How to Provide an Exceptional Guest Experience: Key Elements & Trends

How to Provide an Exceptional Guest Experience Key Elements and Trends

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Ever wonder why a property listing can look absolutely amazing but still have bad reviews and low occupancy? The reason most likely comes down to a poor guest experience.

Providing an exceptional guest experience is often overlooked by vacation rental hosts. However, it is one of the most crucial investments you can make into the future of your short-term rental business.

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What Is The Vacation Rental Guest Experience?

Guest experience is a general term used throughout the hospitality industry and can also be applied to vacation rental businesses. It describes all the events and interactions that leave an impression on the guest during their stay.

This could be anything from their communication with staff, the check-in process as well as the checkout requirements, and overall enjoyment while staying at your property.

Why Is Guest Experience Important for Vacation Rentals?

The experience a guest has at your vacation rental business has countless repercussions for your business. It’s the difference between a bad review and a good one and the difference between whether a guest recommends you to their friends or warns them to stay away. Ultimately, it’s also the difference between whether your business is successful or not.

There are more than enough vacation rental properties to go around, so it’s crucial that your guest feels like they were treated well and that you provided excellent service and value for the money they spent. Otherwise, they may decide to look elsewhere instead of returning for their next vacation.

What Are the Most Important Elements of a Great Guest Experience?

a spotless home is a basic to get right for guest experience

An exceptional guest experience may seem abstract at first. The following few practical steps will help to demystify the concept and ensure you get the basics right.

1. Know your guest type

Different types of guests will have different guest expectations. So, it’s important to know the type of guests you are targeting to provide memorable guest experiences.

For example, if you’re creating a family-friendly holiday house, you can add small touches like age-appropriate movies or toys for children. You can even take it one step further and partner with other businesses in your local area to offer discounts to families.

On the other hand, if your vacation rental caters to business travelers, you’ll want to swap out the children’s play area for a dedicated desk and upgrade your internet connection.

2. Understand the entire guest journey

The best way to guarantee guest satisfaction is to put yourself in your guests’ shoes. This creates a picture of what every interaction with your vacation rental will look like.

From creating your listing for the booking stage to when it’s time for your guests to check out, you’ll need to think about your guests’ perspective. Even ongoing communication after checkout, like how they receive marketing communications, will need to be considered carefully.

3. Be flexible

One of the greatest advantages that vacation rental accommodation has over most hotels is greater flexibility. Many hotels have very strict policies for cancellations, late departures, and changing bookings, but short-term rentals are able to show a bit more flexibility when it comes to their cancellation policies.

If your guest communicates any issue with you that might affect their booking, trying to accommodate them as much as possible will go a long way. It is usually these types of experiences guests will rave about in online reviews.

4. Simplify your property management tasks

Let’s face it, managing a vacation rental business without any help is tough. And when you’re juggling multiple bookings on top of all the background admin tasks, it is difficult to pay attention to the finer details of providing great guest experiences.

That’s why it’s crucial to simplify and embrace ways you can automate many property management tasks. This will free up time to focus on what really matters and improve the guest experience.

iGMS, for example, is a leading vacation rental software that enables you to:

Automate triggered messaging and organize your chats into a single feed via a unified inbox to ensure prompt replies
Manage multiple accounts and listings across the top booking platforms from a single interface
Synchronize reservations across multiple platforms to eliminate the risk of getting a double-booking
Build a stunning professional website for direct bookings with the website builder
Automate guest review send-outs
Share daily cleaning schedules with your cleaners and auto-assign cleaning tasks (helping to improve the staff experience too)
Create essential reports on your performance and results within minutes.
Automate Today

5. Provide more options

Everyone loves options. Giving your guests the freedom to choose between what they would like to be included and excluded during their stay will add to the guest satisfaction.

For example, you could give them the option for different kinds of room upgrades, like extra beds to be added.

6. Provide a warm welcome

The moment your guest arrives at your vacation rental you need to start showing off. Check-in is the ideal time to make them feel special as it will set the tone for the rest of their stay.

Besides following a detailed cleaning checklist to ensure your property is absolutely spotless before your guests arrive, you’ll also need to plan out their check-in process.

Are you going to meet them in person when they arrive, or will it be a contactless check-in?

If it’s a contactless check-in, will you be using a lockbox to store the house keys or will you use a smart lock with mobile check-in?

Whichever method you choose, you’ll need to ensure the key handover process is as simple and easy as possible for your guests.

You’ll also need to think about how you’d like to communicate important information that your guests will need when they arrive. The best way to do this is to send the most important information, like check-in instructions, in a welcome letter via email. Then, for all the finer details of the property and their stay, you could create a welcome book that’s strategically placed on a coffee table or the kitchen counter.

To take it one step further, you could also try giving your guests a welcome basket or gift. This will take your guest’s experience from good to great and make your guest welcome something to brag about.

Giving a welcome gift adds to the guest experience

7. Focus on convenience

One of the hidden secrets used to increase customer loyalty and win more bookings is to focus on the convenience you provide. Guests’ experiences of a vacation are rooted in how easy and convenient things are made for them.

