Hot tubs are the must-have ingredient in the recipe to holiday booking success. According to self-catering specialists Hoseasons, a private hot tub is the number one searched for item on the website, accounting for more than 100,000 searches each month.
“Hot tubs really are the golden goose of the holiday market,” comments Jon Moxon, business development manager at Hoseasons.
“There’s been a meteoric rise in the popularity of hot tub holidays since our first unit went on sale at Faweather Grange, Yorkshire, in 1997. These days there are more than 2,500 lodges and luxury holiday homes with hot tubs across our portfolio, with unit numbers increasing by 21 per cent since 2013.”
A highly profitable addition to a holiday letting, there are however, potentially hazardous pitfalls to avoid before taking the hot tub plunge. Over the past ten years, a significant amount of holiday park operators and holiday let owners have purchased and operate what are in fact domestic hot tubs only designed for home, and not intended for commercial use.
Commercial spas, the type found at health clubs and spas, are generally much larger than the average portable spa with bigger and better filtration and sanitation systems along with other features that suit much heavier bather use. Chris Brady of Lincolnshire-based hot tub retailer 1 Stop Spas his advises customers to avoid the temptation of buying a cheap hot tub on the internet, which may not be robust enough to cater for the high demands of a holiday hot tub.
“We come across plenty of customers whose opinion when buying was ‘I only want a cheap spa because I’m only renting it out’. Like most electrical equipment, buying cheap isn’t always cost effective over a few years,” says Chris.
“Cheap spas can cost up to ten times as much to run, meaning higher overheads. They are often fitted with cheap components, therefore the reliability is not very good meaning in inconvenient downtime for you and rental customers.”
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