Post on 03-Sep-2020
WINTER 2015, Issue 1
Top tips for setting up and running
a QUALITY bike rental business
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Understanding your customer
Bike rental falls into several
categories and you can only
start to analyze your
opportunity when you
correctly identify it:
High end - expensive bikes to
discerning customers. You will
need to be located in some
world-class cycling territory,
or a significant attraction. This
is all about great customer
service and great product.
Deliver first
class experiences and they will
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tell their friends and come
back. You need to know your
bike kit and all about cycling
locally. Think quality.
High volume - lots of 'bums on seats'. Might be beach rental or a trail-centre. This is all about maximum efficiency. Get people on bikes and out the door having fun as efficiently as possible. Again choosing the right kit for the location is key. Think fun.
Touring - you might want to have a fleet and offer tours. Lots of people do this and it's really synergistic. You have a fleet that you use for two purposes - tours & events
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and simple renting. Hardest category - your bikes must be tour-ready; panniers, racks, even mudguards perhaps. You need access to a workforce to deliver those tours of course!
Family - perhaps in a National Park or holiday area. You need to have the whole range of kids bikes, trailers, and tag-alongs. Think safety and memorable family experiences.
Mixed - you might have a business that does some or all of the above - lucky you! Must be one hell of a location.
INSIDE THIS ISSUE Planning your fleet Marketing your business Delivering your service
BIKE RENTAL TIPS
This document is intended to give some tips for setting up and running a bike rental business.
BIKE RENTAL TIPS – setting up and running a rental business
YOUR FLEET Once you've identified your opportunity you have to decide what type of fleet you're going to need. Do some market research. Then do some more. This will help you identify not only what type of bike, but how many. Don't forget with most bike types you need different sizes of each model. So it can be an expensive mistake if you get the basics wrong. Start small and expand when you run out of capacity for your fleet. Your bikes need to sturdy; to withstand all the abuse that rental bikes invariably attract. Your bikes also need to be appealing to your target customers. No point having some heavy old cruisers at the bottom of a steep hill. But at the same time your bikes need to be affordable for your business. If things take off you’re going to want to buy lots of them, and keep buying them. So pick some bikes with a good price point. Get the quality / price mark right. Finally think about how your bikes can add to your customer experience, not simply be a means of transport for the rental duration. The right bike for your local cycling can make all the difference. Think of it as another opportunity to exceed your customer’s expectations. For more information about fleet choices please visit: http://rentalmanblog.com/
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It’s a subtle distinction, but
with bike rental you are selling
a service, not a product. So
think about how you're going to
deliver that service - end to
end, from enquiry to delivery of
service, to post-ride
maintenance. Get it right and
you have happy customers, get
it wrong and you have a lot of headaches.
Generally, this can go pear-shaped for one of two reasons.
Sometimes the concentration is
too much on the product, the
cool bikes etc. Other times
there is a total neglect of
understanding the customer is
a human being. Both are
extremes, but it does happen.
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The happy medium of course is
to concentrate on the whole
experience you are selling
from initial contact, to setting
up the bike, bike fitting and
bike return. The customer is
not buying the bike, but for that
1 hour or 1 week rental, your bike belongs to the customer.
To make them love the whole
experience you have to be
very organized . For each
rental you do you there are
about 7 or 8 steps you need to
go through, from a
conversation about availability,
pricing, to bike preparation,
security deposit, scheduling,
checking out, checking out and
servicing. You need to think
about the whole process so that
Remember it’s a service,
Not a product!
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you can ensure that you do
each one of those steps to the highest quality.
If you get properly organized
you can ensure that each
interaction with your customer
is pleasant, efficient and
rewarding. Put yourself in your
customer’s shoes; are they on
holiday, doing a triathlon, day
on the beach or ticking off a
life-long ambition for that long climb?
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If you get truly organized and
concentrate on the experience
the rest will follow, you will get
recommendations, you will
have happy staff, happy customers.
What it means to be truly
organized depends entirely on
your business. We typically
find that upwards of around 25
bikes dedicated software helps.
COMPUTER SYSTEM
Most people who rent bikes don’t start off thinking about the computer system. It’s true there is plenty to think about, and software may not seem the most pressing.
But why not plan to be successful? What will life look like if you grow to around 30 or 40 bikes, or more, all being rented for varying durations, some pre-booked, some walk-in? Suddenly you will have a hard job keeping on top of it all. Then there is online booking to consider, tracking everything, including issues. Even just dealing with change can be time consuming and stressful if you don’t have the right system.
Change happens a lot in rental, change of bikes, change of duration, change of dates.
Bike Rental Manager has been built from the ground up to solve the unique problems faced by bike rental operations.
Getting the right software in place from the start is smart.
MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS
Sure, your bike shop must look good, including quality, prominent, location-appropriate signage. But this is the 21st century so you also need to be thinking about inbound marketing. This means leveraging social media, websites, blogs and review sites to create a sense of community and draw customers into your business.
You need to start this from day one because it takes time.
BIKE RENTAL TIPS – setting up and RUNNING a rental business WINTER 2015, ISSUE 1
AND FINALLY
A word about online booking
It’s worth thinking about this thorny topic from the outset. More and more bike shops are offering online bike booking. Importantly more and more customers are expecting it. Some shops do it well; others do it very badly. We’re not just talking about how the booking page looks, we’re talking about how integrated your online booking is with your day-to-day operations.
Unless you choose a booking system that is tightly integrated with your back-office systems you will be setting yourself up for failure. Why? Because delivering bike rental is quite a complicated business, as discussed above. If you ‘sell’ bike rental online you are setting up an expectation with your customers. If you fail to meet those expectations you have created an unhappy experience.
All too often we come across shops who have tried to shoe-horn in a shopping basket solution, like Magento, shopify etc. But bike rental is not a product that can be shipped it’s a service that needs to be delivered, so you need to have the right tool for the job.
Unless you have an online booking system that queries your live availability and tightly integrates any bookings with offline bookings, and your workflow, we honestly believe you are better off without it.
http://rentalmanblog.com/2014/11/28/online-booking-is-a-pain/
www.bikerentalmanager.com