Using boat rentals as additional revenue stream and a unique amenity on Airbnb (Ep568)

This episode of “Get Paid for Your Pad,” I had the pleasure of interviewing Jimmy Schweitzer, founder of James Vander Properties. We explored the world of renting out boats on Airbnb and how it can transform your vacation rental business.

Jimmy shared his experience of incorporating boat rentals into his lakefront properties, boosting revenue and attracting more bookings. Providing unique amenities sets your property apart, and offering a boat is a game-changer.

Complying with local regulations and prioritizing guest safety are crucial. Guests can bring drinks on the boat, following specific alcohol consumption rules in your area. A signed waiver protects against liability, ensuring guests are accountable.

James Vander Properties saw a remarkable 10-15% increase in nightly rates after introducing boat rentals. This additional amenity enhances the guest experience and differentiates your property.
Considering boat rentals? Jimmy outlined three options: buying your own boat, partnering with boat owners, or collaborating with boat rental companies.

Platforms like Facebook Marketplace can be a great resource for purchasing boats, and forming partnerships with local jet ski companies can create additional revenue streams.

To facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration, James Vander Properties has a dedicated Facebook group. Joining allows you to connect with like-minded individuals, access tips, and stay informed about boat rentals and unique amenities. Visit jamesvander.com to learn more and join the James Vander Properties Facebook group.

In conclusion, being creative and exploring innovative ways to maximize revenue is crucial. Boat rentals provide an opportunity to increase earnings and enhance the guest experience. So, think outside the box, consider boat rentals, and visit jamesvander.com to join the James Vander Properties Facebook group for insights and networking opportunities.

Jasper Ribbers:
What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Get Paid for Your Pad. Today, my guest is Jimmy Schweitzer. He is the founder of James Vander Properties out of South Carolina. And he just finished the Ledges X program, which was awesome. And he created a really cool video that I've shared over email, which was really awesome. He's a rapper, I guess. It's

Jimmy Sweitzer:
I don't know about

Jasper Ribbers:
hilarious.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
that, Jasper, but I try to put some rhymes together from time to time.

Jasper Ribbers:
Awesome. I love that video that you created. Jimmy, welcome to the show. Today, we're going to be talking about how to rent out boats on Airbnb, because Jimmy has a number of boats that he's renting out, and he's also added some boats to some properties as well. Really interested to learn more about this, Jimmy. But before we get into it, why don't you give us a quick background of how you got started with Airbnb and where you're currently at.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
Sure, yes I've been doing Airbnb for five or six years. My wife and I actually got started by just renting out a room in our house and that was a very humble beginnings but allowed us to learn the business and allowed us to pay our mortgage each month with just one room out of our house. And fast forward to about a year ago, started a business with my business partner and the goal is to bring on lake houses and to focus on specifically lake front properties in North and South Carolina. And that is the business that we currently have. As Jasper said, the business is James Vandert Properties. And we're excited to be on the show. So thank you for having me.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, I'm excited to learn about the boats. One thing I remember when I first started doing Airbnb in 2012, it was just rooms and homes that people are putting on Airbnb. But over time, people started putting all these different things on Airbnb, right? And now you have such a wide range of assets, like you have unique properties, like tree houses and camper vans. All sorts of stuff. And, uh, and, and there's people that put boats on Airbnb. I think there's a couple of platforms that's that are kind of like an Airbnb for boat rentals. Um, I don't know if you, I remember once renting a boat on clickboats. Have you heard of that?

Jimmy Sweitzer:
I haven't heard of Clickboat, but a boat setter is one where you can go on and you can find a boat for say Memorial Day weekend that's coming up for us here in the states. To find a boat for that holiday or what not is a cool thing. It's even cooler to have a boat that's sitting there waiting for you that's specific to you and that you don't have to go around trying to run around especially on a holiday weekend or a busy weekend to find a boat. So yeah, but those are some sites out there that you can do that for sure.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah. So how many boats do you have?

