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You are leaving money on the table. A place that Sleeps 8 should not be a logical choice for a group of 2. I also have a house that sleeps 8 and have never had a group of 2 as it would be ridiculously expensive for them. I have a different smaller unit that can sleep 3, where I get couples booking.
My place can sleep up to 20, but because that many would involve airbeds my price is not super high. I have had bookings for 1 and 2 people who didn’t care about the cost, they loved the location and wanted the extra room. I hope they don’t bed hop, but if one of them snores, I’m not going to fret that they needed another room.
We have always charged an extra guest fee for any guest after the first one. It’s not been a problem in almost 300 stays. I do have to pay attention during the booking process. Anyone who books for one person who doesn’t explicitly say, “it’s just me”, is questioned about the number of guests they are booking for. When they tell me it’s really 2 people or 5 people or whatever, I have a response that I’ve perfected over time that I copy and paste to them.
It tells them what their actual price will be with the extra guests, the reason for charging per person (to give solo travelers and smaller groups a discount and to accommodate a larger portion of the Airbnb community) and that I will be sending a change request and that they are free to accept or decline, that I will understand either way and that they have 48 hours to cancel penalty free.
I’ve never lost a booking over it and have never had a complaint about it. I think you can file it under “how it’s handled”, like most things. Surely I have had some people not book because of it but that’s no loss to me, because we’re clearly not on the same page to begin with. It may even be one reason why we haven’t had any really bad guests - it’s easier to weed people out prior to booking than to get the reservation cancelled.
We get a lot of single travelers in our 2BR apartments. We love our single travelers, best guests in the world, but we wouldn’t get them by pricing for 4 guests. We also get a lot of couples who need separate beds who we’d miss out on by pricing for 4 guests.
Theoretically, but it’s never happened. And there’s also plenty of groups of 4 or 5 that are paying a lot more but hardly touch anything, so you’re covered either way.
So why are offering a house that sleeps eight, then charging for extra guests after two? Doesn’t sound fair. I would price it for four, then add maybe $10 per extra person per day. I can understand why you need to charge for additional guests, extra wear and tear plus the use of more utilities, but you should be fair about the pricing upfront. Then you need to state several times in the listing your additional guest charges, and put it in your House Rules, which they must agree to before they can book.
Offering a base rate for two then additional charges for more helps to get folks at least looking at the home. I agree, not the best strategy but better than the home being vacant. Once I get a few more reviews, and things have hopefully settled a bit on the pandemic, I’ll look to change my settings.
This is not true. You only have to add an extra guest fee in your pricing settings. It is then automatically added to the price when the guest books for the correct number of guests. Guests are obligated to book for the correct number of guests per the TOS.
I had a recent request that I’m fairly sure was a scam. Reservation for 2 asking for a discount because $600 for their stay was out of their budget, I looked at the days they wanted & it wasn’t showing over $525 including all fees & taxes for 2 people. They were also overly concerned about the location & my listing clearly states that it is in a tri-plex with many photos etc. I asked for a screenshot showing the charges of over $600 & offered them a discount but further messages & when I told them I was staying in the tri-plex at the moment they were suddenly no longer interested. I can only imagine how many people they were planning on having staying. People don’t understand that many of us have to charge more per person not just because of cleaning but especially because of utilities.
My Insurance company requires the full name of every guest. And although I have self check in I always mention that I will stop by sometime in the evening to make sure everything is ok and they have everything they need. Suddenly there are corrections to the reservation but because even with the extra charges I am very competitive I have never had a cancellation. They may not book with me but they don’t cancel, & I’m fine with that because the ones who play games are usually the ones that cause problems.
