Renting out Fishing Cabins with Automated Booking Software

Modern lifestyles are filled with daily pressures and mentally exhausting work schedules. Many people look for a getaway for their vacations to divert their attention from worldly thoughts. Fishing out in the deep heart of nature is turning into one of the relaxing ideas, and its popularity does not seem to fade away pretty soon. 

This trend can be a good business opportunity for you. Increased need for fishing spots and desires to relax in nature increase demands for fishing cabins. Therefore, you can start renting out fishing cabins for profit. However, you need to follow the steps below in order to succeed in this business.

Step 1: Prospect Fishing Locations

Before building or purchasing cabins, you need to prospect the areas that will be both pleasing and generous for fishing. Building a cabin in areas that do not contain fish may not bring any potential renters.  

Here are the things you need to do before installing your fishing cabins:

• Do research.

Googling the local fishing spots, reading forum discussions, checking out nature maps, and networking with local fishermen can help you to pinpoint good fishing spots to install your cabins.

• Contact Landowners.

We all know that none of the land is up for grabs. There are two scenarios: Either land is owned privately or is covered under the government’s natural park programs. In either case, you must obtain proper licenses or permissions to place your cabins (unless you purchase the land yourself). Concisely, you need to consider the licensing and property fees. If the landowner charges high for land usage, you may need to increase your rental fees to cover those costs. The downside of this situation is that it limits your competitiveness in the market.

Please note: if you rent out the land from a private owner or own it yourself, your customers do not have to purchase fishing licenses. Because fishing on private property is legal.

• Experience it yourself 

Put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Something unpleasant to you may be unpleasant to others as well. Give yourself a question: If you were a customer, would you rent the cabin at that spot? If the answer is yes, you can go ahead with your next moves. You can either build cabins from the scratch or purchase prefab cabins to rent to fishing enthusiasts.

• Consider the accessibility

Some people may be too weak to walk miles in the wilderness to get to the fishing location. Of course, there may be clients who prefer high endurance walks, but it is always better to base your fishing cabins in a place where customers can access with their own transportation (unless you want to offer off-roading service yourself).

Step 2: Register Your Business and Get Insurance

No matter in what part of the world you are going to operate, you need to get permission for your business activities and register it as a legal entity. If you have dozens of fishing cabins, it would be best if you registered your business as LLC. That way, you will not be personally liable for accidents or injuries. Plus, you will be able to open up a business bank account so you can easily integrate your business with popular merchant gateways such as authorize.net, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, PayPal and others. 

You should also get business insurance coverage that covers your properties and liabilities, such as damages to cabins, losses to customers’ assets, or injuries. You will never know what will happen in the wilderness, so it is always better to be on the safe side.

Step 3: Build or Purchase Cabins (if you do not have any)

When it comes down to setting up cabins, you have several options. Here are the primary ones:

1. Buy cabins that are already there. 

Sometimes it is better to buy a property with ready cabins as it saves you time and resources. Check the local classified sites such as Craigslist, look at social media ads or consult with local realtors to find such places. However, it is essential to inspect the structures and find out why the owner is selling the cabins. For instance, if the cabin is beyond repair or requires too much for remodeling, it is better to build them from scratch or buy prefab cabins.

2. Lease cabins from companies or property owners.

This is the best option if you want to start a fishing cabin rentals with a minimal budget. In this case, you develop a business plan using others’ property and cabins. For example, let’s assume you have seen low-cost (possibly unmaintained) cabins for rent in good fishing locations. In that case, you can contact the owner and lease it for a longer period with a valid contract. Calculate the costs that would be essential to make it inviting for customers, plus consider the lease and maintenance fees to price your cabins accordingly. 

Another strategy is to rent out portable cabins from rental companies and repurpose them for fishing by installing them in good fishing locations. However, although you are not paying the total price for the cabins, you still need to pay for the moving, maintenance, insurance, and other potential fees. The downside of this strategy is that you do not own the cabin at the end. You will keep paying and have minimal chances to remodel it based on your preference, as it does not belong to you. 

3. Buy innovative and self-sufficient cabins.

People are accustomed to the conveniences of modern technologies. They prefer electricity, air conditioning, and internet access. Yes, even in the woods. If your fishing spots are deep in nature, it would be best to buy self-sufficient homes with built-in generators or solar panels. You can find them by searching the keywords such as “self-sufficient cabins for sale, “portable homes with solar generators,” etc on Google. Also, you check out Alibaba as it connects you with prefab home manufacturers around the world.

