelers? Retired couples?
2. What kind of place do they want to stay in? Do they want luxury or a more rustic experience?
3. What activities do they want to participate in? Do you offer them or can you help them find those activities nearby?

Update your Vacation Rental to Appeal to your Ideal Customer

1.  Does the current look of your vacation rental appeal to that ideal customer?
2.  Does the current look of your vacation rental justify the price you are charging in the eyes of your ideal customer?

Home Staging can update the look of your rental to reflect your “brand”, appeal to your ideal customer and justify the price you want to charge.
Here is an example of how home staging helped highlight my brand, attract my ideal customer, raise my nightly price, increase my bookings by 200%.

Here is what it looked like before and after home staging and design

Market your Property to attract your Ideal Customer

• Get great photos of your beautifully staged rental property.
• Update your website, highlighting your brand and what makes you and your property unique at the top of your home page.
• Show off your photos and use them to create a great video.
• Advertise your unique property on:
  • Social media- Create a Facebook page
  • Vacation Rental Sites
  • Your local Chamber of Commerce

Here is an example of the video I created from my photos after staging, which I promoted my brand and attract my ideal customers. I put this and my new photos on the home page of my website and a business Facebook page.
Can you tell what my brand is? Who my Ideal Customer is? Which B&B would you have picked to stay at, what I portrayed before or after staging?