Vacation Rental owners— what are your stories, suc

[NatanBricks]

Hi all! Vacationing for the 6th time in 9 years in a place I love. I am now financially at the point where I am starting to think about buying a property as a vacation home that I could rent out for the rest of the year and then eventually do some snowbirding.
I'd love to hear stories about how this has worked out for you. What would you like to know when you go, how easy/difficult it is to succeed, etc.
Thank you!

[Kaly]

If you have a management company, expect them to take 30-40%.
Find one major cleaning company and pay them well. I've learned to ask for their rate and offer more. You usually pass the cleaning on to the people who are renting anyway. For example, I was told $250 for cleaning, so I pay them $300 (4 beds, 4 bathrooms).
We also use good kitchen pots/plates and silverware. When we travel, my wife loves to cook and hates dealing with horribly scratchy Teflon cookware that costs $50 a set.
Getting decent mattresses is another matter. It makes a world of difference. I'm not saying discount $1,500 for a mattress. We spend $300 to $600 on hybrid memory foam and only get great reviews. USE MATTRESS PADS!!! I can't stress that enough.

[Gato]

Platforms like airbnb punish you if you take too long to answer tenants' questions, so you have to be online at all times, if you don't have that option you can use a channel manager for vacation rentals which will help you always be aware of when people are due to leave and when new people arrive and generally help streamline the whole staff management process.
We use it to regulate the cleaning and the person who plows the driveway when it snows, shovels the porch and patio and takes out the trash.