Hosts of The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals looking up the ladder of the Bird’s Nest at Firefly Eco Lodge in Bali – Courtesy Netflix
You know the vacation rental industry is officially no longer “alternative” when Netflix has multiple original series and other shows about them on the platform. Lucky for us, the streaming giant released a new one in June: The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals.
And boy, did they deliver on that title. Throughout the eight-episode series, hosts Megan Batoon (the designer and travel newbie), Jo Franco (the experienced world traveler), and Luis D. Ortiz (the luxury NYC real estate guy you may recognize from Bravo) traveled around the world to 24 truly spectacular vacation rentals from caves to chalets to treehouses. The trio evaluate the properties themselves and the entire guest experience, which they do well to show are intricately intertwined.
Over the course of their travels, the show drops dozens of nuggets useful to hosts everywhere. This article explores seven of those lessons, and where we might add an asterisk or two on how to take advantage of their suggestions in a responsible way. TV producers may not find responsible practices sexy (we’d beg to differ), but if you’re not dotting your I’s and crossing your T’s on the important things, all of the TV-friendly fun stuff is moot.
Spoiler alert: I share a lot of details from the show here, so if you’d prefer to be surprised, go binge watch the series now and bookmark this article for later!
Lesson 1: The rental check-in experience counts.
Every episode features three properties, one of each in the categories of budget, unique and luxury. Each property’s segment is divided into two: check-in and experience. It was an insightful move on the producers’ part to focus on the check-in process and the experience of that in and of itself.
Check-in is where hosts can set the tone for a 5-star review (or at a minimum head off a bad one). If you’re going to put a wow factor anywhere, where guests check in and first experience your property is it. If you live on site, consider welcoming your guests in person with something special, a la village leader and host Made’s flowers in episode 1’s Camaya Bali Butterfly. If your property is a luxury one, perhaps a concierge could be on hand with a welcome beverage, or an in-home chef could have a special meal prepared.
Check-in is also a critical opportunity to set the tone for your expectations of guests. Ensure they know about things like quiet hours, how to properly dispose of trash, where to (and not to) park. You don’t have to come across like a nanny when doing so, though, by keeping these reminders light and friendly.
Read next: Communicating Vacation Rental House Rules Effectively [+ templates!]
Lesson 2: Set proper expectations and rules to preserve your community and your vacation rental property.
Speaking of guests’ adherence to things like house rules and local customs, setting your standards high here can preserve not just your community and your relationships with neighbors but your property itself. Episode 8’s Blaze II catamaran, for example, had to make sure guests knew not to flush toilet paper and to conserve water. Otherwise, the plumbing could break down or the boat could run out of its 200 gallons of water supposed to last the entire trip. If guests didn’t follow these rules, they and the boat would be SOL.
The very first property featured, Firefly Eco Lodge in Bali, made sure to point out the importance of local cultural rules and customs, too. In Bali, traditional clothes are required to enter the country’s temples, so the host made sure the guests were properly prepared to enjoy the temples in a way that was respectful to the local culture and, therefore, enabled a great guest experience.
Lesson 3: Design your short-term rental with intention, brand – and safety.
Speaking of Firefly Eco Lodge, the wow factor of the property’s aptly-named Bird’s Nest rental was its design: a series of rooms stacked on top of one another in a towering bamboo and thatched structure designed intentionally to look like a giant nest. While it blew the hosts away, understandably, and I’m sure results in treasured lifelong memories for its guests, the rooms were accessed by a single open-air bamboo ladder going all the way up four stories to the “penthouse.” I can practically hear the gut churning of vacation rental safety expert Justin Ford at Breezeway at the thought of this. (PS. Read his safety advice here.)
Perhaps Bali’s building codes are more lax than in the US, but regardless, great design should never come at the risk of a guest’s or staff member’s fall from that height, no means of escape in case of a fire, or other dangers. Design for surprise and delight, yes, but put safety first and above all (and get good STR insurance, too.)
Coincidentally, the third Bali vacation rental, Noku Beach House in Seminyak, exemplifies smart design in a different way: branding. Everywhere the hosts went, “Noku” appeared on things like the toiletry bottles, in a design feature on a wall at the entry, and even in inlaid tiles around the pool. Hosts don’t have to go so deep with the branding, but having a branded property is an easy way to elevate the guest experience and win referrals and repeat guests.
Lesson 4: Bring experiences to the vacation rental.
In true Noku Beach House fashion, the host designed everything about the house for the guest experience, particularly the experience of groups. This segment seemed to promote the idea of hosting parties at vacation rentals and even stated the home could host up to 200 guests. After all, Luis says, “It would be a waste not to share it with others.”
That may be true, but wide shots of the home showed it sat just across a fence from several other houses. It’s not clear if those houses are also vacation rentals, but this is one of few bones I’d pick with the show. If hosts want a property that can host parties, we must make absolutely sure 1. It’s legal to do so, and 2. It’s not going to disrupt neighbors. Better still if you can find a property a significant distance from those in earshot, and use noise monitoring tech to keep an eye ear on your place if you’re not on site.
But as the show does do a good job showcasing, parties aren’t the only way guests can experience vacation rentals together. Episode 4, “Bizarre B&Bs”, featured Beckham Creek Cave Lodge in the Ozarks, a stunning luxury home built into a massive natural cave, dripping stalactites and all. There, the host embraced the unique way sound reverberates through caves by bringing in a sound therapy session for guests.
