Decorating for Christmas and other Holidays

As an Orlando property management company, we often get the question from new homeowners whether to decorate their vacation home during the holidays in December in order to help with bookings. While the pictures will look great as a selling feature for the holidays, our answer is no.

Busy Season

The main reason we say no to this question is that Christmas time is the most popular time for families to visit Disney World. The theme parks are packed with hotels and vacation homes getting sold out as well. Having a vacation home available for Christmas will get booked. There are more people traveling to Orlando during that time than accommodations available. This will not help you increase your bookings as this already is a popular time of year anyway.

Time Consuming

Decorating for the holidays is also very time-consuming. Most of our homeowners live in other states and have full-time jobs. They might visit once a year with their family for a week, and the rest of the year we manage the home in their absence. They do not have time between visiting the parks with their kids to worry about decorating their vacation home. Property managers are busy preparing multiple homes for the Christmas crowd with winter maintenance, preventative checklists, checking inventory, and more.

It Can Be Costly

Expect your electric bill to be higher not only because there will be guests in the home, but because if you have Christmas lights. Vacation homeowners often have a mortgage on the home and trying their best to save on costs everywhere they can. If you are trying to save money, we definitely recommend that you not decorate.

Offensive?

Holiday decorations could also offend someone of a different faith system. Not everyone celebrates Christmas so they may not appreciate Christmas trees. There are more diverse practices than ever so to remain neutral and prevent guests from becoming upset, it is best to avoid decorating.

Themed Rooms Are More Effective

What kind of decoration would be best then to have your property stand out? Our most rented vacation homes have themed bedrooms tied to Disney World and Universal Studios characters. This looks great in the pictures year-round and has adults even feeling like kids again. This is a cheaper one-time option for a low $200 to transform a bedroom into a themed bedroom. Having themed rooms will help you increase occupancy more year-round than holiday decorations. If you are looking for more tips on how to produce more income for your vacation home, contact us today.As you can see, we are extremely active with our marketing efforts. We would love to have the opportunity to manage and market your vacation home. Last year, we did not have one vacation home occupied less than 220 nightsa nd our average vacation home was occupied 248 nights annually…that is over 20 nights a month!Check out more of our Orlando Vacation Property Management.

Trey Duling

trey@orlandovacation.cbx.dev

1-800-641-4008 ext 7007