The Advantage of a Remote Business

It was only some years ago when remote work was an exotic possibility, known only by rumor to some.  Today almost everyone knows at least one person who works or who has worked remotely. This opportunity isn’t only for the worker, however.  Business owners can choose to make themselves (and their teams) remote too.

Advantages of Remote Work

At the core of remote work is the changeover from “I’m watching you” management style to “I trust you” management reality.  The advantages of remote work combine with that trust to create a possibly ideal work environment for those with the discipline to take advantage of it.

 

• Autonomy.  You always said you wanted to create an ideal work day.  Remote work lets you do that. You may need to be available within a certain window and you may need to complete certain tasks, but you can do it in an environment that works best for you.
• Freedom.  You do not have to live in a particular geographic area.  You can go and live where you would like to, given visa and budget considerations.  You can flee winter or chase summer (and vice versa) as much as you would like.
• Flexibility.  Just because you have the freedom to be remote doesn’t mean you need to become a digital nomad, sending selfies of yourself on a laptop by the beach to the whole world.  You may just like the idea of being able to go somewhere away from your homebase for an extended amount of time without having to lose your income from work.

Advantages of a Remote Business

On the other side of remote work is the remote employer, who has his/her own benefits from having a remote team.  Here are just a few:

 

• Larger Labor Pool.  Why be restricted to only hiring from those who live in your town, county, state, or even country?  Technology allows you to hire from all over the world. Why not use that to bring in the most qualified team members?
• Lower Costs.  The reality of remote work is that you are able to offer lower salaries because there are so many applicants who are willing to accept them in trade for the flexibility of remote work.  This may change in time as remote work becomes more widespread, but for now its a reality that business owners can take advantage of to grow their new companies.
• Broader Perspectives.  With a global labor pool necessarily comes greater cultural awareness and broader thinking when it comes to various projects and problems.  No company ever suffered from having perspectives that take into account other cultures and realities.
• Better Employees.  Because employees are required to be unsupervised, only the best survive and thrive in a remote environment.  A remote employee, unlike a traditional one, has to be able to do work, sometimes for weeks at a time, without any direct oversight from you.  This makes them better oriented around problem solving, efficiency, and communication.

An Opportunity

There are many remote jobs available these days.  Many more than used to be available and many more will be available in the years ahead.  But fully remote businesses, much less fully remote franchises, with systems in place to help you manage fully remote teams?  There aren’t many of those, but MaidThis is one of those. There’s no need to wait for the future to bring you a fully remote franchise opportunity: it’s here now.

The Vacation Rental Industry Continues to Grow

The vacation rental industry as a whole is swiftly moving towards a value of $200B worldwide and it only continues to go up.  This isn’t just a question of more and more people deciding to open up their own homes to vacation rental, but of serious individual investors and institutions getting into vacation rentals as a business, seeing the trends and following the growth.  What’s perhaps most exciting of all is that all of the excitement in the marketplace doesn’t come from one source, but many.

Why is Vacation Rental Growing so Rapidly?

There are many factors leading to the growth of vacation rental, but we will focus on four big ones:

• Airbnb.  While VRBO, not Airbnb, was the first vacation rental marketplace, it was Airbnb that became a part of the language, much like “xeroxing” something meant to make a photocopy, it is now standard to say that you “got an airbnb” for a vacation, even if you made the booking on a platform other than airbnb.  Indeed, VRBO was one of the companies acquired by Homeaway in its race to keep up with the global inventory being gobbled up by Airbnb, and Homeaway was acquired in its turn by Expedia. Airbnb has mainstreamed the concept of sharing your home with visitors and travelers, and while its road has not always been smooth (there have been fights with cities and challenges with law enforcement) both hosts and guests enjoy using the service and the company is due to IPO soon.
• Technology.  Part of Airbnb’s growth has been due to better internet access, better software, and more widespread use of smartphones and the apps that are installed on them.  More than ever people are using their phones not just for messaging and games and videos, but to book travel, including vacation rentals. Technology covers every part of vacation rental, from an ad from an internet search that might lead you to an OTA (online travel agency, like Expedia) to the reviews about a room you are interested in booking, to the bluetooth-operated smart lock you may use to get into your rental.  Technology has smoothed the friction which used to be part of so many points in the travel process.
• Market Adaptation.  For a while the hotel and tourism industry sneered at the growth of vacation rentals, seeing them as a niche market rather than the game changer they are.  But they didn’t stay dumb for too long. Marriott recently announced they would be getting into the vacation rental market themselves through managing properties that look a lot like standard vacation rentals.  Marriott is hoping that their lure of earning points will attract people away from the unique and interesting stays they can find on Airbnb and other vacation rental platforms. But it’s clear that the big players in tourism no longer are skeptics when it comes to vacation rental.
• Experiences.  There has been a concerted movement in Western societies away from purchasing objects and towards having experiences.  Unique experiences often come with different accommodations, and vacation rentals are perfect for that need. As this market sector grows (which Airbnb has also entered with its Airbnb Experiences brand) vacation rentals will only have more demand for the unique experience they provide.

