How to make your airbnb kid and baby-friendly in 2022.
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Welcome to another episode of Vacation Rental and Airbnb Mastery. I’m your host, John Candelario. Today we’re gonna talk about making your vacation rental baby friendly to attract more bookings. People have kids, people travel with babies, and you want to be as baby friendly as possible so that anyone traveling with their baby would look at your property and say, Hmm, you know, that’s a place that I would book. It looks totally baby friendly. So here’s a couple of things you can do to make your vacation rental stand out as being baby friendly. Number one, does the listing say that the home is family or baby friendly, kid friendly in your title and description? If you are in fact kid friendly, you should really spell it out because a lot of people searching on Google or searching on VRBO or Airbnb type things like that. And the more baby friendly you are, there’s people looking for that specific kind of accommodation and you have a higher chance of showing up in search results.
Add baby-friendly or kid-friendly to your headline, title, and description
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If you write kid friendly or baby friendly in your description and your title, it really does help. Also, do you have any stairs? Do you have anything that’s unsafe for kids? If possible, you may want to put up baby gates to make it safer because safety is at the top of mind of every single traveling parent. Make sure your vacation rental is actually safe for kids. Talk about those floors. Is the floor going to be a comfortable one for a baby to crawl on or for kids to play on? If you have very, very hard flooring like tile, um, maybe you want to spell it out in the description what kind of flooring you have, because a lot of parents have that at top of mind. Like, can my baby crawl on the floor comfortably as they’re learning to walk? Um, and if they have a lot of kids that they plan on, you know, letting play in the house, that’s gonna be important.
Install and market that your vacation rental has baby-friendly flooring and baby proof your airbnb.
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So you do want to highlight in your description what kind of flooring it is you have at your rental. I have sharp edges at the home, on your coffee tables, on the countertops, on any of the furniture. You do wanna make sure you’re doing the right thing in baby proof them if you’re advertising, especially as kid friendly or baby friendly, make sure any of those sharp corners or edges are properly taken care of. There’s a lot of great baby proofing hardware you can buy at Lowe’s, Home Depot, Any sort of hardware store, they’re gonna have things to baby proof that house for you. Think about anything that could potentially cause injury because you don’t want anyone’s child getting hurt at your house. Plus it’s a liability issue and it makes great business sense to make sure there’s nothing in your house that could potentially harm a child. In Florida, it’s really popular to have a private pool at your vacation rental property, but so many hosts and cleaning crews, they forget to put that baby gate up the enclosure. In Florida, it’s actually a requirement to have either your baby gate up or to have a beeper. They’re kind of annoying, but they do save lives. Like when the sliding door opens, that thing goes beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep beep, and that alerts the parent that somebody has opened the sliding glass door out to the pool area. It’s a great safety feature. So
Pool owner? Baby and child safety is a priority for all airbnb hosts. How to host a pool, safely.
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You can either do like that beeper by your sliding glass door leading to the pool area if you have one or a, a baby gate by the pool so that no one can access the pool without having the right authorization or asking their parents. It’s super important if you have a pool. There are tons of drowning cases in Florida and it’s horrible to hear things like this, but you can prevent things like that happening if you’re properly prepared. A tragic story that I actually remember by Champions Gate Resort in Florida, there was actually an instance where parents, um, they were barbecuing, they were in a kitchen cooking and they did leave that back door open and someone did drown in there. Uh, could have been prevented. Um, but this is our responsibility as host to do everything possible to make sure that stuff like this doesn’t happen.
When it comes to vacation rental safety, preparation is paramount.
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We can save lives and all it takes is the right preparation. Laundry usually goes without saying, but if you don’t have a laundry at the house and you’re saying you’re kid friendly, think of the parents having to do laundry.
Share closeby experiences, landmarks, playgrounds, and things that make mom’s life easier.
Uh, it’s a huge, huge thing like laundry adds up when you have lots of kids and in your description to look more family friendly and to explain and try to paint in a picture of how you’re family friendly. You can explain that you have a working washer and dryer so that their parents can do all the laundry that’s needed on their stay, but where you could sell, what makes your home unique. If you have any sort of park for kids to play in, if you have a resort style pool with a splash pad, if you have any sort of recreational facility nearby, if you have any sort of field like a football field or a state park by anywhere, kids can play like a playground, spell it out in your description.
Sell what is nearby your airbnb, families like to wind down after being out all day.
