When is it time to change your holiday let manager?

Changing the company looking after your holiday home is rarely a decision made overnight.

In most cases, there has been a gradual build up of small frustrations. Perhaps communication has become slower. Standards have slipped. Revenue feels stagnant. Maintenance is always dealt with after something goes wrong rather than before it does. Or perhaps nothing is obviously wrong, but you have the nagging feeling that the property could simply be performing better.

For owners who have spent a great deal of time and money creating a good house, that feeling matters.

A holiday let manager is not simply there to answer guest messages and organise a cleaner. At its best, the relationship should feel much closer to having someone actively representing your interests on the ground.

That means protecting the property, understanding the market, challenging pricing when necessary, spotting defects early, keeping housekeeping standards high and continuously asking whether the guest experience can be improved.

When that stops happening, it is reasonable to question whether the relationship is still right.

Revenue is important, but occupancy alone tells you very little

One of the easiest traps for an owner is to look at a busy calendar and assume the property must be performing well.

A full diary can sometimes hide weak pricing.

If Saturday nights in August are selling months in advance, that might be a sign of exceptional demand. It might equally mean they were simply too cheap.

Equally, an obsession with nightly rate can lead to a beautiful property sitting unnecessarily empty.

Good revenue management sits somewhere between the two. Rates should move with demand, seasonality, events, booking pace and the behaviour of comparable properties.

We would therefore look beyond occupancy and ask more useful questions.

How has annual revenue changed? What is the average achieved nightly rate? Are the strongest dates being sold too early? Has shoulder season improved? Is the property positioned against the right competition?

A manager should be able to have that conversation with you.

Look at what is happening inside the property too

Financial performance is only one part of the equation.

Holiday homes experience an unusually hard life. Hundreds of people use the furniture, mattresses, appliances, bathrooms, crockery and outdoor spaces each year. Small maintenance issues quickly become guest complaints if nobody is actively looking for them.

A loose handle, tired silicone joint or dripping tap might sound insignificant, but collectively these details influence reviews and ultimately the property's ability to command a premium.

This is one of the reasons we believe physical property inspections matter.

There is only so much that can be understood from a laptop.

If you continually find defects yourself when visiting the property, particularly things that should have been obvious to somebody regularly on site, it may be worth asking how actively the property is being managed.

Reviews often tell the story before owners realise it

A property rarely goes from excellent reviews to poor ones overnight.

The warning signs usually arrive gradually.

A guest mentions dust in one review. Another comments that a mattress is uncomfortable. Somebody else notes that the heating was difficult to operate.

Individually, these can be dismissed as isolated comments. Repeated over several months, they become operational information.

A good management company should be looking for those patterns.

Reviews are not simply a score to celebrate when they are good. They are one of the most useful pieces of management data available.

Changing manager is usually less complicated than owners fear

One reason owners stay in an unsatisfactory relationship for too long is the perceived difficulty of moving.

What happens to existing bookings? What about Airbnb reviews? Who tells the cleaner? How are keys transferred? What happens to the photography?

The answer depends on how the property has been set up, but a good incoming manager should be able to create a clear handover plan.

Typically this means establishing ownership of listings and photography, reviewing future reservations, transferring operational information, obtaining licensing and compliance documentation, meeting housekeeping and maintenance teams and physically inspecting the property.

We would also want to understand the history.

What repeatedly goes wrong? Which trades know the house? Where are the water shut offs? Which appliances have recently been replaced? What do guests consistently love?

A good handover should capture the knowledge that has accumulated around the property, not simply collect a set of keys.

Should you keep the existing team?

Not everything needs to change.

If the housekeeper is excellent, we would normally see that relationship as an asset rather than something to replace for the sake of it. The same applies to good gardeners, tradespeople and local suppliers.

The objective should be to improve the operation, not unnecessarily dismantle it.

Sometimes the best management transition is almost invisible to the guest.

What should you expect from the next manager?

Before appointing somebody new, we would look beyond the management percentage and ask how the company actually operates.

Who will visit the property?

Who makes pricing decisions?

Who speaks to guests at 9pm on a Saturday?

Who checks housekeeping?

How many other properties does that person manage?

What happens when something breaks?

How regularly will performance be reviewed with you?

And perhaps most importantly, do they genuinely care whether this particular house succeeds?

There are many perfectly competent large operators in the short term letting market. There are also owners who want something more involved.

Neither model is inherently right or wrong, but they are very different propositions.

Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes is valuable

We have taken on properties where nothing was dramatically broken.

They simply needed somebody to look at them again.

Photography might need refreshing. Furniture may need editing rather than replacing. Pricing might need more active attention. Small pieces of guest experience may have been neglected over time.

A mature holiday let benefits from being periodically reconsidered.

The market moves. Guest expectations move. Competitors improve.

A property should too.

If you are considering changing management company, the first step does not necessarily need to be terminating your current agreement.

Start by understanding where the property is now, what you believe could be better and whether another operator can genuinely offer something different.

Fairgray manages a deliberately curated collection of holiday homes across Loch Lomond, Glasgow, Stirling and wider Central Scotland. If you are considering a change, we are happy to have an initial conversation about the property, its current performance and whether we believe it would be a good fit for the collection.