Minimum Stay Strategy - Worth it really? + Should Thu and Sun be part of 'Weekend'?

21

Hey Jaquo,

What is the option to get Muddy and Rolf to stop harassing posts. Is there any way to get Terms of Service enforced? They are relentless and highly personal in their attacks. Is there any effective moderation that can address this behaviour? I would be keen to engage with any moderation to help keep things focussed on hosting. Can you assist at all? Or advise where one may seek assistance? There seems many dozens of personal attacks - and other examples of TOS violations. Is flagging helpful? I’ve flagged many of their posts but no reply so far. Any help would be appreciated. I’d prefer to keep things focused on hosting tips, not asking my two apparent stalkers to tone it down lol.

22

Where did you get that idea? All the hosts I know, and those whose practices I’m aware of because they have mentioned them on hosting forums have cleaning fees that reflect exactly what they pay their cleaners or themselves for cleaning.

(This is not a personal attack nor trolling. It is challenging ideas you put forth as some sort of facts, without anything to back it up)

3 Likes
23

I AM the person who responds to flagged posts. I have seen your flags. Please ensure that you read this forum extensively so that you get to know the people you are talking to.

5 Likes
24

No comment necessary.

2 Likes
25

A large number of hosts do their own cleaning. It’s normal. Myself included many times. This is earned income. Is this what you mean by ‘profit’ from cleaning? And if hosts spend hours managing cleaners, doing supply runs, sorting lost property, checking up on cleaning standards with spot checks… this is all part of cleaning, and is paid to the host. Regardless if the host also cleans, or does all the associated cleaning work like buying cleaning supplies etc - they earn this money.

What do you mean by profit on cleaning. It sounded like you were suggesting that work done for cleaning should not be paid? Or that there is some issue with profit / income from cleaning?

If I am a cleaner, I want more cleans. As a host, I earn money from cleaning as well, together with my cleaner. Sometimes cleaning with them, sometimes myself alone, and sometimes not - but still doing a lot of work ‘cleaning’ even on the admin side as that can be significant too in a large house.

I don’t see there should be any problem earning from cleaning fees if you are also working for it. Can you clarify your comments on profit from cleaning? That is a good thing right? More work is more income?

26

How many times do you need the same thing clarified? Income - expenses= profit. If a host cleans themselves and factors their cleaning time into their charges to guests, that is an expense, earned income, not profit. If they charge a cleaning fee of $250 but only pay their cleaner $200, they are making a $50 profit off the cleaning fee.

And supply runs, managing cleaners and other employees, sorting lost property, etc., are not part of “cleaning”- they are time spent by most hosts, to be factored in as expenses to arrive at the nightly fee and other charges, so as to end up with the profit you wish to make.

1 Like
27

Fair enough on your view - but seems we can agree to differ here.
I also realise now I have for years listed it as a Linen fee, as the cleaning fee is technically zero, but it’s more a $245 charge per stay. So I guess it’s a bit moot point if it’s not even classified as cleaning. It helps to discourage single night bookings, as I want them more expensive - and this is a simple approach.

I checked Grok and ChatGPT, both are clear, and also they referenced many forums too.

And I didn’t even consider cleaning supplies themselves, electricity, and so on - which are all directly part of cleaning. I think as long as the fee is reasonable, it should not directly cover the cleaners time - it should cover all associated expenses involved with managing cleaning.

Interesting that if you get a cancellation, the Linen fee is waived, which is fair - same as Cleaning fee. I’d prefer there was a way to say there is a ‘Per booking’ fee, as I agree it can be misleading. Still it is a big benefit to any Self-Clean guests as they can avoid this fee entirely if they want to take on the work.

image
image1561×799 68.9 KB

28

OMG, it’s almost sad to see this thread. I stopped reading long ago. It seems like several people here don’t have a thing better to do than snipe at each other.

5 Likes
29

Interesting observation to add here. Another poster here was commenting on should cleaning fees be what a host ‘pays’ - which was a helpful insight to review this area. While I don’t agree with this on several grounds - it gave me a new way to think about Min Stay settings.

My cleaning fees are wildly varying, as I sometimes pay $40 ph, sometimes $50 and sometimes $70 even. It depends on which cleaner does it, and there is no way to know before hand, or even an average. In university holidays I might be more likely paying the least, my regular is in the middle, and sometimes if they are not available I pay a larger commercial firm which is most expensive. Couple this with the cleaning duration ranging from 3hrs as a min, to sometimes over 5hrs (As it’s 5 bed, not just 1 bed, with varying guest numbers) - and sometimes it’s double rate on Sunday.

So given the cleaning fee can be frequently $100 variance, and sometimes $200 or more, it’s not possible to set it to an ‘exact’ value - quite apart from there being many other cleaning activities that need to be factored in above what any staff member is paid.

HOWEVER - Consider setting Min Stay to only Fri+Sat. This arrangement is common, and yet it BIASES the cleans to be a Sunday. This is problematic on several levels. It could be double the cleaning expense because it’s a Sunday. Even if not, it’s much harder to get cleaners on a Sunday I find, as they often have children, and even if they can, they seem to like it less in general.

