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Yes, your definition of a cheap guest sounds like a very reasonable description. I’d call that cheap as well.
It just hasn’t been my experience that because I have a budget-minded listing, that it attracts guests who do any of those things. So I don’t believe that just the price of a listing determines whether it attracts the kind of cheap guests whose behavior you describe. It’s not nearly as simple as the price point. There are a lot of factors involved.
Yeah, think you’re right. I’m starting to think “whole house” rentals are the Devil, but we don’t have the option to do home-share. I love the stories of connection you all share. I think connecting with the host/guest makes a difference.
I think that’s why it bums me out when guests are cold in messaging. I feel better about the ones I connect with.
Well, some home-share hosts get problematic guests, but certainly it’s the off-site entire place hosts who get the brunt of bad behavior, but that seems to me to obviously be the risk.
I might have been up for being an off-site host when I was younger, but there’s no way I would want to do that now.
Back to “cheap” guests, there seems to be a type of guest who thinks “I paid a lot for this place (whether that is objectively true for what they got or not) and I’m damn well going to make sure to get my money’s worth”. Whether that means having unregistered guests, sneaking a pet in without paying, demanding a discount for some trivial issue, or walking off with the host’s supplies.
I really never realized there were so many self-centered, entitled, nasty people out there until I started reading hosting forums.
Guests who ask for discounts, guests who ask for extras that are not included, guests who steal my TP and all the extras I provide.
RR
Thanks for the reply. I definitely get that, I’d just probably call it “greedy guests”.
And as I mentioned, I just don’t see getting guests like that to necessarily be directly related to the price of a listing. A host can get mostly great, appreciative guests and then one that walks off with half the CD collection. That guest is just a thieving jerk.
Agree with this completely. Asking for discounts is a MAJOR red flag. You think it didn’t take time/energy/money/risk to make this place look like this? Then you ask for a discount?
Early on, we would concede a discount to get a listing rolling and the next thing you know, the same guests don’t then want to pay for additional guest/dog fees. Fees that are a passthrough for us to our cleaning crews anyway!
Regarding those (awful guests/greedy guests) that feel they’re entitled to take the extra roll of paper towels, extra 2 rolls of TP, and stock you out of hot chocolate/coffee/tea. Whew! I’m just glad they are <1% of who we deal with.
I have been giving this issue a lot of thought lately. My rates jumped considerably after covid (I use Beyond Pricing) and while the average booking was certainly netting me more I didn’t like the guests I was getting. Entitled, barely communicative and often taking great liberties. I’ve since lower my rates.
Samesies.
20220202020
It’s really interesting to me the variety of guest experiences we all have, even with just a single factor being considered (like pricing, or minimum age to book, etc).
It’d be really interesting someday to explore why. Rental type? Location (country, rural vs urban, etc)? Distance to city center? or other categories. I’m sure they all factor in but it’d be cool to see how, by category, a single tweak (say 15% price drop) impacted a host.
No research students want to take this one? LOL! I’d participate for free to see the final data analysis
There probably are some but woe be to the student who ventures onto this forum seeking volunteers. LOL. Unless they want to be torched by all the people posting here telling the students hoW vaLuaBle tHEir tiMe is, they’d better stay clear.
Buy a plug-in power meter and charge the actual kWh price ( or a bit more).
A I had some Teslas using up to 40kwh overnight.
What I’ve found is that most of these student surveys are either based upon some false premise, they are set up in a way that doesn’t allow you to see all the questions to start with to know whether you want to participate, or the questions are framed in a way that is leading or irrelevant. Or they want to interview you for half an hour for a $10 Starbucks gift card.
I have participated in some that aren’t like that. If it seems to be collecting valuable info that shows a basic understanding of issues hosts or guests experience, I don’t mind helping them out for 5 minutes.
Have you actually used this device? Did you use it when the Teslas were charging? This being max 15A seems pretty low.
Yes, I use a similar device.
I’m in Europe so we have 230V @16A on a normal socket. I ask the Tesla users to reduce the charging current a bit. So they use about 3kW/h
It charges about 25-30% over night, but that is often enough for them.
I can also provide 400V @32A but I have no device to measure the consumption.
Yes, we pay €0,30 per kWh
So that would be €12.
I don’t either but I’m old-fashioned enough to think that studies conducted in 5 minutes have little value. The problem for me with these surveys, is that all hosts, all rentals, all guests are different but the studies seem to want an average - there’s no such thing.
Also someone hosting for ten years will be very different to someone who has been hosting for a couple of months.
And then comes out a headline (because I wonder sometimes if they’re not journalists or bloggers really) saying Airbnb hosts think this or Airbnb hosts do that making it seem that we’re all the same.
Mine really is! 
So that would cost me about $6
I am ok with that
RR
The fact that you had a charging station for Tesla enabled you to book a premium customer willing to pay a premium for the property. Absorb their car charging as a business expense…and say, thank you very much.
I don’t have a Tesla chargeing station.
I just offer a socket to plug in at 230V or 400V.
Most Tesla’s are company cars driven by cheapskates. The cost of charging the car is almost half the nightly rate.
They book me because I am cheap, so no way they get to charge for free too.