The best way to introduce convenience into your vacation rental is through new technology that will improve your hospitality services. This could be smart lighting that can be adjusted to customer preference or smart locks that eliminate the need for carrying a physical key. You could also offer fast fiber internet and a smart TV that is able to accommodate popular streaming services like Netflix (this also doubles up as another way to provide your guests more options).

8. Stay in touch

Effective communication is a crucial element of the experience guests receive. Poor communication and a hard-to-reach host can be frustrating if guests urgently need assistance.

This is why it is important for you or your front desk staff to be available to answer any phone calls or messages from current and potential guests. You can use unified communications systems that unite all channels and third-party software integrations within one unified platform to prevent miscommunications. This way, you can answer immediately on any communication channel your customers prefer.

Then, to remind your guests you are always available to help, it’s a smart idea to send them a quick message or email halfway through their stay. This approach lets you check in on them, without pestering them too much.

9. Make it personal

Every guest appreciates a personalized experience. It shows that you are paying attention to them and care about their experience.

An easy way to personalize the experience is to customize your email communication to include their name. You could also try to find out more about their preferences in order to suggest vacation activities or send them personal special offers that will appeal to them.

10. Go the extra mile with add-ons

Even though your guests will be well aware that the vacation rental experience is not exactly the same as a hotel experience, there are still ways to go the extra mile to impress them with your hospitality.

spa treatments: going the extra mile for guest experience

For example, you could offer add-on experiences like spa services, or guided hikes and tours. You could also provide other practical services like organizing transport to or from the airport if needed.

Collect feedback

This is the last step in your guest experience offering, and possibly the most important. After your guests have enjoyed their stay, it’s ideal to get feedback from them as soon as possible.

This feedback should at least include their opinions on what they enjoyed and what can be improved. While it might sting to hear some criticism about your vacation rental property, acting on this feedback is the fastest way to improve moving forward.

Feedback is usually given by the guest through online reviews, or the host could send a private feedback form via email for past guests to complete.

Write a Guest Review!

Traveler Trends That Impact Guest Satisfaction

Now that we’ve covered the basics of a memorable guest experience, it’s time to take a closer look at current trends in the hospitality industry. These trends impact how well you provide exceptional guest experiences in the current state of the industry.

Guests are embracing the digital nomad lifestyle

The pandemic stirred a mass realization that work does not need to be chained to an office building. This boosted the popularity of the digital nomad lifestyle. As part of this trend, the global workforce has started to shift towards traveling while working remotely.

For vacation rentals, this trend has meant that no matter what type of property you have, basic workstations and a decent internet connection are the bare minimum for travelers booking long vacation rentals or hotel stays.

Greater emphasis on green business practices

Customers of any industry are shifting to a more environmentally conscious mindset, and the same goes for the hospitality industry. Showcasing any efforts you make towards going green and benefiting the environment is a big plus in the eyes of a lot of travelers.

Business partnerships that enhance the service offering

Sometimes referred to as “partnership marketing” or the “partnership economy”, a trend within businesses is to form mutually beneficial relationships that, in turn, will also provide greater value to customers.

When looking at the vacation rental industry, this could mean short-term rental businesses forming a partnership with a restaurant, spa, sports center, etc. in the surrounding area.

This partnership means that you could offer discounts for your guests to enjoy. At the same time, it will send new customers to your business as well as your business partners. It is a win-win situation for all involved and a great way to elevate the guest experience.

Travelers expect the same quality of service as a hotel guest experience

If you are able to provide the same quality as a hotel guest experience, then you’ve hit the jackpot.

A hotel guest experience typically provides ultimate luxury and convenience. The downside, though, is that it requires a full hotel staff to be able to provide this level of service. So, while it’s not an expectation, being able to mimic aspects of a hotel guest experience, like spa treatments, will go a long way for the guest experience and customer loyalty.

Guests are leaning into rewards programs

According to American Express Travel’s 2025 Global Travel Trends Report, 66% of travelers all across the world are looking at ways they can combine their credit card rewards with other loyalty benefits. What’s more, it’s not necessarily a cost-saving measure. More than half (58%) use it so that they can splurge more on travel-related experiences and expenses.

Going forward, consider creating your own loyalty program. With mobile technology becoming more accessible, you can even go as far as to create your own app. It’s a great way to attract returning guests. Alternatively, if restaurants in your location offer attractive rewards programs, you can highlight these in your guest communication. It’s another example of how guests will see that you’re going the extra mile to offer more value.

Final Thoughts

Hands down, one of the best things you can do to grow your business is to invest time and planning into the guest experience you provide. Travelers are looking for the entire package. They look at the overall experience of their stay. From the people they meet, to the places they visit, all of this determines whether you’re providing a positive or negative guest experience.

Start with the basics, such as communication, understanding the guest journey, and implementing feedback. If there is not enough time in the day, consider automating your daily hosting tasks with vacation rental software to free up time to focus on your guests. Then, once you nail the basics, you can start thinking about the next steps and current industry trends.