Jimmy Sweitzer:
So we have three and we have them actually in different areas which is kind of cool. But yeah, I'll let you kind of guide me on that. Essentially we own two boats and then we have a property owner who has a boat as well and we are renting out all three.

Jasper Ribbers:
And so give us some background on the boats. Like, what kind of boats are they? How many bedrooms, et cetera?

Jimmy Sweitzer:
Yeah, so these are decent size houses on the lake. Four bedroom is kind of what we really target. It allows about 10 people to stay at the property. And we combine that with a boat that at least can, of course, hold 10 people. So there's all kinds of different boats options that you have out there. As far as what we decided to focus on, we decided to focus on pontoon boats. very simply because anybody who has never driven a boat before can drive a pontoon boat. They're very easy to drive, they're very easy to coach and learn. Our boats don't go super fast, they're not like the speedboat kind of type. We want people to have a fun, safe time on the lake and we found that pontoons are really the best way to go.

Jasper Ribbers:
Okay, so these are boats that you're not gonna sleep overnight on, you rent

Jimmy Sweitzer:
No,

Jasper Ribbers:
them for the day.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
no. So all right, let me give you a little background. So we, like I said, we're into lakefront properties. We were trying to figure out a way to ultimately bring in some extra revenue, bring in more nightly stays, bring in longer stays. And so I started researching and looking into what are people looking for? And there's a handful of things. I'll share them with you real quick. People love like fire pits, you know, at the lake house. People love game rooms, for sure. And then the other two categories are in the boat kind of category. One is kayaks. So you have a kayak or canoe. You're certainly not renting that out to your guest. You're just allowing them to use it as one of the amenities. But to actually increase revenue, we found a few listings that were actually renting a boat on the property and it was an additional fee on top of what you pay. And once we saw that, we said, oh, that's exactly the kind of business that we want to get into to increase our revenue. And what we found is that people will book our place because there's a boat, whether they use the boat or not. And I found that to be an interesting thing. It just gets you more exposure and provides more amenities that you're able to show on Airbnb and on your own site.

Jasper Ribbers:
Got it. So, okay. So the boats are really like an addition to the properties. It's not

Jimmy Sweitzer:
That's

Jasper Ribbers:
like

Jimmy Sweitzer:
correct.

Jasper Ribbers:
you're just renting the boat. Okay. Got it.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
No,

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
and we don't rent our boat to anyone but our guests. So

Jasper Ribbers:
Right, yeah.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
the guests have exclusive rights to it and have the option to rent it or not. What we found is about two out of every three reservations during the summertime, so during our peak season, people want the boat. And so it's provided a great little revenue stream for us. We actually got the boats in May and June of last year. And each boat that we brought on brought us in $10,000 actually, which is awesome. And so that was a great add to the bottom line.

Jasper Ribbers:
Right. And then would you want to share how much did you pay for the boat?

Jimmy Sweitzer:
Sure, yeah. So the boats that we basically purchased, we had one for about $20,000 and

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
another for $15,000. The one for $15,000 is a little older, if you will. But either way, it's going to pay itself off in really no time. And that's exciting for us to have a really good positive cash flow.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, well, that's an amazing investment. If you've already made $10,000 on that's each boat

Jimmy Sweitzer:
on each boat and that was only

Jasper Ribbers:
on each

Jimmy Sweitzer:
in

Jasper Ribbers:
boat.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
a about a four or five month kind of span.

Jasper Ribbers:
Wow.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
So really, so really the boat season for, for what, so we're in, you know, my boats are in North Carolina. I live in South Carolina. You know, we get a pretty good summertime, you know, kind of range. So depending on where you are, obviously listening to this call, this may not make full sense, but our, our season is April until all the way through September. So we're only out a handful of months and so we've already had people rent, rent the boat. for this past month. And so that gives you an idea of kind of this season, at least kind of in the East Coast, North and South Carolina areas.

