I provide beach towels. Have never had a guest jack one, but I have had them get covered with sunscreen, gross.
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We provide beach towels, too. About two get lost every year (probably left in the rental car or at the beach), and they last about six months before they get faded or holes in them. We sleep six, so we go through 14 of them a year. I buy them at Costco for $12 each. So about $225 per year (I have to pay duty to import them into St Lucia) - or around $1 per rented night.
Thanks, all! I never did the math before this conversation was startedâŚ
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I get them for half that. Iâm much more low budget. If you get the colored ones with designs they will last longer. I replace them maybe once every two years. I donât have the traffic or number of guests that many of you do, not the price point! 
I do find that oddly enough many of my guests travel with their own beach towels.
I have a notification on my dashboard that they will ask all the hosts to provide linen and towels starting from July. Iâm already providing it, but I know many places, especially ski resorts in Austria, Italy and Slovenia that traditionally do not provide linen and they expect you to bring your own. Or they charge you for it. I wonder whether Air will allow for the service to be provided for a surcharge?
Went into an Ikea during a trip to the US last year and got a few of their cheapest bath towels - I think price was $ 2.49 per towel. Perfect enough for us and any guests for the beach âŚand if you get an ugly color âŚnobody will think twice about taking them on a roadtrip.
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@Inna. Providing linens for a full home rental is not common in many places.
In my area if you rent a entire condo (not room) through an agency there is a linen surcharge of $25-$35 per guest. A linen service leaves a bag of clean at the beginning of a reservation and picks up the bag at the end. Beach towels are not provided.
To save renters the linen fee, budget conscious hosts either donât offer linens or provide but guests must leave them clean & dry.
Airbnb is forcing hosts to offer something that is not the standard for their area.
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I know all of this that you wrote, but my question is whether Airbnb will count it as âproviding linensâ if you, for example, charge guests for the linen service. If yes, then it wonât be a problem, I guess. If they insist that it has to be for free, thatâs way too much meddling into hostsâ practices.
I think itâs wrong to force hosts to do something that has never been standard in an area. But with Airbnb, itâs âjoin or die.â
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Yes, unfortunately. Shouldnât guests decide whether something is value for money? Same goes for the listing who have lower average grade than 4.5 or whatever was their stupid limit. Why threaten to delist them? Many people are happily booking a place even if it has 4 stars overall because it is, for example, very cheap or it has superb location. Or they Why forcing people into upgrading their service if they are working perfectly well with their current arrangement?
I suppose you can always build the linen fee into the listing. But it may be a headache for guests who have always been used to being able to choose to save money by bringing their own⌠and now they donât get that choice.
Because Airbnb has become a brand. They are no longer a home sharing site. As more people use the site and share their experience, tell their friends, and write their blog posts, Airbnb doesnât want reviews that say âI had to bring my own sheets but it was okay because the room was cheap.â Or "itâs worth sharing the dirty bathroom with three other guests to get a place for $40 near the university. " Perhaps in the future a new home share site will be viable.
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No-one is forcing any host to list with them. But for those that do, then we have to abide by their rules in certain aspects of our businesses. We agreed to do that when we joined up. Airbnb has attracted plenty of bad press for years and the company is still trying to overcome that. If itâs seen as being a cut above the rest, then thatâs good. Airbnb is no longer a place for budget travellers and backpackers to find inexpensive places - it went beyond that a long time ago.
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I agree with this⌠and that places far greater expectations on us as hosts who wanted to offer this. If you set youâre price low because your place isnât perfect, you will still get guests who gobble it up at the low price but then crack you because the place wasnât perfect or modern enough for them!
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Why wouldnât there be enough space for both not-so-perfect places and high-end places , and everything in between, on the platform?
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Well, itâs not really up to us. In the last few years it seems that Airbnb has changed its focus to encompass an upmarket brand. With ventures such as experiences, and Airbnb Plus, they seem to be trying hard to get away from the air-mattress-on-the-floor image that they had in their earliest days.
At one time the media appeared to see them as just one step up from couch surfing and it might be that some existing listings donât fit in to their desired image now. Iâm sure (well, I hope!) that thereâll always be a place for an ordinary one bedroom apartment or whatever, but I also think that Airbnb is more interested in promoting the unusual/spectacular/immaculate listings that offer nearly experiences. This way, they can sell the whole package.
Very very astute reading of their strategic planâŚ
Get hosts to raise standards across the board so Air is perceived as a higher caliber choice, one that can compete with the market VRBO has always held
Downward pressure on hosts to lower prices while increasing booking nights. This will result in more nights booked with greater percentages kept by Air.
Pressure hosts to offer or simply force free and flexible cancellations to compete with booking dot who is cutting into their listing inventory and taking listings from them. Eventually go to a free to book model like they have and put the percentage on the hosts, most of whom, who will simply eat it rather than pass on the guest.
None of these things are in any remote way going to be good for hosts in the long run. Itâs a sad state of affairs.
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Akin to the rise of fascism. That did not happen overnight in totality, but in bits and bobs.
They choose not to pay attention to all the red flags these platforms are giving us. All of us should be doing our own websites, especially if we have free standing rentals.
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I think that HA already puts pricing into their search results model. We are ranked number 2 in our market of about 1000 listings, so I tried an âincognitoâ search to see where we ended up in the search order to compare to the ranking.
When searching without dates for two people, we ended up at #140. Since we have a three-bedroom house, our price is rather high for two people (although about a third of our guests are couples looking for a romantic getaway). When looking for 4 people, we are #15, and are #4 when looking for 6 people.
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Really âŚall their precious little marketing names make me want to puke!
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