Beachfront bolthole, country charmer or gorgeous Georgian, the descriptions of self-catering holiday homes can promise a unique and carefree break – but do the houses always deliver?
Holidaymakers hope their booking will match the online pictures, but a lot can go wrong. Scan Tripadvisor and you’ll find vacationers complaining about everything from no toilet paper to too few champagne coupes. So how can holiday-home owners get it right?
“You want to go somewhere at least as nice as your own house,” says Kela Hodgins, owner of Dunowen House. Expect a five-star hotel vibe and music memorabilia in this luxury six-bed 18th-century rental she runs with husband Stephen. The house was the former home of Noel Redding, bass guitarist with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Located 10 minutes from Clonakilty, in west Cork, and costing €1,000 a night, it’s popular with extended families and groups of friends. The ethos is “laid-back luxury”, says Hodgins. Nestled in its one-acre walled garden is a second self-catering property, the three-bed Orchard Cottage. This costs €150 a night with a minimum of two nights in peak season.
“When we moved here to set up Dunowen House, we were just fed up of going to places around Ireland where you turn up and there wasn’t even salt and pepper, or they didn’t tell you you had to bring your own towels,” says Hodgins. Here, fluffy towels come as standard. The visitor experience is thoughtfully curated. “If someone has travelled a long journey and they rock up here at four or five o’clock, they don’t want to have to get back in the car to Clonakilty just to go buy the basics,” says Hodgins. “We want people to settle in really quickly.”
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“We have a well-stocked larder, and included as standard when people arrive is tea, coffee, home-baking, milk in the fridge, butter and home-made jam.” There are plenty of dishwasher tablets and cleaning products, too.
On a self-catering holiday, cooking is a big part of things and it shouldn’t be a chore. At best, it should be more of a joy than at home. Both kitchens at Dunowen are chef standard, says Hodgins, with all the utensils you would expect and good knives. “We have everyday ware, but also a very nice dinner service,” says Hodgins. “Everything is matching. We have good wine glasses, Prosecco glasses and cocktail glasses. There is nothing worse than opening a cupboard and it is full of pint glasses from the local pubs.”
Dunowen can accommodate 18 people for dinner, so an extra dishwasher in the utility room means no one is left at the end of the night scrubbing delph for breakfast.
“When our guests arrive, we want them to feel like no one else has ever stayed here, even if they only vacated at 10am that morning. You don’t want any trace that somebody has been there before.” While the Hodgins’ love pets, their holiday lets are a pet-free zone. “If I go somewhere, I don’t want to have the smell of pets in the house,” says Hodgins.
Holiday rentals can be synonymous with wipe-down leatherette sofas, neutral colours and the minimum of breakables. Dunowen House is not that. “Because of the history of the house, we have tried to put personality into the place so the rooms are decorated individually, there is a lot of history on show,” says Hodgins. “There is memorabilia, there are guitars for guests to use and there is a very well-stocked library.” Do things get broken or nicked? “I have to say, we would have been nervous at the beginning but 98 per cent of the time people are very respectful. The only things that have ever gone missing are small cushions,” says Hodgins. The Hodgins holidayed in lots of self-catering properties when their children were small, and they still do. “I hate bad ben linen and I hate people being mean with what they leave you, and also over-selling and under-delivering,” says Hodgins. “I’d prefer someone to say your website doesn’t do justice to the house.”
There are 2,877 self-catering style properties in the Fáilte Ireland National Quality Assurance Framework. It grades three-, four- and five-star rentals. Proprietors of those in the five-star category are expected to go the extra mile, says Tara Kerry, registration and grading manager. At a minimum, the property should look like the photos. Some of the requirements that make a property five-star include the flow of accommodation, artwork of local areas, minimum 500 thread-count linens and a choice of pillows which may include a pillow menu. Heavy curtains and blackout blinds are advised, too.
“Many holiday rentals are in extraordinarily scenic settings, but few visitors want to be woken by the rising sun whilst on holiday,” says Kerry. Irish people are very well travelled these days, their own homes are nicer and so they expect a lot from a self-catering rental, says Rosie Campbell, director of Unique Irish Homes.
