Should You Buy a Hot Tub or Sauna for Airbnb?

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Hey, what's up guys, it's James here. And in today's video, we're going to be discussing whether or not you should buy a hot tub or sauna for your Airbnb, your short term rental property. This is probably one of the most common amenities that I get asked about. And people always ask me, you know, is it worth the money? Is it worth investing into? And so this video is going to answer that question. Now, if you are interested in investing in short term rental properties, or if you're interested in managing other people's properties for short term rental, there are free trainings linked in the description down below for specifically how to do that. Now, if you are in the investor side of things, we have a free training that outlines exactly how we invest successfully in short term rental properties, and are able to make incredible cash flow, some of our properties, individual properties, even cash flowing 7080 $90,000 per year. So if you're interested in that, I highly recommend you check out the link in the description down below. And also, when you do that, you're gonna get access to our spreadsheet or analysis spreadsheet completely free. So you can start actually analyzing deals and figure out which ones make the most sense for you. Again, all that is free. And all of that is linked in the description down below. So that being said, let's start discussing whether or not a hot tub or a sauna makes sense for your Airbnb. Now, to start with, the main thing that you want to ask yourself is who is your ideal guest for the property? And would they be interested in that amenity? So I mean, obviously, there's a logistical question as well to ask of can you actually even fit a hot tub or sauna at your Airbnb? But I assume that if you're watching this video, you obviously know that that you can't be going and shoving a, you know, a hot tub into a condo. Now you might be able to put a small little sauna inside of a condo, for example. But ultimately, what that comes down to is you really need to ask yourself, Who is your ideal guest? And would they actually care about this amenity. So, for example, if you have a business travel listing, then more likely than not a sauna or hot tub isn't going to be a really great investment. Because people that are traveling for business are often busy, they're probably not going to spend the time to use it. Maybe you could argue that a small individual sauna like an infrared sauna would be okay. Because it'd be something they could use to kind of relax after a long day of work, but probably not going to give you a really strong ROI. And certainly not going to give you an ROI to go and invest, you know, 567 $1,000 into a larger one or into a hot tub. Now, assuming that you're welcoming, you know, your average guests or your ideal guest is a group of friends or as a family. And they're typically traveling for a bit of a vacation, and you're not in an incredibly hot market, then a hot tub or a sauna can make a lot of sense. Obviously the answer to the question of you know, would this be something that your ideal guests would want would be a yes. Now the other question you want to ask yourself is, are you in a market with winter, right, because if you're in a market that has a winter time, now, you might be in an area like Arizona, where it's just incredibly hot all the time? Well, a double or a sauna is probably not going to make a lot of sense there. But you also might be in an area that's more temperate, where it's not too crazy, we don't actually get a proper winter. And you're probably not going to get a really great ROI on getting a hot tub or sauna there. Whereas if you're in a market that is quite seasonal, and there is a defined winter period, then having a hot tub or a sauna is really going to be helpful. So for example, the properties that I've been purchasing are in Canada, they're north of Toronto, and they're in an area where we get, you know, pretty substantial winter, we get lots of snow. And so in that month of the year and not several months of the year, really it's about six month period where we got winter there in that period of the year, that's our downtime. And so having a hot tub or a sauna really helps to even out the performance of the property through the winter, because it gives people a reason to go there in the wintertime. Now in other areas where you've got like let's say for example, a ski resort having a hot tub or a sauna is going to make your property more desirable in that high season. Because winter can sometimes be high season for areas that have a great reason people to go there like a ski resort. And so having that extra amenity is going to give you a competitive advantage and likely going to be worth your while. And so what I recommend is that you really look to make your your investment in that amenity proportionate, proportional to the revenue that you can bring in in the property. So if you have a smaller property, again, it's probably not going to make as much sense because yes, it might give you a competitive advantage. Yes, you might be able to charge a little bit more. But by charging an extra 10% on $100 a night, it's only $10 extra night. Whereas if you have a property that rents for 500 to $1,000 a night that's on a might get you an extra 10% And that's 50 to $100 a night, it's gonna be way quicker and easier to get a return on your investment of let's say four or $5,000 for a hot tub or for a sauna by getting an extra 50 to $100 a night, then it will be by