The hosts of The Sitka Lighthouse in Alaska in episode 5 “Private Islands” have fresh salmon delivered to guests by boat. In episode 6, “Gourmet Stays,” La Villa Bonita in Tepotzlán, Mexico made the property and the experience one and the same. La Villa Bonita is also a cooking school where the hosts teach guests how to make traditional regional recipes with local ingredients.
Lesson 5: Integrate with the local community and help guests explore it responsibly.
For the time guests spend outside of the rental, hosts can curate their experiences to the quintessentially local – and help them explore responsibly, like the Balinese temple example from earlier. The hosts of the Seasons Niseko ski chalet in Niseko, Japan sent Megan, Jo and Luis to the restaurant of a local expert soba noodle maker where he showed them the noodle-making process first-hand.
At Old House Cay in Hilton Head, SC, the hosts ventured to a church with local celebrity chef, Sallie Ann Robinson – a.k.a. The Gullah Diva – in an exploration of the region’s Gullah food and culture.
Todrillo Mountain Lodge in Judd Lake, Alaska in episode 2 “American Adventure” created whole guest experience packages that included cocktails on a glacier made with glacial ice, a via ferrata tour with Olympians, and gear to explore the salmon-packed waters around the home without disrupting nature.
Lesson 6: Embrace nature in your rental.
Nearly every property featured in The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals embraced nature in some way. Sometimes it was through materials and amenities – I think at least one property in each episode had an open-air something-or-other or outdoor swinging bed. Many were built using local natural materials. Still more encourage their guests to get out into nature with activities like waterfall repelling in Hawaii (episode 8), plunges into icy waters under the Northern Lights in Finland (episode 4), and private boat rides to shifting sandbars and deserted islands (multiple episodes).
Others, like the Bolt Farm Treehouse in the “Trees ‘n’ Zzzs” episode 7, brought it all together. Originally built by Seth Bolt and his father as a surprise honeymoon retreat for his new wife, Tori, the charming Charleston-area treehouse overlooking the tidewater brought nature in and the romantic getaway out. A pair of vintage bathtubs sit outside on the deck of the honeymoon suite, local flowers and plants adorn the interior, and wall-to-wall windows marry the two (pun intended.) (PS. The Bolts also have a brand new property near Chattanooga with custom-made luxury geodesic domes on a cliffside overlooking the mountains.)
The point: what’s outside your vacation rental is just as important as what’s inside. Embrace it – with the love, care and respect nature deserves.
Lesson 7: Preserve and celebrate history.
Vacation rentals have a long history, and using vacation rentals to preserve history creates win-win-wins all around. Take Sausalito’s The Yellow Ferry in “Boats ‘n’ Floats” episode 3. The ferry was the oldest living one on the West Coast, built in 1888, and sitting on a shoreline deteriorating after WWII. The owner bought it for $1,700 and restored it to its former glory, now living in half and renting the other. During his preservation, he intentionally celebrated its history by exposing the ferry wheel and restoring other relics.
The Sitka Lighthouse not only preserved the lighthouse itself but repurposed stairs from a 1930s cargo ship and turned a ship wheel into a table.
The Playhouse in the Berkshires in “Gourmet Stays” episode 6 perhaps does this best of all. (Look familiar? The Playhouse was featured in our January 2021 newsletter! Shameless plug: Subscribe to catch other cool stuff like this in your inbox.)
The Playhouse was built by electrical pioneer George Westinghouse as a playhouse for his children – and the first home in the world with AC electricity. (Pro tip: Superlatives like first, last, biggest, smallest, etc. are amazing for marketing, especially to Millennial and younger travelers. Capitalize on this, if you can!)
The Berkshires in Massachusetts was once a haven for the wealthy during the Gilded Age. In recent years, many of the era’s once-grand estates were collecting dust and falling into disrepair. Luckily, among the area’s new generation of intrepid entrepreneurs is Daniel Dus of Shared Estates, a company that purchases historic estates and renovates them to today’s environmental sustainability standards using crowdfunded capital, then rents them for high-end short-term rental stays.
The show explored how Shared Estates combined the old with the new, keeping the estate’s theatrical elements and original architectural details while creating new spaces, like a yoga studio, an office space overlooking what was once the stage, and a game room by the basement library.
Our advice: If you preserve a historic property in your town and support it through short-term renting, make sure your community and particularly your policymakers know about it; maybe even invite them over for a themed cocktail hour or meet and greet. It’s important for them to see the good that vacation rentals do for their town and the special experiences they create for both guests and residents. Bonus tip: Make sure they know about the financial benefits to them, too, with numbers like revenue and taxes.
Bonus Lesson: Watch the show and enjoy!
Lessons or not, I recommend the show for any STR operator for the pure joy of it, especially after this past year. The show reminds us all about the wonders vacation rentals can create, and why many of us started hosting in the first place. On multiple occasions, the magic of the properties and travel experiences they afforded brought the hosts to tears (ok, you caught me – I got a little weepy, too.) And I didn’t even mention the Gaudi-inspired showstopper Quetzalcoatl’s Nest winged serpent house in Mexico City!
As Luis puts it in a perfect soundbite at the end of the final episode, “There’s not just one way to travel, there’s not just one people to meet – there is so much to see, and at the end of the day, we’re all doing this to be better people.”
Love shows about vacation rentals?
👉 Read about another Netflix hit, Stay Here – and spot Rent Responsibly CEO and co-founder Dave Krauss at 19:20 in episode 7!
👉 Watch our friend Matt Landau’s The Vacation Rental Show.
👉 Get more inspiration and takeaways from Australia’s Instant Hotel reality competition show.
👉 Get down to renovation business with HGTV’s Vacation House Rules.
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