The most logical way of increasing vacation home rental revenue is to increase the number of guests you can comfortably host and house. Most of us do not have the capital needed to hire an architect and contractor to actually add bedrooms to our properties. On top of that capital expense, you’d have to figure in the lost rental income during the period of construction.
What if you could “add” a 10’x12’ room with a small investment of $4,100 and approximately 6-8 hours of your time?
Sweetwater Bungalows offers just this opportunity with one of their “tent cabins” or “tent bungalows”. Essentially a semi permanent structure with canvas walls and roof, real doors, real windows, and a wood platform floor, these versatile structures provide a thrifty way of adding valuable capacity to a vacation rental.
The company’s products have been featured on the Home and Garden channel program ‘Vacation Living’, the Discovery Channel’s ‘Christopher Lowell Show’ and a recent episode of NBC’s ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’. These swell tent-cabins have also been featured in such publications as; The New York Times, The San Francisco Examiner, House Beautiful, Sunset Magazine and Country Home.
A vacation rental owner in Sonoma County with three acres of land covered with mature nut trees, a pool and a hot tub, all situated on a rise overlooking the Russian River vineyards, found that her small two bedroom house limited the rent she could ask in this highly competitive market. One week she built two Sweetwater Bungalows on her property and increased her capacity from four people to eight people with minimal disruption. She had no trouble raising her rental rates for the property after that.
The added bonus was the uniqueness of the experience her tent cabins provided. Some guests have reported it feels very “Out of Africa” and others have shared that the tent-cabins brought back fond memories of summer camp or holidays at St. Thomas’ Malo Bay. Add in a fireplace and get cozy year round!