An outdoor woodfired hot tub can boost holiday let bookings by differentiating a property in search facility, be worth more per night and increase the season during the obviously quieter colder months. Hot tubs in general can benefit from A lot higher rates and increased off season availability with a woodfired one adding a rustic experiential twist which photograph well and is Mostly appealing for country holidays and cottages, typically there is a significant boost in isolation for cabins, lodges and countryside getaway cottages in general. Why it does work is partly pragmatic, partly sentimental.
A hot tub features among the most-filtered attributes listed on top booking sites, so adding one hits a broader group of potential viewers. Wood-fired also announces a certain pulse-taking slow off-the-grid weekend, which can turn out to be a very profitable trick. You can do very well, but it also depends on how you promote the feature, and how you manage the episodic running of it for visitors.
How much can a hot tub increase bookings and nightly rates?
Industry feedback from holiday let agents is pretty consistent with hot tubs among the top most significant higher impact additions a proprietor could make, with a property often able to command a surcharge of between 20 and 50 percent a night over a similar non-hot-tub listed property. Though there are too many moderating variables (location, type of property competition other features) to accurately predict the uplift, the trend is accurate and (per many owners) the headway pays for the hot tub within a couple of seasons of frequent letting.
The bigger prize is occupancy rather than rate. A hot tub is one of the most-effected search criteria on Airbnb and Sykes the listings that don’t have one aren’t getting seen by a huge chunk of searching guests when price isn’t even talking yet.
More searches means more bookings year-round, and that implicit virtue of occupancy can often have a bigger impact on annual income than the explicit benefit of rate. Still, this is where the piece really comes into its own: the shoulder and winter months. It’s a big ask to say, “Come and spend a cold and gloomy January weekend in a rural location, ” but give that same weekend a wood-fired hot tub, and it suddenly becomes the whole point of your trip.
Why choose wood-fired over electric for a holiday let?
The wood fired option also sells the story, and stories sell the bookings. The picture of soaking in boiling water heated by a burning wood fire, in the middle of the countryside hits the nail on the head of what guests are booking a rural hideaway to experience, and that pull to do so cannot readily be fabricated by one of the standard electric spa models.
There is also a convincing running-cost argument, but which works both ways if you are going to rent out a property. A wood-fired spa with no electric element can do away with the relatively high standing cost of keeping a full electric system hot between guests, which can be an issue when the property is empty for days, because you only turn it on when there are people there.
Still, you then have the responsibility to provide the heating fuel and to convince people to do it right, which introduces a varying variable. The guest experience is different to appeals to the right clientele. Wood fired tubs take several hours to heat through, so benefit customers who are prepared to settle in on a slow break rather than jumping in straight away, couple that with the 2-4 hour time to heat!
What are the practical and legal requirements for owners?
Safety and compliance are not optional and failing to get it right is the quickest way of turning your most valuable asset into a liability. Holiday let owners are meant to be following water hygiene guidelines to control the threat of bacteria like legionella and this involves a recoded process of emptying, flushing, cleaning and testing the water systems in between guests many insurance companies and platforms even require proof of this. But the changeover logistics require honest consideration before you get one.
A hot tub usually needs emptying, cleaning and refilling in between stays and a wood-fired hot tub then has to be re-heated, which extends your turnaround time and that means cost that your cleaning team has to absorb. Plenty of successful owners incorporate this into their changeover time and their prices preemptively, rather than discovering that the hard way in their first season, and some limit hot tub use to somewhat longer stays to reduce the time pressure.
The hardware itself has to withstand heavy, sometimes careless use by a rotating cast of guests, so build quality matters more for a let than for a private garden. Commercial-grade wood-fired hot tubs from suppliers such as edenhut are built to handle the wear and the maintenance demands of constant changeovers, and choosing equipment designed for that intensity saves you repair headaches and lost bookings down the line. A tub that fails mid-season costs you far more than the price difference at purchase.
Which properties and regions see the biggest gains?
Clearly, the uplift isn’t universal, and it is the matching of the feature to the property that sets a good return from a noxious investment. It is rural cabins lodges shepherds huts and country cottages in the Lake District Scotland Wales, Cornwall and Peak Districts where the effect is strongest because the wood-fired tub bolsters the rustic, escapist appeal already present in those locations. Guests booking those locations are actively looking for just this. City and seaside lets gain a smaller, alternative use.
In a town-centre or city apartment the ye-old-fire-heated angle doesn’t seem quite so romantic, and the space and smoke-prohibition rules, nor how many lives and offspring you refer to, may determine that a switch-driven tub or no tub is far, far wiser. The calculation is changed when switching to the budget tier.
For a premium lodge charging a premium nightly rate, a tub investment is quickly recouped and can then be a marketing lead as it pushes the lodge out at the top end of its market. But, for a budget with thin margins, the maintenance burden has to be carefully balanced with the rate increment it can support.
