How to Build a Sauna Rental Website With Readymade Rental Software

Saunas are an essential part of Scandinavian culture with a wide range of health benefits, including increased blood circulation, body detoxification, stress management, pain relief, and improved cardiovascular health. However, in modern times, the application of saunas has also extended to leisure and recreational purposes. For this reason, the need for sauna rentals is witnessing a notable incline. 

In contrast to European countries, saunas are considered a luxury amenity in North American countries. Due to this, the rental prices for saunas are very high, ranging between $100-$500 per day. Adding to the prosperity of the business idea, currently, there are no market giants present in the sauna rental market. This opens a wide opportunity for new entrants to enter the market and establish their name. 

For capitalizing on the industry, let’s take a look at types of saunas, top markets, business models, revenue models, and the software technology required to build your platform.

Table Of Contents

Types of Rental Saunas

Rental saunas can be classified on both mobility and the mechanism used for heating. Based on the market viability, you can select to invest in any of these saunas.

Tent Saunas

Tent saunas are highly portable saunas that can be set up in both indoor and outdoor settings. They provide all the benefits of traditional saunas and mostly burn wood for heating purposes. Additionally, they are also highly cost-effective. The only downside to them is their small size and low durability. 

Trailer Saunas

These are high-quality saunas built to last long. As the name suggests, they can be towed away to any outdoor location and are mostly used in public and private events. Due to their strong build, they can be heated up via both wood burning and electrical mechanisms. However, trailer saunas also require heavy maintenance for which the business owner may need to hire additional personnel.

Electric Saunas

In comparison to traditional saunas that burn wood, electric saunas use electric stoves for heating purposes. They also provide precise temperature control and can be heated up very quickly without increasing the overall humidity. Just like trailer saunas, electric saunas are also strong and made to last long with high power efficiency. 

Infrared Saunas 

These are mild heat saunas that instead of steam, use infrared lamps to provide heat to the body. Because of no hot temperatures, infrared saunas are very safe to use. They are highly preferred by audiences who cannot tolerate high temperatures but look forward to receiving the other benefits of saunas.

Hot Tubs

Similar to saunas, the hot tub rental niche is also on the rise. Hot tubs provide a familiar experience to saunas and are used for recreational purposes. They are usually cheaper than saunas but require frequent cleaning and maintenance.

Top Countries Where Sauna Rental is a Normal

The spa and sauna industry is proliferating rapidly with a CAGR of 7.43% in the projection period 2024-2029 and is expected to reach a market share of $194.5 billion. With increasing preference for rentals, we can expect the sauna rental market to become one of the primary contributors to the industry. 

As per our reports, the following regions and their neighboring countries are the top markets to start your sauna rental business. 

Finland
Norway
Sweden
Denmark
Iceland 
USA
Japan
Canada
Russia 
Turkey

How the Sauna Rental Business Model Works?

There are two possible business models in the sauna rental industry. Both of them vary based on vendors and required investment.

The P2P Sauna Rental Business Model

Under this business model, various sauna owners sign up on the P2P marketplace and list their saunas. When customers rent those saunas, the marketplace owner gets to keep a commission as their earnings. A key benefit of this business model is that it is highly asset-light, you only need to provide and manage the rental marketplace. A private fleet is not required.

Workflow of the P2P sauna rental business model:

Sauna owners sign up on the marketplace and list their saunas
Customers browse those saunas and enter their preferred rental dates 
To place an order, customers submit a rental security amount along with the rental fee
The stored rental fee and security amount are stored in the sauna owner’s eWallet
The sauna owner fulfills the order as per the selected fulfillment method
On return, the sauna owner inspects the sauna for any unexpected damages and reports them to the marketplace owner
The marketplace owner reimburses the damages and returns the rental security amount to the customers.

Single Vendor Sauna Rental Store

In contrast to the P2P model, in the single-vendor sauna rental model, there’s only one vendor, which is also the store owner. This business model is highly suitable for those entrepreneurs who want to start their own sauna services, or are already in the industry and want to make the digital leap. A key benefit is that the store owner gets to keep the entire rental fee.

