Good suggestion! I agree !!
Thatâs my vote because it puts you in control of each night and each booking and allows you to gauge for yourself how you are feeling that day and/or week. I am assuming that most of these 75% one nighters are also last minute bookings so you would have pretty good knowledge of yourself and situation to make a good decision.
I just realized this was posted more than 2 years ago so am interested in what you did and how it wentâŚ
Something else that I do (that helps reduce the last minute books or at least give you more money for them to make up for it) is nightly increase the next 3-4 days
Today (or tomorrow) $25 (or $20)
Tomorrow (or next day) $20 (or $15)
Day after tomorrow (or day after that) $15 (or $10)
Day after that (âŚ) $10 (or $5)
Day after that $5
They add up to same day bookings being $50-$30 more than otherwise (and my base rates are $38 w/ a $20 cleaning for private room and $70-$55 with $65-$55 cleaning for 2-1BR whole house).
Lastly, I also do the above price increased for the 3 days before and after each booking so potentially if I got back to back last minute booki NC s it could be $80 more for that night. It happens less often now and when it does I feel like it is worth it and the extra money helps as motivation.
In addition to the cleaning fee we NOW have the option of discounting however many day stays we want. So if your rate is $100/night but you want to get $150 for a one nighter (without it being the cleaning fee) you can make tour rate $150 and giving a 33% discount for 2 day stays (it will apply to 2 or more).
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There are rules sets you can apply now that werenât back when you wrote this.
Basically weâve stuck to Instant Book, but with two daysâ respite between each booking. We get very, very few last-minute booking - a lot of people come here to Lancaster to see their kids at the local Uni, which is in the Top Ten best in the UK, and they book quite along time in advance (six to eight weeks is normal). Weâre doing quite well - we get about 10 to 12 nightsâ occupancy per month, which is just about right for us given age, etc. 107 guests now, many repeats, average * rating 4.97 - so we must be doing something right! Thanks for your interest.
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Perhaps hiring someone who will do the cleaning and laundry will solve the problem? And also hire someone or a company that is reliable.
Thanks, but with our relatively low occupancy rate - about 10 nights per month - and the two-day gap between guests weâre now managing very well indeed!
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Hey @southendbootboy, great to have this thread come back alive and good to hear that you are doing so well. The average score you have is amazing so well done on that. I do however wonder whether you are missing a trick here. If you are located close to Lancaster University, you will have a constant flow of academics and researchers who need to stay for a week or perhaps longer. Someone on a fellowship might even wish to stay for a few months. Wouldnât you want to rent your place out to that type of guest? The problem is that your one-nighters (which are effectively three-nighters because the preceding two nights are booked) block up your calendar 6 to 8 weeks in advance. This means that any visiting academics donât even have a chance to consider your place because of the odd one-nighters. By increasing your minimum stay to two nights, you would certainly lose all the one-nighters, however I am wondering whether or not you would gain a lot more one weekers (or even longer stays). What do you think?
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Thanks Suntory. In fact we do get quite a few guests who are working or attending courses at the Uni - weâve had a number of 7-day stays. However - and this might sound strange - we actually like having a variety of guests rather than having people staying for long periods! There are also legal implications vis-Ă -vis security of tenure of having people stay for a long time. Apart from a bit of a downturn at the moment - which appears to be happening over a lot of the UK - weâre quite happy with our ten or so nightsâ occupancy per month.
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That sounds great. You obviously tweaked it in a way that it suits you well. Keep up the great work. That average score is impressive.
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Sorry that just wouldnât work @pyrenees023 I know my local market and I canât price in two hours a day for someone to iron my bedding!!
I live in a price sensitive area. As you say itâs all about supply and demand. I would be stupid to price myself out of the market by paying someone to come in and iron and adding the fee onto my listing making it way out of kilter with comparable listings.
Agreed! I do the cleaning and laundry myself around a work schedule, and I know those one-night stays can be brutal when you find your week filled with them.
You get to set the cleaning fee - considering yourâre doing it all yourself, think about what your time is worth and how you pay yourself out. If Iâm rushing around or folding YET another set of linens I just remember our cleaning feeâŚ!
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Which means that you pay yourself very little (or nothing?) to do two hours of ironing a day in order to be able to do AirBnB at your current rates.
There is no way I would spend two hours a day ironing @Militaryhorsegal why would you think I would do that 
I spend about 20 minutes a week for three duvet sets.
It was @pyrenees023 who for some strange reason assumed It would take 2 hours a day to iron a few duvets 
I wrongly assumed that you were since you said you wouldnât pay someone else to do itâŚglad I was wrong! 
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