Long stay guests

I offer a second story bedroom and bathroom fully private. My listing says arrive earliest 6 pm, leave 10 am. When I get long term guests who stay all day on Saturdays and Sundays, using electricity, shower, kitchen privileges, I want to know how to increase the cost for the weekend stays. I’ve already extended kitchen privileges, which is not mentioned in my listing. They ask for it, and I agree pending total clean up. If anyone can help me address the extra cost on those stay-in weekends, and kitchen privilege issues, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

Set a higher price for Saturday and Sunday on your calendar, regardless of length of stay. Or just raise your rates in general.
As long as you stay competitive.

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Our apartments are self contained and have their own kitchens but I still like to discourage kitchen use as much as possible. It makes turnovers much easier if the kitchens have only been lightly used.

I do this by having as many takeout menus as possible and menus from local restaurants available in the apartments. I show the guests these during the house tour and say something like 'after all, who wants to cook when they’re on vacation? XXX is a great coffee shop for breakfast, these are excellent for lunch…" etc.

Of course, this only works if you genuinely have some great places to eat locally.

If you get those local newspaper things with coupons for food places, leave those for guests too. It’s a good idea (though ecologically unsound, I know) to leave paper plates and mugs, paper towels and cleaning materials. If you don’t want guests in your kitchen have at least a coffee maker and a microwave in their room.

I’m not sure what you mean here? Here’s a link about weekend pricing.

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Thank you, Jackie, for you information. He just started a new job, only 2 blocks from my home (his quarters are on my second floor) and he says he’s on a tight budget having relocated from NYC. From India, I’ve had to steer him away from using high gas heat, oily and other messes, and told him his privileges are contingent on his leaving the kitchen the way he finds it. That’s slipping a bit so I may need to drop him a line on the Airbnb web, so our agreement stays in writing. Maybe it’s just getting a bit annoying, but I’m enjoying the income. Otherwise he’s a nice guy.

It’s great if he’s new to the States, I can see that you might have to go into ‘mom mode’ but it means that you can be quite firm with him and tell him ‘that’s not what we do in the US.’ You can encourage him to tell you about India and his own culture. If as you say he’s a nice guy you’ll probably both enjoy learning more about each others lives.

That’s always a good idea as a just-in-case measure.

Indian food is my favorite. I’ve never had an Indian guest but would gladly clean the kitchen after they cook in exchange for them cooking enough for me, too. :smile:

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Me too. It’s curry night tonight from the local takeout. Then leftover curry for dinner tomorrow. Perfect!

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5 week stay with Indian guests.
After they vacated, walking in the front door, it smelt like an Indian restaurant.
Everything. In the kitchen, from ceiling, walls and cupboard contents had to be cleaned.
All fabrics, curtains, rugs in the house had to be cleaned.
Not my favourite guests!

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We’ve been quite lucky when it comes to guests that not only cook, but invite us to join them :grinning: So far no Indian, or my personal favourite from that region, Pakistani food (and yes, it is different!).

One of the best was an Italian couple travelling with the wife’s sister. They were one of the first guests in that apartment and decided to cook for a couple of the nights while they were here. We were treated to two delightful evenings that included one of the best carbonaras I’ve had for years. We supplied oven fresh bread and wine, and the ladies just kept churning out fantastic food.

A combination of illness and Covid has stopped them coming back for a bit, but we’ve kept in touch and have a natter on WhatsApp every so often. We also have an open invitation to their summer estate on the Amalfi coast…

The one that hasn’t been topped however is a couple who own a small hotel and restaurant in Provence who booked for ten days in March a couple of years ago. They brought four large boxes of kitchen equipment and supplies, their intention being to have a chill, but at the same time come up with some new dishes for the upcoming season.

All I can say is that even the “disasters” were highly edible and B, the husband, was highly receptive to learning more about sherry, and of course sampling what was available.

It took both of our digestive systems a week to get over that one. Waaaaay too much rich food; foie gras, confit duck, sauces heavy with butter and cream, and so on. Add in the supply of French wines they brought, the Spanish wines I introduced them to, the sherries, the brandies…

It was fortunate the other apartment was empty while they were here, god knows what a couple of Spanish guests would have thought!