Workflow of a single vendor sauna rental store:

The store owner uploads detailed sauna listings on the platform
Customers browse those listings and enter their preferred rental dates 
To place an order, customers submit a rental security amount along with the rental fee
The store owner fulfills the order via the selected order fulfillment method
On return, the store owner inspects the sauna for any damages and reimburses the same from the rental security
The remaining rental security is returned to the customer

How to Generate Revenue on an Online Sauna Rental Marketplace

Being online comes with the advantages of utilizing multiple revenue generation streams for your business. These streams vary as per the business model, market trends, and business preferences. On an online sauna rental marketplace, you can consider using the following revenue generation streams:

Rental fees: When renting out your own saunas (or in a single vendor sauna rental model), you can keep the entire rental fee as your earnings.
Rental commission: On a sauna rental marketplace model, where different vendors rent out their saunas, you can keep a portion of their earnings as your marketplace commission.
Featured Listings: In the marketplace business model, you can also charge small fees from top-performing vendors to display their listings in the featured collections of your website.
Subscription packages: You can provide subscription-based sauna services on your rental marketplace. These work similarly to gym subscriptions. Customers can buy a sauna subscription for a month and use saunas as per the inclusions of their subscription. Likewise, the subscription model can be used for renting out saunas to event managers and concierge managers for months.
Rental add-ons: In countries where saunas are a cultural tradition, consumers also like to rent out add-ons such as chairs, tents, barbecues, cold tubs, etc.
Display ads: You can charge other businesses to display their ads on your website.
Gift cards: Saunas are very popular in various regions. In those regions, you can sell gift cards to help customers provide quality relaxation time to their loved ones.

Top Features Required on a Sauna Rental Marketplace

Considering the massive business opportunity in launching a sauna rental marketplace along with the comprehensive workflows of the multi-vendor model, it has become important to ensure that your marketplace has all the essential features. Below, we have briefed some must-have features for your sauna rental platform. For more guidance, you can consult our business analysts who recommend you readymade solutions or help you find out the complete scope of work in your sauna rental project.

Map View Filter

In terms of providing a superior user experience, GPS-enabled search results or a map view filter do a better job. They display nearby saunas to customers, which are in their close vicinity or can be delivered or picked up in a very short time frame. The map view filter also helps build the authenticity of your platform.

Tiered Pricing Module

Different customer segments rent out saunas for different durations. For example, where tourists and residents may rent saunas for a few days, event managers can require them for a few weeks to months. Thus, to cater to the rental requirements of all customer segments, a tiered pricing module can help you set daily, weekly, and monthly rental fees for saunas.

Rental Booking Calendar

Rental operations are a bit complex than sales operations. This is because their workflows and algorithms are different. In rental operations, you require a rental booking calendar that can display available dates to customers and accept rental date inputs. These rental date inputs from the booking calendar are then used to do invoicing for the rental orders, which is also inclusive of any rental add-ons and security deposits.

Rental Add-ons

Rental add-ons are the complementary products and services that are often required along with saunas. As briefly described in the revenue generation section, these can be chairs, tables, barbeques, music systems, and even bath towels and cleaning supplies. In the case of wood-burning saunas, extra wood for heating the sauna is often required. Having add-ons on your sauna rental marketplace can immensely assist you with upselling and cross-selling.

Document Verification

As a standard practice, it is safer to verify customer documents before renting them out saunas. These documents can either be identity proofs, address proofs, business ID cards, etc. For document verification purposes, your marketplace can simply ask customers to upload their documents at checkout. While processing the order, you can verify those documents.

Rental Agreement Management

On a sauna rental marketplace, every vendor can have different terms and conditions for renting out their saunas. For example, some of those conditions can be no jewelry, electronics, or inflammable objects inside, or they can also mention the minimum required age for renting. Thus, to sanction these terms and conditions, your sauna rental marketplace requires rental agreement management and eSign features.

