Rainy Lake Houseboat Deposit Policy
Many guests have questions about deposits and what happens if they have to cancel. Our deposit policies are the friendliest in the business. The Honeymooner, Minnitaki, Voyageur, Tamarac, Saginaw, Kempton Cruiser, and Gold Rush Jacuzzi houseboats all have refundable deposits if cancellation is received sixty days prior to your boarding date. The Lady of the Lake houseboats has a 120 day cancellation policy. Twenty eight of our twenty nine houseboats have refundable deposits. Two of our competitors do not refund any deposits and the other has a ninety day cancellation policy (notification must be in writing) with a $175 fee charged on all cancellations. In the past we have not always adhered to our deposit policy in the strictest sense. We have refunded because of health issues, death in family and many other legitimate reasons; at the very least we allow a deposit to be applied to a reservation the following year.
Guests are booking their vacations now. They may not be taking as many or big of vacations as in the past years. We have created a package pricing plan that lets our customers know the amount a trip costs on a per person basis. It is an effective planning tool for them. Our belief is the trips will even cost less than what the package is listed at. We had to use our last purchased gas from September for our fuel figures. Gasoline looks to be much less than last year, any reduction will be passed directly to our customers.
With the tough economy we are asked how business is, are people making reservations, are we getting cancellations etc? There are definitely people that have lost jobs and cannot come this year. In the same instance many people are making reservations, we are at about the same level as last year at this time. Surprisingly cancellations are running lower than in past years. One definite trend we are seeing is many people are staying in Minnesota or traveling to Rainy Lake from neighboring states for their vacations rather than taking longer extended vacations.