Today, we’d like to talk about different kinds of rental businesses and the level of success you can hope to achieve. If you’re considering starting a rental business soon and you’re looking for some expert advice, then the Rentrax blog is the right place for you. Whether you need help creating a business model for a rental business, figuring out how to market and advertise your bike rental business, or something else altogether, we’ve got you covered. We hope this blog is useful for anyone considering starting up their own rental company.
There is No Perfect Rental Business Niche
The first important point to make is that there is no perfect rental business niche for any person or location. This means that we can’t offer a silver bullet for the rental industry. This is because there are too many variables to consider when planning for success in rentals. That said, there are a series of factors to consider that make your chances of success as good as possible. This is what we will focus on for the remainder of this blog.
Context and Research is Key to Success in Rentals
The cliché ‘knowledge is power’ absolutely holds for anyone planning to start a rental business. It’s important to know where your future business would fit into the current market, both in respect to potential customers and competitors. For example, bike rental businesses have seen incredible growth in recent years, but if you create a bike rental business in an oversaturated area and don’t offer anything new or special, it’s highly unlikely that your business will thrive. But if you bring a more niche rental product to an area, then you don’t need to compete as hard for your audience. But that’s the tricky question: who is your audience?
Working out your audience is vital to any business’s success; it’s not unique to rentals. But it still bears mentioning here. Without a clear idea of who your potential audience is, you won’t know how to put your products in front of them. Without this, your rental business can never be successful.
Presuming you already have a great idea for a rental product or business, you need to put the work into discovering who is most likely to rent from you. Answering this question will give you a range of other answers that can direct your business’s development:
- Ideal price point (lowest and highest)
- Potential customer pain points (profiling your customers and ensuring that your business solves their problem without adding any additional problems)
- Is there an angle or unique selling point that would appeal to this kind of customer that would put you above the competition?
- If you know who you’re trying to reach, you can work out where and how to spend your marketing and advertising budget
- Your brand logo, colors, tone of voice, etc.
Investing in Outdoor Activity Rentals is Very Promising in 2021 and Beyond
At the time of writing this blog, it is January 2021. While most of the advice you’ll find here will apply for years to come, it is important to address the huge potential for outdoor activity rentals in 2021 as the world digs itself out of the COVID-19 crisis and people venture outside and start traveling again. In fact, there has even been research to prove there is a greater appetite for outdoor activities after covid.
While the tourism industry as a whole has suffered immeasurably during the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have begun to administer the vaccine to their citizens, starting with older people and front-line workers. The various forms of vaccine have injected hope into the travel industry, with many people eager to book their 2021 summer holidays. Time will tell whether or not summer is too early for the global tourism industry, but any tour or activity operating outside will likely have an advantage over indoor tourist activities; people have been stuck at home, inside for far too long, and there is a general appetite to get outside and explore nature. There is also the safety factor, with outdoor activities allowing space for comfortable social distancing.
This appetite to get outside will almost certainly create a surge in outdoor activities for tourism destinations with beautiful scenery and plenty of space to explore. If you’re considering founding a rental company specializing in an outdoor activity, then this might be a brilliant time to get started. Surfing, kayaking, skiing, mountaineering, hiking, rock-climbing, and so many outdoor activity rental niches are likely to grow considerably over the next few years.
But one outdoor activity will likely rise above the rest…
The On-Going Growth of Bike Rentals
Bike rentals had been growing in popularity in general — even before the pandemic — so we expect the industry to grow even further as the vaccine is rolled out. Cycling is often the best way to explore an environment, whether it’s a casual city bike ride, a three-day bike trip through the countryside, or mountain biking and off-road cycling for people who need a little more wilderness in their lives.
The variety of cycling activities and bike types allows bike rental businesses to appeal to a diverse range of demographics, but it also allows them to specialize if they need to.
Before we founded Rentrax, we started as a bike rental business in Vancouver — and we still have that original business today. We had tried a variety of rental software and we were frustrated with the lack of functions and the basic understanding the software companies seemed to have about our industry. With the kind of creativity and confidence that pushed us to found our rental business, we started developing our own software that was made specifically for bike rentals. This gradually expanded to include snow and ski rental software, camping equipment software, and several other niches we understood.
Our goal has always been to develop software as a service that helps businesses run more efficiently, both in terms of time and money. We like to make things as easy as possible for our clients; we feel that it’s Rentrax’s job to manage your software so that you can focus on running your business. This is why we offer tutorials and support (as much as you need) to make our software work as hard for your business as possible.
It’s also worth stating here that we’ve made our software as user-friendly as possible, it’s just that there are some really useful functions that go beyond the software’s basic functionality. We have even created a support team for this exact reason.
If you’d like to learn more about Rentrax, check out our rental software features and get in touch if you’d like a free demo. In the demo, we will show you how Rentrax works and we will be happy to answer any questions you might have.