Late Cancellations Management

Late cancellations can be detrimental to your business in many ways. They lead to losses in terms of order processing costs (be it cleaning costs, labor costs, and delivery costs) and also reserve your inventory unnecessarily to impact your order fulfillment rate, which incurs additional lost opportunity costs. Thus, to encourage timely returns and evade the aforementioned problems, it is better to have a late cancellations management module.

Order Management

Order management is one of the most essential modules in any eCommerce business. On your rental website, the order management module should keep you updated on all orders and send real-time notifications. Additionally, it should also provide you access to various order details such as customer name, payment details, etc., and with certain options including order cancellation. 

Vendor Management

On a multi-vendor sauna rental marketplace, vendor management features are required to perform administrative actions on vendor profiles. For adequate management, your marketplace should have features to verify vendor profiles, manually approve listings, and set minimum withdrawal thresholds and withdrawal interval periods. Lastly, the marketplace should also provide you with access to vendor performance and other related details. 

Rental Maintenance Period

After every rental order, your sauna may require inspection and maintenance. During this period, it cannot be added back to the inventory for renting. Thus, the rental maintenance period is required to sync under-maintenance saunas with the online inventory. You can pre-define the maintenance period on your system and it will sync the inventory accordingly. 

Discounts and Promotions

To accelerate business growth, you will need to deploy various discounts and promotion campaigns as well. The discount features can include percentage and fixed-price markdowns or duration-based discounts. Similarly, promotional features such as SEO optimization and homepage banners will help you attract new customers as well. 

Reports and Analytics

Analytical features are essential for all eCommerce platforms. They help you make data-driven decisions to turbocharge growth and overcome challenges. On your sauna rental platform, you should have proper analytical features to provide you with accurate insights on revenue generation, most rented saunas, most purchased add-ons, top paying customers, and more.

Creating your Sauna Rental Platform with Readymade Solutions

Although a sauna rental marketplace can be developed with multiple approaches, including both custom development and readymade software, using a readymade software remains the safest. This is because of three primary reasons, which are:

Readymade solutions are tried and tested
They are highly cost-effective
Reduce the overall Time-to-Market

Thus, instead of paying hourly development charges for a software, it is wiser to opt for the readymade solutions on which the existing rental industry relies. There are basically two types of readymade rental solutions:

SaaS Rental Software

SaaS rental software refer to the solutions that are hosted on the software provider’s own servers and provided as a monthly service. Thus, the name Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). SaaS solutions are primarily useful for small businesses and solopreneurs who want to validate their market ideas. Key benefits of using a SaaS rental software are:

These are tried and tested solutions
Are very easy to set up

However, while selecting SaaS, it must be taken into account that the software provider gets complete control over the hosting server. For this reason, there can be some restrictions on the number of listings and transactions on your platform. To overcome those restrictions, you will need to frequently upgrade your package, which may result in a monthly increase in costs.

Self-Hosted Rental Software

A solution to the SaaS recurring costs and scalability problem is self-hosted rental software. These types of rental software provide complete freedom to business owners in selecting the hosting server, which can either be a third-party hosting service provider or an on-premise server. The top benefits of using a self-hosted rental software are:

One-time costs for a lifetime license
As these are hosted on your choice of servers, there are no limitations on the number of  listings and transactions
Self-hosted solutions are highly cost-effective in the long run. Any changes in the price of the software do not affect existing customers.

Moreover, as self-hosted software come with a lifetime usage license, founders can easily migrate to any other software without worrying about any reinvestment costs.

Conclusion

With rental saunas emerging as a leisure trend in the North American market and their cultural significance in various other parts of the world, investing in a sauna rental marketplace can be a profitable business decision. However, to streamline operations, you need a readymade solution with advanced features and intuitive workflows. This is where YoRent rental software helps. Being a highly reliable and fully scalable rental software with advanced rent-centric features, YoRent supports all sauna rental use cases right out of the box. For a personalized one-or-one demo or software consultation, feel free to get in touch with YoRent experts.