Step 4: Start Renting out Fishing Cabins

This is the fun part because it converts your hard work into real profits. However, renting out a cabin may require more tasks than you anticipated. For example, firstly, you need to allow your customers to book online, be able to process electronic payments, create professional invoices, connect with accounting tools to keep track of your expenses and revenues, manage your clients and orders electronically, and more. Luckily, you can do all of those tasks from a single dashboard when you sign up for Reservety.

What is Reservety?

Reservety is All-in-One Rental Software that comes with a Booking and Reservation system. When you sign up with Reservety, it grants you access to their cloud-based server, where you can build your professional rental website with a simple drag-and-drop style.  Even if you already have a website, Reservety’s team migrates it to their servers, helps with other on-boarding processes, and links it with your existing domain name.  

You can add your rental cabins with variations (e.g., size, type, location) and display them to millions of potential customers online using Reservety. On the other hand, your visitors can view the galleries listed under each fishing cabin, select the suitable ones, enter their billing and personal information into electronic forms, and book them for specific dates by paying with credit card or e-wallet payments.  

Reservety also includes following features and advantages:

• Scheduling. 

Double bookings are the major issue in the rental industry, as hand-written scheduling is prone to errors. But Reservety’s Rental Software solves that problem by integrating your business with a convenient calendar system, which gets updated based on bookings and inventory statuses. For example, if one of your fishing cabins is rented out for a particular date, the calendar displays it as unavailable for that date and disables it to avoid double bookings. 

• Suitable for Walk-in customers. 

If your fishing cabins are located in famous parks, your chances are high for walk-in customers. People may see your fishing cabins and want to book them right away. In that case, you can open an account for them, enter their orders manually, and process their cash payments through an office computer.

• Customer-centered Technical Support.

Reservety treats its customers as individuals with unique needs and helps to tailor the software based on their needs. For instance, when customers request dedicated support, they get on-boarding assistance (e.g., free migration, set up, feature activations, etc.).

If the business prefers 24/7 support and wants to build their rental website with fishing-related designs, they can quickly get that assistance from Reservety. All websites built with the software can be accessed with popular gadgets, Smartphones, Tablets, and PCs, you can even go one step further by developing your mobile app with Reservety.

• Inventory Management System 

The system doesn’t only let you add all of your fishing cabins to a digital database but also add other related products. For example, you can list services such as cleaning, Wi-Fi, etc., and items such as boats, fishing rods, fishing radars, etc. along with cabins. And you can organize all of your inventories with unique serial numbers. That means whenever someone books a fishing cabin, other fishing-related items in your inventory will be featured during the checkout to have your customers rent more stuff. The best thing about Reservety’s inventory management system is that it syncs every transaction with the central module and updates the inventory statuses in real-time. 

• Automated Order Management Tasks

You will be surprised how much paperwork is involved to rent your fishing cabins legally. Luckily, you can automate all those processes with Reservety. Here are some of the things Reservety does in an automated manner:

• Invoicing
• Electronic Contracts and Agreements
• Accounting and Bookkeeping (when integrated with Quickbooks, Xero, Zoho, and others)
• Ability to view and change customer information, order details, customer balances, and more
• Approve or cancel orders, enter manual orders from an office computer, and request online payments
•  Implement a point rewarding system and much more

• Quick and Easy On-site communications

Nowadays, people prefer to get instant support without being on hold on the phone for hours or waiting for emails for days. Therefore, Reservety deploys a Live Chat system that connects your fishing cabin rentals with the customer around the world. Plus, you can exchange files (e.g., catalogs, contracts, invoices, quotes, etc.) with them through the chat system.

• Manage all your fishing cabins from a single dashboard regardless of their locations

Even if you have rental fishing cabins in multiple locations, Reservety connects them all through a single dashboard. Let’s assume that you have 5 cabins in California, 3 in Texas, and 2 in Alaska. In that case, you add all of them to your rental website, and customers book them through the same system by manually selecting the locations on your website. Basically, you will not deplete your energy or resources trying to manage all of them separately. 

• Integrations with Business Maps.

Since most of the business maps and directories are linked with Google Maps, Reservety helps you to add your business to Google Maps, so potential customers can see the locations of your cabins from maps and get to them quickly. Also, once the cabins are on Google Maps, they will be featured in the search results when someone searches for nearby (or area-based) fishing cabin rentals.

• Review and Feedback system

Did you know that good reviews increase the chances of sales by up to 44%?  Because over 70% of consumers check the reviews before paying. Considering that, Reservety lets customers review your fishing cabins and displays them under each cabin so potential customers can read them. Plus, Reservety enables you to accept feedback from your clients through automated emails or stationary forms, so you can study your weaknesses and strengths to improve your business.