When they departed, in their large estate car, B had bought somewhere in the region of twelve cases of sherry, and arranged with a supplier to deliver more during the season. It made me think, what kind of menu will they have? French with a touch of Spanish… then I thought nah, this is all for B’s personal consumption!

These are the types of guests I miss right now, OH and I were actually discussing it on Saturday after our Italian friends sent us a load of pics from their granddaughters christening the previous week, which if it wasn’t for Covid, we would have been there.

That ended up a longer post than I intended…

JF

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I don’t think it’s possible for hosts to always have guests who cook foods that they find acceptable. As @muddy and I have said, Indian food - and its smell - is splendid. To us, that is.

Personally what I hate is the smell left by guests who have fried a greasy breakfast before checking out. Going into the apartment to get the turnover done is horrible. And getting rid of the smell is far harder than other smells, the grease globules seem to float in the air. The smell of cooked broccoli is revolting and hard to air out too.

So I guess it’s all a matter of personal taste and as hosts, we’re not here to complain - even though I’d like to ban broccoli eaters! :crazy_face:

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I know hosts locally who have a stipulation that only vegetarian food may be cooked in the kitchens.

I said it’s a Dilbert moment, i.e. someone who wants to be in the hospitality sector, but really doesn’t understand it…

JF

[I’ve edited out the stuff that could identify the hosts]

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Yum :bacon: bacon, bacon, & bacon

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Oh dear—-no bacon :weary:

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Please, don’t go there. Bacon is an issue right now, mainly because all that’s available locally is Spanish bacon, which is essentially shite.

Until we can get to Gibraltar, which may be be months, we are bereft of smoked back bacon. My friend is a butcher, and he makes his own bacon, and it’s nice but it’s three times (at least) the cost in Gibraltar. I hate paying his Oloroso bill.

The shakes… the shudders… bacon jitters.

JF

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I don’t necessarily see anything wrong with that, as long as the host advertises his listing prominently as vegetarian only. There are vegetarian and vegan guests who are looking for listings like that and I’ve seen many posts from guests asking for listing sites to put that in as a filter or category.

But certainly for a host not to make that stipulation clear in the ad and then expect to dictate what a guest can cook is nonsense.

I’ve had several guests who loved to cook, were good at it, and invited me to share. One made a big pot of delicious fish and seafood soup I was eating for 2 days after she left. She said she found it impossible to cook small portions of things like that.

The best was a 3 day guest who arrived back from town a few hours before his check-out with a kilo of prawns, which we peeled together, I supplied the butter and garlic and we had a big glorious greasy prawn fest.

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I’m a half-hearted vegetarian but I can be tempted by one thing … bacon. :slight_smile:

Proper English bacon, crunchy and cooked to perfection. I can be 100% vegetarian, even 80% vegan, for years but get me near to a frying pan sizzling with proper English bacon and I’m a raging carnivore.

Bonkers. As I said above, I’m a 99.999% vegetarian so what if I saw a place advertised that had a stipulation that only meat could be cooked in their kitchen? Hosts are getting very picky.

Do you remember that in 2015 Morrissey had a thing going where he didn’t allow meat at his concert venues? Why do people think that they have the right to dictate what people eat?

When we’ve got half the world needing to be craned out of their homes and moved about on flatbeds because they are so huge and the other half with little food and no clean water, vegetarianism is the least of our worries. (Although it would go a long way towards solving quite a few problems, including that of obesity. Militant bit over).

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He’s a cnut*. Egocentric and his music makes Leonard Cohen sound like ABBA.

*see what I did there :wink:

JF

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The trick is to cook broccoli, brussel sprouts, for less than 5 minutes to prevent hydrogen sulfide smell. Plus greener and crunchier is much better to me!

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If you were here I’d share with you. I’ve got two types of beautiful thick sliced bacon in my freezer—applewood smoked & peppered. Tasty