For this reason we might want a setting to DISCOURAGE a booking that is Fri+Sat as it could increase costs or make scheduling cleans harder. I had set my ‘2 night min stay’ to cover Thursday to Monday, to try to allow more flexibility in bookings, and (now) also because I don’t think it’s so helpful to use this setting for Fri+Sat, due to how it biases towards a Sunday clean.

So it was helpful to discuss this area on what constitutes a cleaning fee, as it helped me realise the Mon-Stay link with ‘Sunday cleaning is a problem’!

So I have to thank @Muddy for her engaging on this area, which is the second time I have realised some really good helpful hosting tips from her, even if indirectly from discussions on general hosting activities. Great when we can focus discussions on ‘hosting activities’ - and I get value from this forum and would also like to encourage more diversity in engagement of different views.

30

Yes. I am sorry. I acknowledge I should not have engaged like this here. I am worried that sniping comments are exactly as you suggest - annoying others and turning them off, so I finally wanted to speak up. But yes - I recognise I should have just ignored the personal comments, and sorry you had to see all this content, which I also accept I should have not engaged in either.

I did have another member who feels the same suggest to me via DM. He said how I can set ‘ignore’ in settings - to members here who we may personally feel not contributing in a healthy manner. I was keen to find this setting, but seems it’s not available to me for some reason, which is a shame.

It would be good to have more active moderation activity here, or allow deletion of e.g. personal abuse spam comments. It was wrong for me to start engaging on that level too, but perhaps it may help highlight the issues which have been occurring, and maybe help address it. I value all comments about hosting, even from those who may not like my hosting strategies - so long as it’s not personal or impolite.

This is a good forum generally - and I would love to keep focus on professional hosting strategies, so I take your view on board, appreciate and apologise, and will work on my part of not engaging with such comments in future. :pray:

31

Your very first post on this on interesting and worth the effort of reading. It made me think about what I do and why and that is always a good thing. But really, have you never heard of ‘flogging a dead horse’?

It is great that you have an approach that works for you, but to keep on writing whole essays about the same thing as though it is something we should all be equally enthusiastic about feels like bordering on fanatical.

My self limiting beliefs haven’t stopped my business from being successful but I would never try to convince others than my approach is the best or only one. It is the best for me and my guests and that is quite enough.

6 Likes
32

Totally agree! I’ve been wondering why this board seems to be overrun with these diatribes lately. Jacque?…:thinking:

33

For me, it’s pretty simple.

All of your preparation costs; cleaning, laundry, maintenance, hospitality, etc. are paid for in the first day or two of a stay. Therefore, the longer the stay, the more profitable it should be.

I don’t charge a cleaning fee or any other fees.

However, my market is probably unique in some ways, as we are lucky to be located in an extremely popular tourist destination that has no challenge attracting bookings year round. If we need the place to be free - to conduct upgrades or maintenance or whatever - we have to block it or else it will be booked. It’s that productive.

We have a different tourist demographic in summer vs. winter, so we have a different model in those seasons.

Summer is 7 night minimum stay, single price for the entire villa (sleeps 8 pax). This model is for the vacation set. Families, multiple families, professional groups, etc. It’s deliberately priced to be unattractive to party animals or other irresponsible character of guest, who generally search for whatever is cheapest rather than what they find most attractive. It’s not a guarantee, but we have precious few problems with guests. And in summer, it WILL be booked at full price, guaranteed. Usually summer is fully booked before the end of April.

Winter is 5 night minimum stay, with a rather pricey base price for the first 2 pax, and a more reasonable per-person price for every additional pax. This model inherently attracts the winter demographic, which is golfers, cyclists, equestrians, and people just wanting to get away from the cold north - often working remotely. We get a surprising number of older couples, usually golf couples for 2-4 week bookings - because they can’t golf in the snow. They like having a whole house to themselves. It feels like home. And they like having the space and bedrooms to accommodate friends and family that come to stay for a few days here and there. But they aren’t all long term guests in winter. We get a lot that are seeking a quick getaway from the cold north, and they tend to be more last minute (30 days or less advance). Hence the 5 day minimum instead of 7.

So, in my case, a minimum stay is very important. But back to the bottom line: All of your prep costs are paid for with the first day’s revenue, so I’d think that for many hosts, at least a 3 day minimum would be a wise decision - if your offerings and market can support that.

34

Good strategy having a high price for only two, then charging extra per person. It seems your place suits min stay requirements. Most of my bookings are only one or two nights, so if I set a min of three, I doubt I would get booked much at all as I rarely have 3 night bookings.

Good strategy to vary the min nights ‘by season’ though.

PriceLabs can do this too I think, dynamically vary the price as well as min stay range - so it could get you higher rates for 7 nights, but if gaps it can lower the rate automatically OR the min night stay (e…g to 5) to fill gaps that didn’t rent at the higher rate. I was always sceptical of pricing tools after seeing Airbnb’s Smart pricing being so poor (designed to maximise their income, not yours IMO) - but PriceLabs is far better and clearly pays for itself I find.