The Advantages of Renting Sunbeds

Renting sunbeds has a number of advantages over simply buying one. If you have used sunbeds before and are familiar with their operation, having been trained in the past, then it might make more financial sense in the long term to buy. However, you also need to be sure that the investment is a wise one, since commercial sunbeds can be extremely expensive – far more so than the lower-powered home models. Because they are used more intensively, many times a day, in businesses such as leisure clubs and gyms, they need to be built to a much higher specification. Therefore they are correspondingly more expensive.

 

Rather than buy such a machine – perhaps paying tens of thousands of pounds – renting sunbeds offers you many of the same advantages, plus a few more, all for a monthly payment. Unless you have a lot of cash around, you will need a loan to pay for a unit. This may be something you are reluctant to do, especially in the current financial climate. Taking out such a loan requires that you are confident about your organisation’s turnover for several years to come. For smaller businesses, it just may not be possible to look ahead to this degree.

 

Renting sunbeds allows you to offset the risk involved in such a large purchase. Typically, hire contracts run for a year, although much shorter ones are possible in some cases (usually at higher prices, though). You will pay an installation fee, a deposit – which is refundable at the end of the term – and then fixed monthly instalments. Most companies will throw in some kind of extras. For example, you may need to have your unit serviced or fixed at some point in that year. If it breaks down – it could be something as simple as a token jammed in the slot – then it’s important to know that it will be back in operation as soon as possible, since every day that it sits there unusable is a day you are paying for it with no revenue coming in. Hire companies often give call-out guarantees, excluding weekends, for some peace of mind.

 

Other than that, you will need to pay your own insurance costs – since this will relate to the nature of your business rather than the kind of sunbed you rent – and for the electricity you use. This should be a minimal cost, however, since the average sunbed costs about 6p to run for one session – a fraction of the revenue received. You will also need the standard accessories, such as goggles to protect customers’ eyes from the ultraviolet light used, and bronzing creams or lotions. You may also benefit from promotional materials that the company can also supply, often for free as part of the deal.

 

At the end of the hire period, you typically have three options. You can continue to rent the unit for another year, you can ask the hire company to collect it, or you can purchase it yourself. This last option may be an attractive one if you have been renting sunbeds to determine whether there is enough demand to buy one outright. The hire company should offer you a reduced rate, reflecting the money you have already invested in it and the wear the machine has had.

 

Renting sunbeds therefore has a number of advantages, especially for smaller businesses which may not be confident in investing such large sums of money up-front. Accessories, training and maintenance are generally included in the deals at reduced rates or for free, and there should be the option to buy the sunbed at the end of the term; check the company’s rent-to-buy arrangements.