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For years, I struggled with extra-person fees. We have a three-bedroom house in a Caribbean location that is a top honeymoon destination. I was able to fill it in high season at a flat rate for up to six, but needed to attract couples in the low season. I asked Santa for a solution, and his first answer was to create a “child” listing for two people and link them.
Well, this year, Santa gave me an early present with a better answer. For those of you integrated with OR (@georgygirlofairbnb, @HostAirbnbVRBO), you can set different extra-person fees and policies in OR for different seasons and they will push through to Vrbo and AirBnb.
No more “child” listing headaches. My main listing with all the reviews can now be the only listing, and I can lower the base rate in the low season and add extra-person fees to attract couples without having to mess with extra-person fees in the high season. Woo-hoo!
That’s interesting. I don’t have an extra person fee in my 1-bed, 2 person max apartment, but one thing I’ve contemplated (in my fantasies of having a large B&B empire of multiple apartments that would allow me to retire from academia and clean up after Airbnb guests instead… wait, why is this a fantasy?) is having a set price for the MAXIMUM number of guests, and then offering guests a discount if they have fewer than that.
Would that work? Guests would be more incentivised to accurately report the correct number of guests if they thought it was going to save them money, rather than cost them money.
Or I might not even advertise that they’d get a discount, maybe I could just spring it on them as a surprise discount (submitted as a price adjustment or whatever you call it?). I reckon then they’d end up feeling happy and positive about the whole thing because they’d perceive that they are saving money rather than getting charged extra – even though the sums would be completely the same from the host’s perspective.
haha, I have no issues being the cleaning lady of my 3 listing “empire”. It’s a great job, and honestly, I like cleaning. I hate making beds cos I’ve injured my wrist.
Your other idea is good, and needs a little more thought, I’m going to mull it over. the initial problem is that you won’t attract couples if you are advertising a 6pax listing at a higher price, not unless your title is “discount for couples” or something.
It looks like you can do that in OwnerReservations (OR). There’s an option to set discounts for particular numbers of guests. You can configure a discount for children if you want, too.
I don’t know how well this all works with AirBnB and I can’t test it for you. I don’t use OR to manage my AirBnB listing yet since they’d make me use simplified pricing and I don’t want to do that yet.
Me too – I think I like it especially because I sit on my butt in front of a computer all day so it’s exciting when I get to do something physical. I don’t know if it would be quite as exciting if it weren’t the counterpoint to sitting on my arse, though.
Yeah good point, it really wouldn’t work for something that ranges from 2-6 (or more) people. It would only really work if it was a relatively small difference so it wouldn’t price you out of competition in the map search.
You’ve described my problem exactly. Fairly high-end, three bedroom home in a highly-desirable area. A flat rate is fine in the high season and we rent out to families or groups travelling together. But we need to attract couples in the low season and I’m unwilling to lower the price for six to below the price of a single nearby hotel room, which is where we need to be for couples.
