In the recent episode of The Vacation Rental Show: How We Grow, host Lynell Gordon is joined by Justin Ford, Director of Short-Term Rental Safety & Certification Programs at Breezeway. Together, they explore the risks facing rental properties in the USA today.
Justin is the Director of Short-Term Rental Safety and Certification Programs Director at Breezeway and the current International Vacation Rental Safety Expert for Vacation Rental Safety.
The Risk in Short-Term Rentals Versus Hotels
Last year in the USA, only seven people died in hotel fires, and these were primarily room-specific issues caused by guests disabling the smoke alarms themselves. Thus, when staying in a hotel, it is incredibly unlikely you will die in a fire.
Conversely, hundreds of deaths were caused by fires in short-term rentals, and this was mainly due to a lack of checking and monitoring. At the start of the vacation season, you may pass your fire safety inspection and get your permits, but how often are you monitoring your alarm system?
We often buy products intended for home use, such as smoke alarms, which makes sense since we are renting out homes. However, we need to remember that our properties are actually commercially used. Guests might disconnect alarms or block them off in some way that is not spotted and corrected before it is too late.
“Most short term rentals are commercially used. You’ve got the general public coming in, people you’ve never met, people you may never see again, and then they’re making decisions in these properties to use things differently than what you intended, and then they’re using all these things that weren’t designed for commercial use, and then all these issues are happening.”
As service providers, we are responsible for using products as they are designed, closely monitoring their effectiveness, and replacing ones that do not meet the required commercial standard.
Preventing Slips, Trips, and Falls
Although fires are a risk, they are by no means the most likely cause of injury in your vacation rentals. 83% of all insurance claims in short-term rentals are due to slips, trips, and falls, with the majority happening within an hour of arrival.
Think about it: people unfamiliar with the property are arriving with nobody there to greet them and with no idea of the potential hazards facing them in just the short walk from where they park to the door. It makes sense when you think about it frankly.
In fact, 60% of these incidents happen after 10pm, meaning that guests who arrive during darkness are more likely to end up falling, often because of a simple lack of lighting.
To prevent these cases, Justin recommends putting yourself in your guests’ shoes:
“We’ve got to take this realistic look and go wait a minute; I’ve got to show up at my house at night and pretend I’m the renter, pretend there’s six cars down the driveway, and I got two pieces of luggage, and my kids are yelling at me. Now, how do I navigate into this house? And if you can’t do it, neither can they.”
Then, consider installing automated lights illuminating the pathway, including safety information in pre-arrival packs and signposting hazards around the property.
Ultimately, it is up to us to ensure our guests’ safety and implement appropriate precautions. The mentality needs to change from ‘insurance will cover this’ to ‘I can prevent this.’
“The mentality that we need to have as hosts, operators, managers, and people taking care of these properties is, first and foremost, they trust me. I’m here to ensure that when these guests walk into this house, they can be safe.”
To listen to the full conversation between Lynell and Justin on How We Grow, follow the links here: