Hi Folks, I have a small 600 sq ft guest house. For the past year, the different guests that booked for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and then Easter; all had “family over for dinner”. Each guest booked only for 2 or three nights, but over the holiday. Each guest did ask me in advance, I went over guidelines. There were no behavioral or noise issues. My problem is the sheer logistics. The garbage amount was huge each time. 3 to 4 large 30 gallon garbage bags. Kitchen tidied but not clean, so I had to take apart the full size refrigerator and kitchen range to de- grease and clean. All the furniture moved into other rooms and not put back. Small yard dicondra packed down with foot traffic. Tile floors trashed with food bits and residue.
My question is, Do I charge a “Holiday meal” fee? I realize I can just say no. I would like to see a way to incorporate it into my fee schedule.
Do you charge a cleaning fee? If you do, then you can increase it to cover the extra expense of cleaning.
Jack the price up at holidays. You can adjust the price by date but not the cleaning fee.
If you feel the extra work is only because of the extra people, you could request a per-person extra guest fee to help cover it. Lots of hosts say that requesting/collecting these fees can be a bit of a headache, though, and you also have to deal with the problem that the guests don’t necessarily know how many people will actually show up until the last minute.
If it happens only on specific holidays, then @KKC 's suggestion of raising your rates for those days (or the weekends closest to those days) is a good solution. Just choose a rate that you feel comfortable with.
You can charge for extra services
Make it clear in the “other things to note” section, holiday meals are possible for an extra fee (if people other than paying guests are invited from outside). State the fee and what it includes.
Also have an exchange in writing about it at the time of booking so there are no surprises.
And send the charge through before their arrival.
I do not accept this kind of booking, too much work and potential trouble for a 2 night stay!
I love holiday bookings because we charge up to one and a half times our usual rate. Yes, sometimes if a guest is entertaining the kitchen needs extra work but it’s a good excuse to give it a really thorough deep clean . Same day turnovers mean that sometimes kitchen cleaning jobs can be done hurriedly.
If you’re getting a decent price for those dates, some extra cleaning and garbage shouldn’t be a problem.
If you institute a NO UNREGISTERED GUESTS rule, they can’t have guest over. Problem solved.
Ranchlife, you might want to adjust your availability settings for the holidays to avoid those dreaded 2 or 3 night reservations over the holidays.
Just set the holiday periods to a minimum of days that makes you happy. And then raise the price as KKC suggested to make you even happier. And if guests want to have ‘family over for dinner’, well let them know you are happy to allow it, but you will charge an extra cleaning fee to make you even happier.
Now, if you don’t get an reservation with those new parameters, just relax them bit by bit until you get a taker.