To Rent Our Holiday Apartment…or not

A little over three years ago, we purchased our lovely home here in Roccaspinalveti, but in actuality it took us 4 years prior to our purchase to actually find it.

While we were in the process of retiring from out careers in Virginia, selling our chalet home in the mountains with thoughts of downsizing in Abruzzo, I had been already cruising some excellent home sites and creating our top 20 home list. A few houses kept coming up on that list over time and a few I should have crossed off as way too big for just two old retired folks! .

So we moved to Abruzzo, rented a farmhouse and started to look at houses with a few realtors and ended up, happily, here in Roccaspinalveti with a house of two complete apartments! What can I say… we couldn’t resist the view, great condition of this more modern house (built in mid’70s), the price (which I had followed for three years as it slowly came into our budget), good size yard, private parking area, etc. We were hooked. Now what should we do with the apartment below us?

Certainly, family and friends would come to visit us here in wild Abruzzo! They could stay with us and have their own apartment with privacy and the dynamite view. Good thought but it didn’t look like a lot of takers from the get-go. Friends dream but reality of a busy life in the US prevented them from coming over. We planned to visit the US and family planned to come to see us but then COVID hit and plans were crushed. As we are very avid promoters of this area, we then decided to offer the apartment on Airbnb & Booking.com. And we did! And it was a grand success! Why?

John and I both have strong hospitality backgrounds, with John as a professional chef and I had worked at a B&B as well as Customer Service/Tour guide at Virginia Distillery. Both of us have OC tendencies so offering a sparkling clean accommodation with numerous amenities was just something we fell into naturally. We gave the apartment a name: Case Serre Holiday Apartment; Serre being the neighborhood that we lived in. It offers its own private entrance and parking area, long balcony looking out over the mountains and hills of southern Abruzzo… our backyard. Here are a few pictures of the apartment and view.

The perks were many: meeting wonderful folks, promoting the area and artists, offering a relaxing and comfortable accommodation where only one B&B existed in town, and having extra income to help with our upgrades in our home. Most of our bookings were from the US, UK and Italy, with a few other countries mixed in. We had guests who came to relax and hardly leave the property. Others went hiking, headed to the beach for the day, went house hunting, and others came to work in the area. The list was varied with such lasting experiences they enjoyed as well as for us, meeting and hosting them.

John and I divided the labor. I did all the social media & website, handled the bookings, laundry, making up beds, restocking. John did all the refurbishing, maintenance, cleaned the bathroom and kitchen, vacuumed. We realized, after the first season, we had to set a minimum of 2 nights for a booking. It just took too long to clean, and then turn the apartment around to be rebooked after just one night. We had space to accommodate 6 guests, but changed the setup to only allow up to 4 guests the following season. Again, a lot of work with not much return when you consider that I was doing all the laundry.

Even during COVID, we stayed open. We added self-checkin with a lockbox for the keys. Guests had instructions sent to them prior to arrival and also instructions in the apartment. We’d greet our guests across the courtyard, but we all maintained our distance. So we had three great years, with exceptional ratings by Airbnb & Booking.com. Our guests couldn’t have been kinder with their reviews!

So, why did we close after just three years if things were going so great? Apart from the stringent COVID cleaning regulations, which most days left me exhausted, there was the lack of privacy. As the apartment was part of our home, we felt it essential to maintain a level of quietness on our part in order to ensure our guests were not disturbed. Also, our immediate backyard was basically off limits to us as it was part of the package for our guests. Outside management may be worth considering for those thinking of doing this type of rental. It takes the pressure off of you and you have your freedom to travel. We just couldn’t work that into our pricing during COVID, but it is definitely one way to manage a holiday apartment.

Then there were the minor damages, breakage, staining, and theft. The majorities of these were never brought to our attention and only found after the guests checked out. Did we use our insurance to cover? Not worth it was it because it was never large enough but certainly annoying enough. I think if we had done this fulltime while we were younger, it may not have been so taxing. But at our age… retirement…we just didn’t need the hassle. Now these guests were not the norm and we had many wonderful guests, but it was just time for us to move on to another adventure. I have to proudly say that we did this rental well. We had many positive reviews and high scores with both Booking.com and Airbnb. So we felt it was time to close on a high note and we are very grateful and thankful to the wonderful guests we were able to host.

Roccaspinalveti now has a couple more rentals and B&Bs and we are happy to see this trend in our town. There is just so much to see and experience and we hope folks will continue to make their way to this part of Abruzzo.

The winter is now upon us and we are working on a few more upgrade projects in our home. We’ll keep you posted of our next adventure here. Until then have a blessed Christmas and Holiday Season!