Contents
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ROCK YOUR RENTAL
Style, Design, and Marketing Tips to Boost Your Bookings
Joanne and Rosanne Palmisano
This book is for Mom and Dad.
Thanks for teaching us the joy of spontaneous travel,
from Sunday drives on a country road to weekend
trips to the beach. We remember it all.
Copyright 2020 by Joanne Palmisano and Rosanne Palmisano
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, The Countryman Press, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact W. W. Norton Special Sales at specialsales@wwnorton.com or 800-233-4830
COVER DESIGN: Jesse Pakenham, Folk House Design
COVER PHOTOGRAPHS: Back cover; front cover: bottom middle, top left, middle right: Lindsay Selin Photography
Front cover: top middle: Susan Teare; middle left: Gabrielle Booth; bottom right: Joanne and Rosanne Palmisano; bottom left: Molly and Victoria Co.; top right: Orchard Cove Photography
Book design by Jesse Pakenham, Folk House Design
Production manager: Devon Zahn
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
The Countryman Press
www.countrymanpress.com
A division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
www.wwnorton.com
978-1-68268-498-6 (pbk.)
978-1-68268-499-3 (ebk.)
Before
After
Everyone loves before-and-afters, so we filled the book with them! Enjoy!
Contents
Chapter 1
Who Are Your Guests? Why Are You Redesigning?
Chapter 2
Design Matters
Chapter 3
Design Is Marketing
Chapter 4
More Info and Resources
Damn, look how cute we are! Besides being identical twins, things we have in common include our love for our mothers spaghetti sauce, exceptional work ethics, career success, and a passion for what we do. From a young age we worked hard, whether it was washing dishes, selling Christmas trees, sorting tomatoes, or picking up golf balls. Today, in our careers as successful entrepreneur and global executives, we still believe that a customers positive experience is at the heart of any thriving business.
Before we get started on sharing our professional business and design experiences with you, let us introduce ourselves. Yes, its cool that we are identical twins. And we travel a lot. But what is even cooler is what our experience as designers, project managers, marketers, and travelers has taught us about the competitive short-term vacation rental market. In this book, weve combined our talents to bring you unique and budget-friendly design and marketing ideas that can help you stand out as a property owner. These ideas are also relevant if you own or manage a boutique hospitality business, such as a bed-and-breakfast, inn, or motel.
Our design work and Joannes design books have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Dwell, Washington Post, USA Today, Lonny, Apartment Therapy, Better Homes & Gardens, Country Living, Outside, Old House Journal, PopSugar, Flea Market Style, Cottage Country, House Crashers, DIY Network, and HGTV just to name a few.
Joanne Palmisano
Joanne is an award-winning interior designer. She specializes in rental properties, inns, motels, boutique hotels, and restaurants that want a unique and personal look. She is the author of three internationally acclaimed design books, Salvage Secrets, Salvage Secrets Design & Dcor, and Styling with Salvage, a contributing designer for DIY Network, and a stylist for hospitality and lifestyle brands and magazines. She owns and has owned numerous rental properties, from long term to short term.
Joanne started in hospitality after college as a tour leader traveling from inn to inn throughout New England. She then went into the marketing and customer service field for over 15 years, including an executive director role at the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Vermont, and the creator of the Vermont Wedding Resource Guide, working with numerous boutique hotels and inns, before her passion for design became her career.
Today, she combines her hospitality experience and rental ownership knowledge to create personality-filled designs that help increase demand and profits. For the past 10 years, Joanne has traveled across the country speaking about designing with recycled, salvaged, and vintage material and the importance of adding character to our homes and businesses.
Joanne is an avid traveler, and she especially loves to travel when her twin sister, Rosanne, plans the entire trip and she just goes along for the ride (but dont tell Rosanne that).
Rosanne Palmisano
Rosanne has been a brand and marketing strategist professional for over 20 years for global companies that everyone knows and loves, including Pearl Izumi, The North Face, Nike, The Gap, Icebreaker, and Pact Apparel. She has worn many hats throughout her career, from global events manager to international brand manager to CEO/CMO.
Today, she runs Little Giants Collaborative, a consulting firm that helps companies with brand, go-to-market, digital, and marketing strategies. She has a passion for home renovation and has been the general contractor for most of her own projects as well as renovating and designing several other homes. Her homes have appeared in national magazines, which has led many friends (and developers) to ask for her design help. Over the last few years, Rosanne has designed at least half a dozen vacation rental properties in Sonoma County, California.
Rosanne is a United Airlines million miler, and she has been fortunate enough to live and travel around the world for her career. Her lodging experiences have varied dramatically, from a middle-of-nowhere small farm hotel in India to a sheeps sheering shed (say that 10 times fast) in New Zealand to the extraordinary country residence Hotel Villa Cipriani in Asolo, Italy, to a tiny cabin in a 36-foot sailboat, and on and on and on. Rosanne has an excellent understanding of customers expectations based on her personal and professional experience. She is a big believer in reading and writing reviews!