Tips on How to Make Your Stay More Digital Nomad-Ready/Friendly
We often have property owners ask us about how they can renovate their current apartments to be more digital nomad ready.
Digital Nomads of course are a great year-round traveller market.
First – A Few Things You Need to Know About Digital Nomads
These people are professionals that are normally working for themselves or remotely for a big corporation.
They travel to destinations that they want to explore more and live like a local, not like a tourist.
They are interested in the culture and adding value to the community while they are there. They are conscious of the environment and often stay in a new country for 1- 3 months. If your country has a Digital Nomad visa they might stay longer. (These visas are really ‘expat’ visas, so the users aren’t always ‘travellers’.
BLOG SIMILAR TOPICS: “The New Nomad” & 20+ sub-niches of nomads
If you would like to make your apartment/s Digital Nomad ready to attract monthly extended stay guests (one week to one month) with Nomad Stays, here are a few ideas to get you started.
Tips
1. WORK DESK & OFFICE CHAIR
Have a desk and good office chair in the room.
After all digital nomads often spend hours sitting and working on their computers so a good, comfy chair is expected.
2. POWERPOINTS – MULTIPLE AND NEAR DESKS
Having PowerPoints near the desks makes sense when people are working for hours each day.
You can’t really expect them to work from the bathroom if this is your only full spec PowerPoint for instance. Did you compensate with an extension cord and power box? A Power cube is good as it has USB power outlets for devices like phones, cameras, tablets etc.
3. LARGE MONITOR
Have you thought about installing a large monitor in your work areas? Nomads will often plug in their laptops to use a larger screen or a second screen while they work.
Second monitors allow them to display more of their work on screens.
3. HIGH SPEED WI-FI
Having excellent Wi-Fi is a big winner for digital nomads.
Luckily, this is quite inexpensive in many countries these days.
50 Mbps both upload and download speed that is consistent for all users in your property should be a good guide for 2022.
You may need to buy ‘business grade’ internet connections and avoid ‘consumer’ grade services. Consumer grade services often share the same line between hundreds of users which means when kids come home from school or everyone is watching Netflix the overall performance and speed drops right away. Business grade connections don’t often have as much congestion.
4. WASHING MACHINES
Nomads are living almost full time on the road and need to do washing like you and I.
Often this isn’t really that important to ‘leisure’ or ‘vacation’ clients who book for a few days or a week. But it is vitally important for digital nomads.
5. KITCHENS
Of course, you don’t eat out every day of the week when at home, so you shouldn’t expect digital nomads to eat out every day too.
They want to cook their own meals.
Nomads want kitchens, cooktops, ovens and even a dishwasher is highly regarded to make their domestic lives easier.
5. KETTLES, FRYING PANS, BAKING DISHES …
Have you put a kettle in for the tea drinkers in the world? Have you put a coffee plunger in? Is there a corkscrew to open bottles of wine? Lifestyle travellers highly regard these little kitchen and cooking utensils.
How about chopsticks, saucepans and fry pans? Baking dishes for when someone wants to bake a cake.
Think about what’s inside your own kitchen and think about how a global traveller that lives for a while in a new country migh need.
6. Supermarket Access
How close is the nearest supermarket? Is it talking distance?
Most nomads don’t have their own transport so will use public transport when they need to. Using public transport for supermarkets several times a week, however, becomes a real chore and not that attractive to nomads.
7. Public Transport
Have you shared the closest airport on your Stay listing? How many buses a day come past your property? How do you buy a ticket?
Access to public transport is pretty major for many nomads.
8. COWORKING SPACES
Have you places to recommend working from like co-working spaces?
If you have a co-working space nearby make yourself known to them. Also, recommend they list their co-working space with us. Add it as a package deal.
9. AFFORDABLE
Make your stay affordable and competitive in the price range.
If there’s anything that will keep nomads away, then it’s high prices.
Remember that nomads think of themselves like every day renters.
They don’t want to feel ripped off or taken advantage of.
Many nomads have mortgages, business costs, and travel full time so don’t expect to pay peak prices every month of the year. They have a different mentality to a leisure tourist who uses their scarce holiday period as a change to live it up with splurge spending.
That’s why you will find them in off-the-beaten-track places. It’s better to have a customer than not a customer because you are not competitive and overpriced.
OVERFLOW
7. Always have an overflow option. Build a relationship with other Stays around your area so that they send business to you and you to them, if the event may occur that you are double booked.
CONNECT
8. If you are listed with other platforms such as Airbnb or booking ensure that you send us your chosen iCal so that you don’t have this overflow issue and your bookings are updated automatically every few hours. It’s a good idea to diversify your portfolio with long and short Stay/term clients especially if you have more than one apartment.
LOUNGE
9. Have a couch that turns into a bed so that you can accommodate one or two other people. (which you can charge $10-20 a night per person.
HOSTESTY IS THE BEST POLICY
10. Hostesty is the best policy. Don’t have to surprise with extra costs with the guest arrives. If you choose to be pet-friendly ensure that the price is inclusive (no extra charges when they arrive) This will not be tolerated and the guest with not want to return or recommend your stay.
Other Services You Can Offer
Other services you might consider is to make extra money or just help them connect to the local community are these:
Laundry service
Cleaning Service
Deliver bread
Offer local markets tour
Hiking /Biking/ Adventure tours
Local Community Events
Connect them with the local coworking spaces.
Airport pickup/ Drop off Transport
Translation service
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