It’s a Big Question: How Much to Rent a Bounce House For?
So here’s the predicament. You’re a brand new party rental company. You’ve got your bounce house or inflatable water slide cleaned, primed, and ready for a big event. But there’s a big question still left unanswered: You’re not sure how much to rent a bounce house to customers for.
Somehow, the vast treasure trove of knowledge that is our contemporary Internet doesn’t have much helpful information regarding how to price out your bounce house rentals. And given the fact that each inflatable rental is going to be unique—they come in all sorts of styles and with varying features, after all—tracking down the right information can seem like a nightmare.
The few guides available on the web weren’t written by experienced event industry professionals, and their research was pretty lacking and phoned in from what we’ve seen. So we thought we’d create this guide to help you price out your bounce house rental units more easily, with real research put into it as well.
Be sure to comment below and let us know if it was any use to you. And if you’d like to tell everyone your own pricing and help your fellow party rentals companies get off the ground, we’d all appreciate that as well!
Anyway, without further ado, let’s get started!
Pricing for Profits
Before you can figure out how much to rent a bounce house to customers for, you first need to calculate your overhead costs. Put another way, you need to know how much it’s costing you to rent out a bounce house, before you can know how much to rent a bounce house to customers for.
With a calculator app on your phone and a little free time, it’s pretty easy to calculate how much your rental overhead costs will be. You just need to find the following information:
- Total cost of the bounce house divided by 20. This is to pay back your initial investment in your inflatable bounce house. You can set this anywhere from 10 to 50 or even higher, depending on how quickly you want to be reimbursed for the equipment investment.
- Round trip fuel costs
- Monthly liability, vehicle, and property insurance costs divided by the realistic number of times per month you’ll rent Daily staff wages; only include staff handling that particular unit
- Cost of cleaning supplies per cleaning regiment (not the total cost of the cleaning supplies, but the cost of the portion of supplies used per pre-rental and post-rental cleaning)
- Patch kits/ repair costs; calculate these even if the unit is fine. It’s better to be met with unexpected profits than unforeseen expenses!
- Any additional expenses you can think of that should also be accounted for in your projected overhead.
How Much Is It to Rent a Bounce House from Your Competitors?
Now that your know how much a bounce house is costing you each month, it’s time to take a look at your local market and see how much your competitors are charging for each inflatable rental. Without this research, you might end up undervaluing your services or pricing yourself out of contention with potential customers.
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You should take as much time as you need to carefully look into each party rental or event rental company in your area offering bounce house rentals. See if they list prices on their website, and if not, call them and ask for a quote.
Try to get a general sense of their inventory options, too; the unit size and the features of each unit often play a substantial role in pricing. It’s a good idea to see if they have inflatable slides, obstacle courses, dunk tanks, combo bounce slides, or other popular inflatables. This will help you figure out what equipment you can acquire to gain a competitive advantage.
You should try to find as much information as you can about as many competitors as you can within a 50 mile radius of your operational area. If you plan on operating within 25 miles of home, for instance, you’d want to research companies within 50 miles of the areas furthest out from your operational center.
Take some time to read customer reviews of your competitors, too. Get a sense of what they do right, what they do wrong, and what potential customers in your area expect from a bounce house rentals company. You don’t need this information to figure out how much to rent a bounce house to customers for, but it’ll save you time down the line to gather it now.
Bounce House Pricing Averages & Standard Rental Practices
We mentioned earlier that the Internet is woefully lacking in statistics for bounce house rentals and party rentals. It’s pretty frustrating trying to find national party rental business statistics. So, partially out of frustration, we’ve decided to start researching statistics regarding the event and party rentals industries to share with everyone here.
Our first research piece focused on bounce house rental prices. We gathered data from 40 party rentals companies in the United States, each of which offers bounce house rentals, and managed to find national averages for bounce house rentals.
The low average rate to rent a bounce house for a full day (or 6 to 8 hours) is $97.57, while the high average is $409.35. The median bounce house rental price in the United States for a full day is $238.44, according to our research.
We found that most party rentals companies rented out their bounce houses for full days, while a great many also rented them out in 6 or 8 hour increments. It was quite rare to find rental companies offering increments of 5 hours or less. In fact, only one of the forty companies we looked at had a standard rental of less than 6 hours; they offered only a solitary block of two hours and charged hourly rates after that.
