Owners

Going Away for a Short Stint?

Rent your home to guests and fund your getaway. Whether for a weekender, a week or even more. Visitor accommodation in Hobart is an all time premium especially in our Tassie summer. You choose your available dates.

The most exciting part of the day are serendipitous exchanges with those I meet. I can greet your guests and ensure they have a warm welcome with secure access.

Provisions such as milk or breakfast baskets can be delivered to your guests. You may choose to let guests help themselves to your breakfast larder or not.

Are you too busy to market online? I do it for you.

Want to present your holiday home listing in the best light? We can clean and style and even photograph your home.

• Cleaning is $35 an hour.
• House Styling is $60 an hour.
• Photography is $220 for 20 professional images.

Additional Styling services are available for House Sales Listings.

How Do I Price My Accommodation?

There is an interactive map to help you identify your likely pricing zone here. In addition to the location pricing varies according to how many bedrooms and bathrooms you have on offer. Pricing also varies according to 4 distinct tourist seasons,  Mid season October -December inclusive, Peak season Jan-February inclusive, High season March-April inclusive, Low season May-September inclusive. For example a well appointed quality self contained 3-4 bedroom home may command $900 a week during our winter low season whilst in peak season it may command more than twice that. Please ring to discuss thanks.

How Do I get Paid?

Once the booking is made, the guest payment is usually not released until the day after your guests have arrived at your home. In order to receive your payment I recommend Paypal for security and protection. Alternately open up a separate esaver to accept direct deposits and track your income. It takes between 3-5 working days for the banks to process. So allow a working week for your payment to arrive.

I accept both Paypal and bank deposits. I transfer my Paypal income into my bank account which is an extra precaution in case of unanticipated cancellations or disputes as Paypal handle such issues readily. So far I have not had any such issues!

Insurance

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Marketing & Listing

• I market your home as a short term holiday rental by listing your property online through multichannel marketing.
• I can even configure your holiday rental dashboards for free. This is a huge time saver for you-approximately 2 weeks in fact!
• In addition I can arrange to meet and greet your guests and enable secure house key access and even drop in fresh breakfast provisions such as milk. Of course you may prefer to meet your guests yourselves.
• In preparation for your house guests I can clean your bathrooms, kitchen, living rooms and bedrooms. Bed making too. I use non toxic earth friendly cleaning products.
• You supply bed linen which I can launder for you if you choose.
• Plants too can be watered. I charge $35 an hour for all domestic services.
• I suggest you cut a set of 2 spare keys for your guests, preferably with a larger key chain identifier. If you prefer I can ensure your guests are met and have safe access once they arrive.

Checklist for Holiday Homeowners

Before you embark on listing your home and before going away make sure you:
            (pdf is downloadable here) Arrange for our  competitive guest house cleaning service  at $40 an hour.

1. Verify yourselves with a mobile number and ideally several identifiable social media profiles. This grows guest confidence.
2. After bookings make sure your guests can connect via text, phone,  Skype or other VOIP.
3. Keep a variety of teas such as herb, black and green plus both decaf and full strength (Fair Trade) coffee. Dont forget sugar and extra teaspoons.
4. Leave fresh milk in the fridge. I store both organic longlife fat free and full cream milks as extras just in case. But I prefer to provide fresh milk especially local non homogenized milks such as Elgaar or Pyengana Dairy’s Real. Buying this milk shows you care and your guests will too. Elgaar glass bottles are returnable and mainland guests cannot buy milk in this format. Always replace used milk between guests.
5. Provide at least 2 sets of keys for guests.
6. Leave a laminated map of Hobart in your home. Download here. If you have larger maps of the South east Tasmania and surrounds or more all the better.
7. A welcome card? Recommend your favourite eateries! Mark them on your map?
8. Instructions for pets? Any pets would normally be elsewhere but some guests are happy to take care of your pets.
9. Other instructions? Any tricky taps, doors or windows? Is it a shoe free home? Bluetooth music system? Any Wifi passwords?
10. Where are the (clean) cooking pots?
11. I always supply salt, pepper and olive oil.
12. Clean the oven, stove top and your microwave.
13. Ensure guests have clean bed sheets, pillows, doonas and ensure bed base wraps are scuff free. Make beds up with extra blankets in the winter. Keep any hot water bottles or electric blankets on hand. I provide guest quality bath and hand towels and although appreciated that is not necessary.
14. Heaters in each guest room, eastern guests particularly require extra warmth and longer showers.
15. Clean all glass windows and mirrors with window cleaner and newsprint.
16. Dust tops of pictures, windows, mantles and door frames.
17. Vacuum your couches and lounge chairs.
18. Clean all table linen.
19. Provide extra toilet rolls in bathroom and tissue boxes in each room. Plenty of soap at the hand basin and kitchen. A dispenser works well for ease of use, presentation and economy of refill.
20. Extra coat hangers and hooks?
21. Fresh flowers on kitchen table and a small stem of flowers in bedrooms.
22. Water your plants.
23. For fire safety hang a fire blanket in the kitchen and a small hand extinguisher too.
24. A first Aid kit in the bathroom with a label on the door indicating it is there.

Too busy? We can clean and house arrange for you.

Stay Home and Share Breakfast With Your Guests

For 17 months I’ve hosted guests from all over Australia and the globe and I am always so excited and impressed with the serendipitous and deeply moving human connections that hosting complete strangers engenders!

In the east including Singapore, Malaysia and China they call it Homestay and here in Australia we just call it house guest or guest. When you host a stranger it opens up all manner of intriguing mutual connections.

These are some of my takeaways for helpful hosting.

• I recommend you always include breakfast if you invite people into your home to stay with you overnight. You can offer lunch and or dinner too and that is entirely up to you. Be clear though that you are offering the other meals as generous extensions of your hospitality. Or be clear that other meals are charged extra. Make sure you write receipts.  I don’t offer breakfast when guests are self catering in self-contained accommodation. If guests are arriving late at night say after 9 pm I provide a soup as I know they will be tired and hungry and it is a simple gesture to knock up soup and blitz it with a handheld wand.
• I ensure there are varieties of tea, coffee and milk. I like to buy Fair trade coffee and I like to serve up choice with both a plunger and a percolator, however many guests love plain old instant coffee. I have to confess I am deliberately not buying a coffee machine! Perhaps it’s years of serving up cappuccinos but I really don’t want one taking up precious bench space either.
• Prior to arrival I always ask if people prefer gluten free breads and cereals or milk alternatives.
• When hosting people from Asian countries I do cook eggs for them. They generally love a hot high protein breakfast.
• Although I usually breakfast with them most of my guests I leave to help themselves by ensuring plentiful bread, butter, salt, pepper, eggs, jams and cereals as because I work I deliberately dont over commit my resources in the morning especially when trying to get my 7 year old ready for school!
• I love to provide freshly squeezed juices as it ensures I get my own morning zest fix plus it feels extra special for my guests. To this end I have abundant fruit which I buy weekly from Source Co op an organic veggie box service at UTAS in Sandy Bay. It is an economical way of ensuring my guests and family eat organic. Plus I love to shop local. One of the things I love about guest houses is that we not only offer a personalized experience we also spend our income locally unlike large hotel and motel chains who spend it offshore.