trying to repay that investment with an extra $10 And each night so larger properties that cater to families. groups of friends and that are in an area with a wintertime, that's really going to be your sweet spot. Now in terms of which one you should get, I often recommend both just simply because if you're in a market that kind of meets that above criteria that I just mentioned that where one of those amenities is going to be a value add to your guests and is going to get you a good ROI than having both is probably going to be even more beneficial. And so that way people can choose whichever one is their preference and just give us a bit more of an attraction feature gives you another competitive advantage in the market. But if you have to choose just one as of the time of this recording of this video, I would personally go with a hot tub purely based on the fact that Airbnb allows guests to filter at the time of this recording for hot tubs, but not for saunas. Now, if it were the other way around, or if it weren't that way, if you couldn't filter for either, or you could filter for both definitely hands down, go with a sauna just because it's way easier to maintain a sauna. So it's gonna be a lot more hands off a lot less headache. But that being said, unfortunately, with Airbnb right now, the way their platform works is you can as a guest filter for properties that have a hot tub, but you cannot filter for properties that just have a sauna. As a result. People that are filtering for places with a hot tub, your property won't show up all you have as a sauna. And so you're just gonna get more bookings, you're gonna get more viewings on your listing, if you do have that amenity checked off that you've got a hot tub out the property, so I would recommend it. And for hot tubs specifically, I always recommend buying secondhand. Now I know some people are going to disagree with that. And I personally have just found that buying secondhand hot tubs. Hot tubs are a lot like cars where they lose a lot of their value once they get purchased by someone once they've just even been a month or two old. And so you can get a really really great deal. Either way a hot tub is going to cost some money to maintain I haven't had issues with reliability when it comes to buying used hot tubs as long as you know what to look for. And you rely on someone who has experienced you trust with dealing with these things. Make sure you're buying a good unit that has been well taken care of by the previous owner. And I've been purchased personally purchasing in the four to $5,000 range. And that's in Canadian dollars. So the equivalent about a $3,000. US investment. Now for saunas, I personally would love to buy them secondhand, but in the market that we're in right now, you just can't there's just nothing available. As far as outdoor barrel saunas, those are the ones that I really like getting for some of our larger properties. The reason I like those over a more like a smaller, much less expensive infrared sauna that you can even put indoors is simply because with our larger units, we want to make sure that we have the space in the unit to actually accommodate a bunch of the guests, if not all of the guests that are staying there at the property. And so we want to have a sauna that can comfortably accommodate 678 people and you just can't really get Infrared Saunas that do that very inexpensively. You can but they're large, and then you have to find somewhere inside to put them so I just really liked the barrel saunas for that reason, and I would highly recommend that you go with an electric barrel sauna. Just because woodfire is although I personally prefer it. I'm a big user of these things. While I love going in the hot tub love going the sauna, I have a sauna myself that I use every single day. And I absolutely love and ice woodfire sauna and I would actually prefer it to an electric one. But woodfire is obviously a lot of hassle, it's a lot of headache, you need to have the firewood there you're guessing know how to use it, they have to think much more ahead of time to get the sauna heated up and actually go out there. So to fire this thing the other thing so it's just gonna be way easier to have an electric one that they can just go press a button, turn it on, so I recommend not and then as far as the hot tub again, we'd like to get six seven seater hot tubs so that you can nice and comfortably fit pretty well everyone in the group or a big chunk of the group in there. So that's my recommendation. That's my thoughts at our most recent property that I just purchased in setup, we just got a hot tub and a sauna installed. We ended up getting the hot tub for I think it was $3,500 We got a pretty good deal on it. And a sauna we had to buy new and so that was $7,000 but in my opinion well worth the investment. So if you have any other questions or comments or thoughts about this, just let me know in the description down below if you're interested. Again, there's a link in the description down below for our free training on exactly how to invest successfully in short term rental properties. We'll walk you through everything step by step, so make sure you check that out as well. And as always, if you liked this video, please do give it a thumbs up it helps me out tremendously with YouTube's algorithm. And if you are new to the channel or you haven't yet subscribed, make sure you hit that subscribe button so you can stay up to date with the two new videos we post every single week. All that said Have a fantastic rest of your day and I'll see you in the next video.