Maximize Your Rental Income With Proven Hourly Rental Rules

If you are in the rental business, you want to have rental rules that ensure that the equipment is rented as much as possible. Doing this will maximize your earning potential. Let’s learn how to ensure that your rentals are always booked by properly setting up your booking rules.

Booking Time Rules

For rentals such as boats, your rental times will be based on your daily hours of operation. Typically this means 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM or some close variation. In order to achieve the most earning potential each day, you will want to offer a full day rental and half day options (morning and afternoon). This is usually what a customer will want if they plan to go fishing, snorkeling, tubing, or skiing.

Fewer Options = More Income

The best scenario is to set up your booking system, so the choices for a start time are limited to a few options that will allow you to have either the whole day booked by one party or two bookings (morning and afternoon) a day.

The setup shown below from the WebReserv booking system is designed to offer morning, full day, and afternoon rental. The renter can only choose a start time of 9:00 AM or 2:00 PM.

By limiting the start times in the setup, it ensures that your boat will be rented for the entire day, either by one customer (full day) or two customers (morning and afternoon).

A quick tip

Notice how the setup leaves an hour in between the morning and afternoon rentals? This is done on purpose to allow for cleaning, gas, and supplies re-fill before your next rental. You can choose to adjust this as needed, but having a clean and ready to go boat will lead to higher customer satisfaction.

Consider this

If you didn’t limit this time option and gave the customer the opportunity to select any start time and end time, then it would leave it open to selecting a time that wouldn’t allow for 2 rentals in one day. Thus lowering your earning potential. For example, a customer could choose a start time at 11:00 AM for 4 hours, which wouldn’t allow another booking for that day, leaving your boat unbooked for several hours.

Can I make an exception?

Of course! Another feature in this setup does allow you to override these rules to make exceptions. This feature will offer you the ability to select any rental time you choose if the customer calls in or walks in your shop. This is a necessary feature to still keep track of your bookings through the system, but be able to allow a party to book outside these rental times. If it’s a slow week or a weekday, it is a great option to ask a customer to reach out for custom time slots.