Why Does This Matter?

If you’re reading this, you’re not just academically interested in this once-in-a-generation type growth that vacation rental is experiencing.  You want to be part of it, to ride the growth to more time and profits for yourself. That’s what makes MaidThis such a special opportunity. As a cleaning business it already provides a necessary service that so many recognize the value of and continue to adopt every day.  As part of the vacation rental business it is absolutely indispensable: without clean rooms there are no vacation rentals. The reality is that most hosts want to be in the hosting business, not the cleaning business, and they are happy to allocate a portion of their ever growing profits in vacation rentals towards someone who is in the cleaning business, not the hosting business.  Thankfully, MaidThis has been perfecting our processes for almost a decade now, using the technology and tools available to other cleaning companies but rarely used by them, to give you an opportunity to build an establish a business that will grow side-by-side with vacation rental for years to come.

Why Clients Choose MaidThis

 

When people first get into vacation rental they are excited about making money from a property they are in charge of.  But almost no one says, “I can’t wait to clean my rental property after each guest!” But cleanliness is perhaps the most important component of a successful vacation rental property, and if hosts learn that early on.  

The Reality of Cleaning

Unless we were born into a royal family, we are likely to have had a fair amount of experience with cleaning in our lives.  It’s something that we have to do, not often something we love to do. There is a segment of the population who actually does like to clean.  They like to clean so much, actually, that it’s not enough that they do it for themselves, they do it for others, professionally. You may have found one of those cleaners yourself, so why choose MaidThis?

An Individual Cleaner is a Single Point of Failure

There are amazing individual cleaners!  They may have worked in a community for years.  But they are just individuals, meaning that like the rest of us, sometimes they get sick, or have a problem with their transportation, or have standard emergencies.  The problem is that vacation rentals usually don’t have a lot of tolerance for those challenges. Guests expect to check in on time to a clean and ready place. They don’t care about your excuses, and worse, this will reflect on your reviews, only making it more difficult for you to attract good and frequent rentals.

MaidThis Guarantees Our Cleaners

So, part of why customers come to us (which they sometimes do when their trusted-for-years cleaner decides to move out of town) is to get away from a single point of failure.  With us they not only have a primary cleaner assigned from day one, but also a backup. We also have other members of the team who can come should something happen to the backup.  Anyway, that’s our concern, so we guarantee that you won’t be no-showed, ever.  

 

We also happen to clean at hotel-standard quality, which isn’t always available from standard cleaners or mom and pop shops, but which is absolutely vital in the vacation rental world.  We also have automated booking and billing, so you don’t need to worry about telling us when the next guest is arriving and when the last one left. We’ll also give you pictures of how we cleaned as well as any damage we noticed from your last guests.  Of course it’s easy for us to say these things, but you don’t have to take our word for it, you can check us out on Google Reviews, Yelp, or see those who were so happy with our work they did video testimonials for us on Youtube.

Franchise Opportunity

But if you’re reading this, you might be interested in being part of the solution.  The reality is that there are many individual cleaners and mom and pop operations who are just not providing the hotel-quality level of service that vacation rental demands.  But that’s okay because that’s where we come in, to make sure that market is addressed at world-class level.