Jasper Ribbers:
And then your chart, so this is an additional chart, right? You chart that through Airbnb, like through the resolution center, you just ask for the additional money or do people pay in a different way?

Jimmy Sweitzer:
We've had people pay in a variety of ways. We prefer it to go through the resolution center because simply there's no cost to us to do so. You just include it as extra services and most people are able to do that. Sometimes that doesn't work. We've been able to send Venmo links through Airbnb and get paid that way. And we've had a couple people who have wanted to meet up and actually pay cash in person, but that's a very rare kind of situation.

Jasper Ribbers:
Do you guys need to sign some sort of like contract or something that if something bad happens on the boat, that's not your responsibility or

Jimmy Sweitzer:
Absolutely.

Jasper Ribbers:
liability?

Jimmy Sweitzer:
So let me kind of give you a little insight into the process. You know, so once we, once we got the boat, we started looking into what we needed. First and foremost, if this is a route that you want to go, absolutely look at local ordinances, regulations. There's a lot that surrounds different lakes. And so the things that I share may not apply to you. So of course, do your due diligence. You know, past that, we, we established a process where we were able to actually rent the boats out which is very appealing to us. We had to really think through what that process was. Very simply, we'd send the invoice through Airbnb. That was a pretty easy kind of thing to do. And there's a lot of training out there of how you can actually send money on Airbnb. And that worked, or we had to get Venmo or even meet people in person for cash. But we also had to have a waiver. And prior to even having the waiver, we had to make sure that we had a commercial boater's insurance on the boat. So, you know, if you, Jasper, you came to one of our properties and you said, hey, I want to rent the boat, and you have no boating experience, this insurance allows for you, as long as you have a driver's license, to rent the boat. And so, it was important to get that insurance in place right out of the gate. What we required was a bareback designation. So what that simply means is that it does not require a captain. So if you have a captain's license, that's awesome, but is not needed to rent one of our boats. So we had to get insurance in place. Once we had that, they provided a waiver for us that we had to essentially use. We tailored a little bit to our boats. But overall, we needed to make sure that people are signing the waiver. And so we just use… I'm trying to think of the website. It's just like waiver.com or something like that for the waiver. We were able to upload the waiver that was required by insurance and everyone that rides on the boat, not only the driver, has to sign it. So there's a little bit of steps that go into getting it out there. Once we see that those two pieces have been taken care of, we basically have a smart lock inside of our house with a completely different code that you would never guess or anything of that nature with the boat key in it. And so that kind of gets you started on the process. When you check back in, so you're done for the day, you have to fill the boat back up with gas. And you take a picture of the fuel gauge and a picture of the boat being clean, so there's not a bunch of trash and stuff like that on it, to essentially you send that to us, and then we approve and say, OK, thank you so much for returning the boat. And that's kind of your A to Z kind of process. and then they just put the key back in the smart lock and good to go.

Jasper Ribbers:
How do you promote this to your guests? Is this something that's part of your listing or is it something that you introduce once the guests have arrived?

Jimmy Sweitzer:
I was very surprised to find when we were researching, I'm a big research guy Jasper, I don't know if you knew that or not, but I like digging into the data and seeing, hey, what does the data show? And so I basically pulled up all the lakefront properties on say Lake Norman, that's a big lake here in North Carolina. And I was trying to figure out how I could differentiate myself from anybody who's maybe doing this. What I found is that there's not that many people who even have like boat rental in the title. It kind of blew my mind. because you can essentially download all of the lakefront properties and just kind of search and find certain keywords. We only found like three. And I knew that that wasn't the case because we had already looked at a bunch of listings that had that in the description but not in the title. And it's just a big miss. You're talking about a number one amenity that people want when they come to the lake. So making sure that you have it in the title is super important.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, that makes a little sense. Yeah. Yeah, because that's a super fun amenity to have, right? Who doesn't like being on a boat? You know, there's

Jimmy Sweitzer:
Exactly.