She specialises in marketing luxury or unique vacation rentals. The houses are billed as comfortable, relaxing and completely individual, reflecting the character and interests of the owners. Properties on the books of Unique Irish Homes include the luxurious four-bed Dolphin’s Cove in Connemara from €3,500 a week and Island Retreat, a 250-year-old cottage on a private island on Strangford Lough, which sleeps eight and costs from €2,250 a week. Many Irish people rediscovered the self-catering staycation during the pandemic. Airport pandemonium last year was good for the sector too. Houses draw walkers, sea swimmers and those retired all year round. Decent kitchen knives, pans and a good coffee are what exercise guests.
“Coffee machines are such a huge thing nowadays. You will get people ringing up asking, ‘Do I bring pods – what kind of coffee machine do you have?’” says Campbell. People sometimes bring their own machine. She gets asked about the cleaning products too. “It’s maybe to do with allergies, but it’s a thing for people that there are decent cleaning products in the house,” she says.
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Tupperware, tin foil, a pizza wheel – holiday-home owners should try to anticipate what guests cooking away from home might need. “It’s essential that the kitchen is well stocked because people will go to local markets and buy local food and they will cook,” says Campbell. “There may be six people staying in a house and they will take turns to cook. They want a good kitchen because bookings in restaurants are very hard to get in peak season.”
If guests run down a house’s condiment supplies during their stay, they could think of replenishing them, says Campbell. “We ask people to be cognisant of other people coming when they are doing another shop. It’s not nice to leave people without.”
Don’t just look at photos of the house when booking, read the house description, says Campbell. That will tell you that the cooker is an Aga, there is only one bath or that the beds are a certain size. Many Americans don’t want a super king bed, preferring a twin. One quirky house on her books has purposely mismatching delph.
“I remember one lady saying she was surprised there weren’t six matching – but there was this amazing array of beautiful mugs and plates. If you looked around this house, you’d realise it wasn’t the kind of house with plain white Ikea – which is lovely, and can be replaced easily – this had real character,” says Campbell.
On beds, she recommends white linen. “Because it’s very easy to see that something has been cleaned, it shows immediately that it has been laundered.” If a house sleeps eight, those renting are asked to keep it to no more than that. “Some clients will bring all their relations – come down for two days, the weather is great – that’s not very fair on the homeowners,” says Campbell. “The septic tanks and the plumbing just can’t take it. That can lead to somebody not having a very good holiday, and it does happen.”
For young families, there are some things that can make a self-catering holiday much easier, says Máire Ní Mhurchú, chair of Irish Self-Catering Federation. Members of the federation agree to a code of ethics and the body also has a quality assurance system, says Ní Mhurchú. “If I’m booking a holiday with small kids, I like to make sure I can see the fridge and the freezer. There is no point in having a tiny freezer compartment, particularly in summer,” says Ní Mhurchú. There is nothing worse than doing a big shop en route only to arrive and find there is no freezer space for all those barbecue meats, pizzas and ice lollies.
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Ní Mhurchú is also the owner of Dunmanus Cottage, a four-star three-bed self-catering house on a quiet lane near Durrus village, in west Cork, overlooking Dunmanus Bay. A self-catering holiday is about family or friends hanging out together, rather than more separately as you might in a hotel. “It’s important in a house that the spaces are linked. In Dunmanus Cottage, the kitchen goes into the livingroom and the dining area opens into the garden,” says Ní Mhurchú. A safe, enclosed garden area for kids and any pets is important too. Visitors coming from the city want to be able to just open the patio doors on a summer morning and let them out. The welcome pack of local foods at Dunmanus Cottage includes eggs, milk, rashers, local cheeses and some bread.
“It makes you feel comfortable and like you are part of the area,” says Ní Mhurchú.
Plenty of soap, toilet paper, washing-up liquid and dishwasher tablets are left too. “We always leave those for people so that you don’t have to go off and buy anything, it’s waiting when you arrive,” she says.
For those who haven’t yet booked a holiday, there is still hope. Car hire costing up to €1,500 a week has meant cancellations by some American and German agents. “That’s why I have three weeks free in August and two in July. It’s never happened before,” says Ní Mhurchú. A seven-night stay in July costs €1,050. The website, letsgoselfcatering.ie, shows up-to-date availability of houses across the country this summer. “Now Irish people are staying in self-catering, and they are looking for high quality standards,” says Ní Mhurchú. “The basic place that you go to with hard beds and towels, that doesn’t work any more. You have to have a quality offering.”
