bikerental

Top tips on how to keep your bike rental business profitable during slow season

When the weather is slowing down your bike rentals and you want to keep your profits up, you have plenty of options to choose from.

RENTALS

Could you rent other equipment? Depending on the location of your store you could rent other equipment to your customers:

Snow equipment like snow shoes, sledges/sleds, snow scooters, snow bikes or Fat bikes etc.
Beach equipment like umbrellas, beach chairs, beach cart, sunshade, beach toys etc.
Water activity rentals, like canoes, kayaks, SUPs etc.

Did you know you can list any equipment in BRM, not just bikes. Just add them to your inventory.

ACTIVITIES

Start a local activity. Super easy if you are close to a Trail, Park, Event or Attraction.

Bike tours. Sell tickets (and rent bikes). Either self guided tours or guided tours.
Start a local Race and rent bikes for the event.
Skill coaching or tours for (local) school children.
Skill coaching for road biking, mountain biking, advanced biking skills etc.
Corporate events, create an activity and rent your bikes at the same time.

You can easily add events, tours and packages in BRM to reduce administration for the activities.

OFFER BIKE SERVICE AND REPAIRS

According to google there is a hike in people searching for bike service and repair during the winter months so this is could be a great opportunity for your bike rentals to tap into this market and keep revenue coming in.

You can easily add service and repair online bookings in BRM to let customers book your services 24/7.

You could add a blog article to your website to get more business and help with google ranking for your website (read our Easy 4 SEO Tips). You could call it something like “When should I service my bike?” and we suggest using keywords like “bike service in (your location)” and “bike repair in (your location)”.

PROMOTIONS

Create effortlessly great looking email campaigns with integrated Mailchimp mailing. Tempt people out with discounts and packages when your business is slow. Use group discounts to rent more bikes at once and online discounts to reduce your booking admin. Set your discount codes in BRM.

MARKETING YOUR RENTALS

Get active on social media to increase awareness of your shop and increase your rentals.

Post often on social media
Ask your customers to share their great rental experience

Ask for reviews, read more in our blog.

GET READY FOR THE NEXT SEASON

Slow season is also a good time to get ready for the next season. When the bookings start growing again you will be ready. What should you think ahead of the next season?

Have you got the right type of bikes? Use BRM reports to check how much your bikes made profit and how many rental hours they put in. Do you need to sell old stock and buy new.
Maintain your bikes so they are all ready to go out of the door when the customer arrives. The BRM integrated maintenance will not only reduce your bike downtime and improve availability but also stores all your maintenance records and shows visually when next maintenance is due for each bike.
Check and update your accessories, like helmets, baby seats, pedals etc. Remember to add them to BRM online booking to make it easy for your customers to book them with your bikes and increase your profit.
Do you have online booking on your site? Now is a great time to start filling out your bookings calendar for the summer months with super user friendly online booking from BRM. Add online booking easily to your website now.
Keep the BRM online booking updated to get bookings for the next season and make sure your prices are in line with your competition.