If you have been looking for holiday letting advice, one of the questions that is often asked is how to deal with late arrivals. While every rental owner hopes that guests will arrive on time, from time to time, delays occur. Whether these are caused by flight delays and factors outside of your guests’ control, or time-management issues, dealing with late arrivals requires a great deal of tact and professionalism.

One of the quickest ways to risk your holiday rental reputation is to deal with late arrivals in the wrong way. Getting angry, blaming guests, threatening them with fines or even giving away bookings to someone else can all do you more harm than good. At the same time, latecomers and other problem guests should not cause undue problems for you and your staff, either. Today, we share some holiday letting advice that will help you deal with lateness professionally yet effectively.

Holiday Letting Advice: How to Handle Late Arrivals

Some of the best holiday letting advice to consider when confronted with late arrivals includes the following:

• Be clear on your arrival time. This should be communicated after each booking is confirmed, within your terms and conditions, and in your final welcome communication. If you do not make it abundantly clear what time guests are expected to check-in, it will be a lot harder to enforce a set check-in time. If, on the other hand, you have made these times clear in a number of emails and messages, your guests will be liable for any delays without blaming you for not letting them know what time they were meant to arrive.
• Keep communication lines open from early on. Ideally, a text message sent before your guests’ arrival should be sent, wishing them well on their travels and stating that you look forward to seeing them soon. This will make it easier for guests to let you know if any delays occur. It will also allow you to find out more about where guests are in their journey, allowing you to proactively manage their arrival.
• Get flight details. It can also be useful to know the flight details of your guests. If anything unforeseen happens while they are in the air, it may not be easy to guests to let you know about delays. Knowing their flight details however allows you to track their flight in real time. If you know that their flight landed, but they still haven’t arrived, you will also know that something has either gone wrong with their transfer, or they have stopped somewhere along the way.
• Get help from the experts. Dealing with latecomers is never fun. One of the best ways to prevent and handle late guests is to work with a dedicated short term rental manager who is able to meet guests, handle all communication, deal with bookings, and also provide day to day management, marketing and guest concierge. This gives guests a professional, polite point of contact, while giving you peace of mind in knowing that you never have to deal with guest communication (especially when issues such as lateness arise).

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To learn more about working with a dedicated holiday rental manager, contact the Totalstay team today. We will offer expert holiday letting advice, along with a host of exclusive features, from bookings management to concierge, day to day management and marketing.