Tripling Revenue on the Colorado River, AZ

We tripled revenue from 50k Gross bookings in 2023 to 150k in 2024. We did this with a 20k budget for improvements. This property was the impetus for FIBI moving to a business model whereby we only manage properties that we either set up from scratch or that we are allotted a budget to make improvements before we manage it. Our systems and processes apply best to properties that are set up a specific way, and we need to make sure some minimum standards are met in order for us to be successful as managers.

 

Background:

 

This property is a 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom, 2 story, 4k square foot home on the Colorado river. Literally, on the water. It has its own boat dock and a killer deck overlooking the river from High Ground. It was being managed by a local real estate company that specialized in vacation rentals. Their approach was similar to what many other hosts do: take it however it’s given to you by the owner, take some pictures with your cellphone, post it on Airbnb and decide what your weekend and weeknight prices are. Set it and Forget it.

 

Because the design, amenities and operational tech was so far from what we were comfortable working with, we simply refused to manage this home unless we were given a budget to make improvements. To somewhat our surprise, the owner allotted us 20 thousand dollars. So we got to work.

Here’s what we did

 

Living Space – 

• More Color 
• New Rug 
• New Throw Pillars 
• new wall art
• turn on all the lights when taking pictures

Dining Room 

• Rug under the table 
• set the table 
• put a bar cart in the corner

Kitchen

• Coffee Station
• Crock Pot
• Cooking Utensils
• Flowers
• Cook Books
• Cookie Dish
• Tea Kettle
• The above is only what we put on the counters, which were bare. We also installed several items in the cabinets and drawers so that the kitchen was “Fully Stocked” by anyone’s standards.

Game Room 

There wasn’t one, so we removed a glass table and chair that was purely decorative and had little to no guest appeal – they don’t need decorations so much as they need things to do while in the property.

• Air Hockey
• Foosbal

Occupancy and Bed Count

• Single to Double Queen in every room we could

• Queen bed with Trundle when we couldn’t do double queens

• Better/nicer beds at a minimum, if we didn’t increase bed count in the bedroom

• And we turned a double twin room into a quadruple Full

• Also in case you dint notice, we did design color upgrades with the bedding across the board

• In total we increase Bed count from 6 to 11 and the occupancy limit from 10 to 18

Backyard

• More Seating
• More Fire
• More Shade
• More pictures of the Views
• Take the top off the Hot Tub for Photos

 

Summary

 

This property went from being barely occupied to the top performing home on the river in this sleepy little town called Bullhead, Arizona. To date, this remains one of FIBI’s crowning accomplishments.