Our rental is a two bedroom apartment with one bath, kitchen, living area and with an additional sleeping loft with two twin beds. There is also a queen sized sofa sleeper and we even have an air mattress. We rent the entire space to an individual or up to a group of 10 people. The problem is if there are 10 people staying, we’d like to charge more because more bedding, towels, electricity, etc. will be used vs. just one person staying. At the same time, we charge more for two people staying in two different beds vs. one couple sleeping in one bed. We’ve tried to detail our pricing structure in our listing but people tend not to read that and then feel mislead when charged additional fees for additional beds. It seems the Room Types of Shared Room, Private Room and Entire Apt/Flat is too limited and doesn’t fit our situation. I have it set to Entire Flat as that seems to fit the closest. Here is our listing: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/4549298 Would you please look at the listing and see if it is misleading?
Hi,
In my honest opinion, I think charging more for having additional guests is fine however I think charging different prices based on what bed/bedding configuration guests actually use is petty. You should be making money either way and isn’t it just about washing more bedding, and maybe vaccumming an extra room? Ask yourself, does this extra effort you put in really justify a price difference?
To top it off you’ll leave a bad taste in guests mouths if you have this sort of policy, so guests will think twice about booking your property and will look for guest friendlier alternatives. Guests will also mention it in their reviews too if they do happen to stay and the situation turns nasty.
Anyway, a friend’s solution to your dilemma is that you lock access to a bedroom if the guests don’t need it. You can also have 2 different listings to cope with the diffetent kinds of parties, but you have to remember to continually update your calendars.
Good luck.
I recommend charging per bed rather than per guest.
As the others mentioned, I think it is a bit confusing and unfair to charge based on sleeping arrangement rather than guests. Linda makes a good suggestion that you just lock the other room if you don’t want a guest using it but you need to make that clear when a request is sent.
The other option is to increase your Airbnb cleaning fee and charge based on guests. I’m assuming that’s the primary reason you want to charge for sleeping arrangement rather than guests so if you add the extra cost into the cleaning fee, that should help cover the extra work if you have to clean the other room.
I agree with the others. Definitely don’t try to “trick” guests as they will be disappointed and give you a bad review. Better to be transparent. Our rule of thumb is to only list actual beds or sleeper sofa beds on the Airbnb account. For your place, it sounds like there are 4 beds and 1 sleeper bed, plus one couch that doesn’t have a sleeper bed and an air mattress. In that case, I’d say it has 5 beds but can accommodate more people. When you say beds, people generally assume a normal bed or sleeper sofa.
For extra guests, we generally recommend not charging until after the number of beds you have. So if you have 5 beds, only charge for guest above 5. Otherwise, people will often feel duped.
Thanks for everyone’s input. We’ve have locked access to the other bedroom but unfortunately that doesn’t solve the confusion before they make the reservation. We are trying to be fair by charging people less if they aren’t going to use more beds. I’m seriously perplexed! For example, if two people stay in the king sized bedroom, it’s about $100 a night vs. two people sleeping individually in the king sized bedroom and the queen sized bedroom, which is about $200 a night. On the other hand, if four people are staying in the two bedrooms, it’s still about $200 a night. Isn’t that reasonable? If two people stay at a traditional B&B and want two private rooms, they would be charged separately. In my mind, this isn’t any different but it seems the consensus here this is petty and unfair. Please, can you provide a little more insight as to why charging by the number of beds used is not fair? Thanks so much for your time!
SleepyCreek,
If I saw that in your listing, as a guest it would turn me off right away. That being the charge for two people is the same as four people, yet for a couple, its cheaper. That would just say to me, that you discourage single people, and really only want couples.
For my house, I just use the cleaning fee to deal with the use of another bed/towels etc. Otherwise the pricing structure gets too complicated. And my per night rate is more appealing.
i don’t think it looks petty at all to charge more for more bedrooms. I do the same and it hasn’t been an issue although I’ve had only 14 booked visits. I advertise my lowest rate which is for the 1 br (one or two ppl staying in the 1 br is the same cost). If the 2nd bedroom is needed, that’s an additional fee (although not twice as much, I charge an 50% more). Most people rent the 1 bedroom and I lock the second bedroom. It is definitely more work to have to do additional laundry and pay the cleaner to do an additional room. I’m not sure what other posters are talking about and your listing doesn’t look active anymore so I can’t see the description. I can share my description with you if you ever come back to read this post!
Chicagohost, I’d really like to look at your listing and description. Can you please share? We’ve taken down our listing because of this issue until I can decide on a solution where we aren’t losing money nor overcharging. I don’t relish creating a listing for every single pricing scenario depending on the sleeping arrangements and then trying to keep up with blocking each calendar with every booking since the Google calendar sync has never worked for us. It seems silly to have a base price but then add a cleaning fee for each additional bed used. If the base price is $100 (for two people in one bedroom), and they want to have six people stay, the cleaning fee would be $300 - $400 additional. That would be a red flag to me as a guest and would cause me to pass on making a reservation. BTW, our last Airbnb guest said our “communication of the rules and pricing structure was overkill as we communicated it multiple times” (via the listing, the confirmation, the house rules and then verbally upon check-in). Feels like we can’t win.
We’ve changed our policies and pricing so that we have a base rate for two people regardless of the number of beds used. It simplifies things so much on so many levels! Thanks to everyone who gave an opinion. We’ve had to increase the price a little so as to not lose money with the potential in increase cleaning costs. So far, no new inquiries or bookings but hopefully… Thanks again.
Sleepycreek, for what it’s worth, I completely agree that charging for extra rooms is appropriate - it is a lot more cleaning and laundry. The way Chicagohost does it - by an extra fee per person after 2 is the best way given the options given by airbnb. It’s a bit hard to do it for two people that want to use two different rooms, but I wouldn’t feel too worried about saying in my listing that if more than one bed is required for a two guests booking it will incur the extra charge.
Personally I would only advertise my home for as many guests can sleep in the real beds in it, but that’s me.
Wow Helen, I had to be nosy and look too. I adore your gorgeous pic with you and that beautiful baby (and beautiful you). Great reviews! I really believed you had a basement apartment, but those windows look ground level! You’ve made the apartment really lovely, and are by all accounts very lovely too. Well done!!