House Share Idea for Reopening after Pandemic

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My husband and I just talked about what we will do, if we do decide to reopen our house share Airbnb after we’re both vaccinated (plus two weeks, for immunity to occur):

  1. We’ll list one of our two rooms and baths through Airbnb—the one that is further from our master bedroom, and therefore less inconvenient for us to rent out. We’ll raise the price for that room to considerably higher than it was a year ago. Maybe twice what we used to charge. We have no Airbnb (or hotel) competition within about 5 miles. We’ll require a minimum of two nights and a maximum of 14 nights.

  2. We’ll contact our former repeat guests and tell them that they can book with us directly for a price that’s probably closer to what we used to charge. For those guests, we’ll offer both rooms and baths, and I’ll manage the calendars.

We figure this will help protect us from the risks of unpleasant, destructive, or super-demanding guests that many hosts have reported—or bargain-hunting guests. It should also enable us to operate without relying on any support from Airbnb. And it will enable us to build up our direct-book business. We don’t have a website for direct-booking, but people who know us should be willing to use ApplePay or Square or one of the other services.

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We also have a house share and used to host three rooms. We have reduced that to one that is only available to trusted frequent guests. We have don’t have an ensuite but can dedicate one bathroom to the guest and limit interaction by including the room connecting the bath and bedroom in the rental. We increased our rate slightly. If we love an old guest we never raise their rate. We have opened that one room to Airbnb bookings as of July 2021. I have had a few inquiries from guests who have been here once and are looking for accommodations, but we respectfully tell them that we are not open until Summer. We feel a little better now that my husband is fully vaccinated and I will be within a few weeks.

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