Jasper Ribbers:
even a song about it, like, I'm on a boat. You could probably rap it.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
Yeah, and I'll save your listeners that one. So I usually have a little more a little more prep time on anything like that But you're absolutely right, you know people love the boat people you know Sometimes people bring their own boat and that doesn't offend us. That's fine We always have dock space for somebody else's boat but anybody who is wanting to rent a boat it's right there and The kind of clientele that we appeal to and the guests that we have stay they want convenience Having a boat sitting right at the dock when you when you drive up and you know You're looking at every you look at the whole house and you're saying oh, this is the kitchen and it's nice But then you immediately go outside and you see the dock and there's the boat that you get to rent and you don't have To worry about it being delivered. You don't have to worry about you know it not getting one because we you know save it for you It's it's a fantastic amenity people love it and we've gotten raving reviews just because we had the boat And people just saw that they eat it up It's definitely something people want to do when they come to Lake House.

Jasper Ribbers:
Are people allowed to bring drinks on the boat and it's like a speaker and turn it into a little bit of a party?

Jimmy Sweitzer:
Yeah, I mean, we don't encourage that, just like, you know, we don't encourage parties at the house, but we know that kind of stuff happens and we're totally fine with something like that. You know, again, they have to follow local regulations. And so, for an example, this is kind of a crazy example. Again, do not quote me on this for any other state, but you are allowed to actually be drinking a beer and driving the boat at the same time as long as you are below, you know, a.08 level, which is a very interesting rule. So like I said, look at your local rules and regulations, but that's OK. And that's legally allowed to happen in North Carolina. And so yeah, we want people to have a good time. They are responsible for, just like anything, if they're staying at the house, the legal ramifications of anything that they do.

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
And the waiver is very clear about that. So it's covering our butts as far as that goes.

Jasper Ribbers:
Right. If you had any like interesting experiences so far with the boat rental, like maybe somebody fell in the water or like got eaten by a big fish or.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
uh… you know it's nice no tales of like jona are anything like that but uh… no overall we we've had uh… we've had just success with it uh… we we've had uh… very few kind of problems uh… i i i'm trying to think of the only only real problem we had was uh… we had a float that we include with the boat uh… so it's like a tube that you can like you know pull some people around and have some fun with uh… and that uh… that popped you know and so did that We were able to replace the float. They had a multiple day rental and so we were able to replace the float the next day and it was fine. We really haven't had too many problems. I know that you certainly can and this is something that definitely increases your liability. There's no doubt about that. But overall, you just want to make sure that you have all those things in place to where you're really not in trouble if things do happen. And we want it to be as safe as possible. A perfect example is you got to include a number of life jackets, one per passenger. We make sure that there is an additional two or three regardless. And so we take the safety precautions very seriously. And I would encourage you if you go this route that this is a whole other animal. It is not a house. It is something that's motorized. It's something that you can get hurt on. But as long as you have the right rules and regulations in place. you provide over and above what is the minimum on safety, then you should be set.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah. Is there anything else that people should know if they want to start doing something similar?

Jimmy Sweitzer:
Yeah, I'm looking at my notes here. I think one area that I haven't really covered is actually finding a boat.