Additional Charges & Fees to Consider
Some other fees you may want to consider charging for your services include:
- Deposit: standard practice in the industry. These are typically flat fees, though some companies charge percentages of total costs. Most companies offer refunds for acts of God (bad weather, earthquakes, wild fires, etc.; things outside of the control of your customers)
- Cleaning Fees: These usually only take effect in instances involving uncommon or severe messes. Most companies will include regular cleaning costs as a part of their overhead but might charge additional cleaning fees in the event of bigger-than-usual messes. If a mess resulted from improper use or a violation of your safety protocols, it's perfectly fine to charge cleaning fees. A kid eating cotton candy in your bounce house and getting it all over the place was violating your rules. The customers should be liable.
- Attendants: It’s not a common practice, but some companies offer an attendant who will monitor and care for the equipment and watch over the kids to make sure they’re following the rules. These fees are usually hourly rates and should at least cover the wages of the employee(s). Excessive charges however will likely result in no one paying for this service.
- Setup & Teardown Fees: Only two of the 40 companies we reviewed in that aforementioned study charged setup and teardown fees. It’s extremely rare, and may even border on unethical. Most customers will consider setup and teardown to be standard practice and complimentary. It’s up to you whether you should charge for this or not, but we generally advise against it in most circumstances.
Bounce House Package Deals
One popular bounce house rental option a lot of companies utilize is grouping equipment into packages. Package deals are popular with event planners and party organizers looking for a great selection of equipment for a great price, and can let you move lots of rental units all in one big shot.
Pricing your bounce house rentals in packages should be done carefully. You want to make sure you’re offering a good discount, but that you’re not overselling or undervaluing your products either. higher quality bounce houses should still be priced fair, even if you're charging more, and you'll want to reflect that in your packaged deals.
You’ll also want to put some serious thought into what each package contains and be sure each package makes sense to your customers. Party tents, tables, and chairs all work well together. Inflatables go well with sealed air frame games, carnival games, obstacle courses, inflatable water slides, and other inflatables.
Ethical Bounce House Rentals
Your bounce house rental prices will ultimately play second-fiddle, with most customers anyway, to your company’s approaches toward safety and cleanliness. In most cases, a customer would rather pay more for a clean, safe rental than endanger their children due to frugality.
Try to always remain transparent with State inspection results, as well as your cleaning policies and cleaning records. This not only helps protect the children using your bounce house, but the overall reputation of your party rental business as well. Word that you’re renting out dirty bounce houses will spread faster than the germs in those bounce houses.
You’ll want to provide customers with proof of inspections, proof of liability insurance, and information regarding your safety record. And if a customer asks for information about your cleaning, it helps to be able to provide them with detailed information regarding when your bounce houses were cleaned and how they were cleaned.
Be sure to clearly state the rules for your rentals, too. Emphasize safety and be sure you tell customers how your equipment can be used safely. An adult should ALWAYS be watching play inside your commercial inflatables and supervising children. Child safety should be your number one concern, and if customers ever come across as flaky or irresponsible, it’s better to reject their business than experience an accident.
Be sure to ask parents about EVERY accident or incident, too, no matter how small or frivolous. This information can go a long way toward helping you improve your safety rules and preventing more serious incidents down the line.
As a rule, try to always be transparent and honest. Don’t try to hide easily-researched facts from customers. It’s not only unethical, but it hurts your reputation severely.
How Much to Charge for Bounce House Rentals, Boiled Down
So how much should you actually charge for each bounce house rental in the end? At face value, it boils down to all of the factors we just talked about. What are your gross overhead costs? What are your competitors’ rates? Can you calculate strong enough profit margins to grow your equipment inventory and your company as a whole while remaining competitive?
How much to rent a bounce house for will ultimately come down to all of those factors,as well as a somewhat undefinable “it factor” of where your priorities lie. There’s a discernible difference between being in business to entertain kids while making money, and making money while entertaining kids. And where you land on that parabola will play some role in determining how you price your bounce house rentals. Just try to always remember that the companies that care the most can and often will earn the most.
Whether it’s a toddler’s birthday party or a huge corporate event, a bounce house rental is something that can be great for all ages. Your customers have their own factors to consider when deciding whether to patronize your party rentals company, and how much to rent a bounce house for is definitely one of them. Hopefully this guide helped you settle on reasonable bounce house rental prices that benefit your customers as much as they benefit your company.
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