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It’s a huge selling point. And a lot of times parents as you’re planning their vacation when they’re done at the amusement parks or at the beach and they come back to their vacation rental to wind down, they’re looking for things close by in close proximity to the vacation rental that they can do with their kids or even let their kids play on their own if they’re not babies. So if you have anything like that by the vacation rental, make sure you say it, say it once, say it twice, say it over and over because it’s a huge selling point. Advice host to do is ask questions as if they were a parent. If you’re not actually a parent, try to put yourself in in the parent’s shoes. If you are a parent, you know those questions ask, it’s things like, is the furniture secured to the wall?
Make sure your windows are secure, no sharp edges, safety in your staircase and balconies. If you have baby equipment like a crib or stroller, make sure your airbnb cleaners sanitize all baby equipment.
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Um, are there any windows that don’t lock? Is there any sharp edges in the home? Are the stairs safe? Do you have a good balcony to support someone walking up the stairs? Are there high chairs at the property, a pack and play? Do you have a stroller? If you are saying your baby friendly, it may be a good idea to one, either offer these items complimentary if they’re in good working order, in good condition, and yes, they do need to be cleaned by your cleaning crew between turnovers. The worst thing is getting into a stroller that’s full of cereal crumbs or chips. Worst thing ever. So if you’re advertising that you have these things and it’s complimentary, you do want to keep it in good working shape and very clean because parents are big on cleanliness for their kids, huge on it. Also, if you’re saying that you, you don’t have these items, you want to find a local company in the area that can deliver things like a crib or um, pack and play.
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Provide baby equipment as a plus or offer parents a place to rent much needed equipment like cribs, pack-and-plays, and strollers.
There’s tons of companies in tourist areas that will actually take in order, drop it off on the day of check-in and pick it up on checkout day. So you don’t even have to buy anything if, if you don’t want to. Um, it just takes a little research in your local area to see, um, what services there are in your local market and what they’re offering and if it’s a good fit for you, ask yourself every question a parent could ask so you can make sure that your place is baby friendly, kid friendly, and baby proof. It’s hugely important. And now more than ever, you need to differentiate your vacation rentals as stand out from a very, very competitive and saturated market. This is one huge way you can make yourself stand out and make your vacation rentals shine above all others. If you have anything like a crib, a pack and play a stroller, please make sure it’s cleaned and sanitized between stays.
Hire, retain, and encourage your cleaners to always report safety issues so you can prevent accidents before they occur at your Airbnb.
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It’s so often forgotten by cleaning crews because cleaning crews have usually a set checklist and a lot of the times those amenities are not included on the checklist because they do actually cause extra money to clean. So if you need these items clean and you’re, you’re providing them, you do definitely need to communicate to your turnaround crew that these need to be maintained and cleaned and replaced from time to time. Amended tip for your turnover crew is to make sure that they alert you anytime they see something that could potentially be dangerous for a kid. I know that cleaners in my network are always looking for things that could potentially cause harm because they never want to guest to have that experience or a tragic that you happen at the rental, but you need to make sure you’re communicating as a leader, as a vacation rental business owner, what they should be looking for, why they should be on the lookout for things like sharp edges, uh, broken mugs, broken glass, anything that could hurt someone.
If your vacation rental cleaner sees something dangerous, they should say something.
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If you see something, say something item in your description where you’re saying how baby friendly you are and all the things that make your rental baby friendly. Set expectations there as well. What do I mean by that? The expectation of if you have a crib, should the parents bring their own sheets for the crib? If you have the pack and play, should they bring things to put in the pack and play? Do you have toys for kids or is that something they should bring? It’s better to just set the expectation up front so the parent kid rental be stress free, enjoy their vacation, and have peace of mind that their baby or child is taking care of. Mommy and daddy need to rest, right? And the worst thing is thinking a place is ready for their kids and it’s actually not. Then you gotta go all the way to Target or to Walmart or wherever, buy what you need and it’s cutting into your valuable vacation time. It’s cutting into time with your family and it’s actually robbing you of time. So that’s why there’s so many complaints on Airbnb and the reviews is a good section to see if a place is baby friendly or not. You’ll see it and if
Ask your guests to leave a review and to include how kid-friendly your airbnb was for them.
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You, you are baby friendly and your guest had a great experience bringing their kid, you can ask them to leave a review and specifically share how baby friendly your rental was because that will come up in search results as well. And you best believe guests that are looking into staying with you, they’ll look at those reviews and if they have a child or a baby and they see that in the review that you’re baby friendly and it was great for a family, you best believe you, you’re gonna have a higher chance at securing those new bookings. Well, in all, I hope this was helpful to making your vacation rental more baby friendly, more kid friendly so you can get more bookings by being a baby friendly or kid friendly Airbnb. If you haven’t yet subscribed to my weekly newsletter, please go to vacation home help.com/podcast and enter your email and I’ll send you lots of free resources and my five top insights from the week to help you level up your vacation rental game.
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