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
And so, how do you go about finding a good boat? There's a couple ways of doing that. And we actually have, we've used all three of these. So I'll share these with your listeners here. You can obviously buy your own boat. Or you already have a boat. That's the easiest way to go. We have purchased two of our boats. And you know, it's It's basically one is in my name, one's in my business partner's name, and we use them for business completely. That's an option. Where do you go to find such a thing? Well, it can certainly be a neighbor or a friend and family, just like you'd find anything else. But I actually found both of our boats on Facebook Marketplace. As crazy as Facebook Marketplace can be on trying to sell or buy things sometimes. It really was a great source for us to hone in on what we were looking for and essentially go and get two boats. One is a 2021, so a little more new, and the other is a 2007. And so there's a little due diligence that we had to do there as far as making sure that the older boat was good to go and had been kept up on maintenance and things like that. But that's certainly one option. Second option is to borrow or rent someone's boat. We have a property we just brought on board that he has a boat, but it's not in our name. So we're managing the property and we're basically going to be using his boat. And you're like, well, how can that work? Because you need this insurance and things like that. Well, we use like what you talked about earlier, we use Boat Setter as the tool to book the boat. So it's not for anybody but the guests. And you're able to like basically block off the calendar and then just, you know. open up the calendar for that one day or for the two days that your guest wants to have it. So that's an option. And then the third option is to partner up with someone, a boat company on the lake. While you certainly will not make as much money doing it this way, because there's a huge chunk that they take, there's a lot of people that want to partner up that have a smaller boat company. Maybe they have three or four boats and they need the traffic. And so you can find somebody who has boats and you can get a little cut from the different rentals. So that's another thing that we do as well. So

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
we actually just partnered up with a jet ski company because we don't do any jet skis. The liability on jet skis is crazy. Y'all don't even look into it. It is, you don't wanna go that route. But we partnered up with a jet ski company that for every rental that we get, we actually get 10% of the revenue that comes in. So that

Jasper Ribbers:
Right.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
can be another revenue stream. And those are really

Jasper Ribbers:
Right.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
the three ways of, you know, kind of getting a vote for your guests and making some more money.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you walking us through that. And, you know, one thing that comes to my mind is like, I always feel like boats are typically being underused, right? For the amount of time that a boat lies on the water and no one's using it versus the amount of time that people are actually using it. I know even for cars, it's pretty crazy. I just rented, I've been renting cars here on Turo. You know,

Jimmy Sweitzer:
Okay.

Jasper Ribbers:
cause I just got to the US and one thing I realized, is we need a car. This is a country where you kind of need a car unless you live like maybe

Jimmy Sweitzer:
That's

Jasper Ribbers:
downtown

Jimmy Sweitzer:
very

Jasper Ribbers:
somewhere.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
true.

Jasper Ribbers:
But yeah, we're like, you know, we're I think it's like three miles to two or three miles to the nearest supermarket. And so I'm like, okay, I could do with a bike, definitely. But you know, at the end of the day, like to drive to the office where Eric is like, I'm going to need a car. So I've been renting. these cars on Turo and I noticed like there's people that have entire businesses on Turo, like literally like this guy that I rented a car from has like, you know, 15 or 20 cars or something on Turo. So it's, you know, it's definitely interesting that like these, these cars and boats, they're so underused. And I think it's awesome to what you're doing of like, Hey, let's, you know, let's find a creative way to. to use the boat and you know, it sounds like it's been a really good investment on your end as well.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
Yeah, it really has. I mean, I kind of shared the numbers with you. We bought one boat for about $20,000. We did about $10,000 in revenue. All in all, with the boat payment and the insurance, we're looking at about $300 to $400 a month. So that comes out every year. But you're able to pay it off in just a very short amount of time where it becomes a real asset to the company. And what's cool is while we are talking about boats, some other things have come to mind that you could rent out. And I don't know the regulations on this kind of stuff, but like an ATV or even electric bike or things like that where about any property could have an extra revenue stream with something that is motorized. And so, kind of get the gears turned in on, all right, well, I have this kind of property, this would be a cool vehicle or whatever to have with it. And once you start thinking that way, then you can look into what you need to make it happen. But I would encourage anybody who has a lake house, for sure, to look into the boat side, no doubt about it.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, and I think also, you know, the additional revenue streams, especially in the markets where we're seeing some, you know, saturation gone on, where the supply has increased a lot over the last few years. Like those are sort of the ways that you can still increase your revenue, right? If the ADR is under pressure a little bit. So I think it's good to kind of put that seed in people's mind of like, hey, you know. There are other ways to make more revenue than by increasing occupancy and just ADR, just really being creative of what can I invest in that's going to give me a really high return of investment.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
That's really awesome that you said that and something that I failed to say up until this point, you just reminded me, is not only did we get the boat revenue, I mean that's an obvious bottom line kind of figure, it just adds to the bottom line. It's a great revenue source. But we were able to increase our nightly rate by 10 to 15%. So we were able to say, okay, we now have this amenity, whether people use it or not, and I've said this already. they're still like, okay, this is nice. This is something that we have the option to do. And it also increased the number of stays that we've gotten because people are coming to the lake to have a boat. And when you have one there, you differentiate yourself from your competition hands down.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, so it's really like a double whammy. It increases the revenue on the house, and then also you have that additional revenue stream as well. That's pretty awesome. That's pretty awesome, man.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
Yeah, absolutely.

Jasper Ribbers:
Sweet. Awesome, man. Well, I really appreciate you sharing all this. It was definitely a pleasure to have you in the Legends X program. Really awesome to see your rep videos. And I'm going to have to find a way to share those because everyone's listening now thinking, hey, I want to see that video. Maybe we'll link it up in the show notes on getpaidforyourpad.com

Jimmy Sweitzer:
Yeah, go for it. So.

Jasper Ribbers:
if you don't mind it.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
No, of course not. Of course not. And I'll leave your listeners with this. It's just, you know, think outside the box. You know, we don't have to get into the same rhythm of doing the exact same thing as our neighbors. Literally. In some, you know, situations where you are competing against your neighbor. So I'd encourage you guys to think, alright, what are some other things that I can provide or do that are different? And it doesn't even have to be for an additional revenue stream. It just could be, you know, something… completely unique to your property. And we have found that having a boat is pretty unique on the lake, surprisingly enough. And we're doing it in the way that makes sense and that we're following all the rules and regulations that go behind it. But I would definitely encourage you guys to think outside the box, get rid of the box, and create new revenue streams with all kinds of different things that you can have at your property.

Jasper Ribbers:
I love it. Think outside of the box. Before we let you go, how can people find your listings? And if somebody maybe is listening and has a house or has a boat and they want to partner with you, what's the best way to find you?

Jimmy Sweitzer:
Absolutely, so we actually just launched a Facebook group per the mastermind legends X kind of instructions or you know things that you know set yourself apart in that way and So if you go to James Vander and that's with the V so J am es van der Com you will go to our Facebook page and that is specific to lakefront homeowners So we would love to talk with you about it. We have information in there updated on a daily about you know today we posted something about how to prepare for Memorial Day, which is a huge you know holiday on the lake and it's really been a great community that people have come together to Give tips and tricks and different things like what I'm sharing today. So definitely check that out. It's open to the public You're happy to join and we would love to have you a part of that community

Jasper Ribbers:
Awesome. So it's jamesvander.com.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
You got it.

Jasper Ribbers:
That's the best place. And if people want to stay at your listings, is there an easy way to find your listings or are they also in the Facebook group?

Jimmy Sweitzer:
We basically post them in the Facebook group. That would probably be the best source for now. We're working on getting a website up and running. That URL will eventually go to more of a permanent website. But either way, you'll be able to, from our website or directly, be able to join the Facebook group. Because I really feel that that would be the best way for us to connect and for you to ask questions and just pop in there with, hey, what do I need to do about this or that? Lake houses can be a different animal. Everybody thinks that their property is unique and that's very true. There are some nuances and things with lake houses that other owners don't deal with. And there's also opportunities that don't come about without having a lake house. So we'd love to have you part of that group for sure.

Jasper Ribbers:
Sweet. Well, Jimmy, thanks so much for jumping on here. It was awesome to have you on and learn some things. And yeah, keep crushing it.

Jimmy Sweitzer:
I appreciate it. Jasper, thanks for having me and have a great day.

Jasper Ribbers:
You too.