Hi Folks; We live in a small town house in Lancaster, UK, and do old school AirB&B - Superhosts for two years - the guests have our spare bedroom and share the bathroom with us. Due to our increasing age (70+) we’re converting our garage into an ensuite bed and bathroom. When we have guests we’ll move down from our bedroom to the new room. Guests will still have the spare room, but they’ll no longer have to share the bathroom with us - they’ll have sole use. The question: should this be reflected in the rental cost? We charge £35 per night for a single person, £40 for a couple (we’re on the cheap side for the area) - would an increase of say £5 per night be too much - or too little?
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Perfectly reasonable. 2 of my rooms are doubles, one shares the main bathroom and the other is en-suite. The en-suite room is £10 a night more expensive than my shared double.
I’d pay an extra £5 for a private bath. Try it out and see how your bookings go!
You’ll see a drop in bookings or your “value” rating when you start pushing the max price for your area.
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You should be charging the highest price that gives you the occupancy you want. Let the market determine the price.
After I remodeled to give the guests a private entrance and ensuite bathroom I found that I didn’t get much pricing power. That is, if I wanted to be booked most of the time I couldn’t really raise my price. What I clearly got were more bookings. So if you need the money and don’t mind frequent turnovers keep your price on the low side and you will make more because you have more business with a bathroom that isn’t shared. I think £5 increase is a good starting point, you may be able to get more.
You mentioned moving rooms. Have you considered letting the guest have the new remodeled space? Guests love new and ensuite. And if you could have any way to give them a private entrance into the room that’s a bonus. I think that would give you even more pricing power.
If you simply want to keep doing airbnb as you have and about the same number of nights a year but make a little more money then your plan is the best.
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Thanks - the garage we’re converting will have only one entrance, a door into the kitchen - in the long term we intend using it owing to probably increasing infirmity, abandoning our top floor. We had thought about giving guests the new room, but thought they might find it strange accessing it from the kitchen?
That makes sense. If I were you I’d probably just go ahead and move into the ground floor room rather than moving down there when you have guests. Accessing the ensuite room via the home through the kitchen or elsewhere doesn’t seem odd. But then you would probably have to be quieter because it would be right next to the guest room. It seems if you live downstairs and the guest has the upstairs they will have more privacy. Many guests value privacy over other features.
Thanks - yes, that’s basically the idea. When we don’t have guests we’ll sleep in our main bedroom on the second floor - when we have guests we’ll decamp down to the ground floor. As you say, this gives the guests total privacy to engage in noisy sex, etc.
@southendbootboy Malcolm, why would a couple cost more than a single person?
We charge £35 per night for a single person, £40 for a couple
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To cover extra hot water and double the quantity of breakfast (cereal, fruit, yoghurt, home-made bread, home-made jam, croissants, real coffee, &c).
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I also have a small second person charge most of the time ranging between $4-10. I don’t offer breakfast but I find two people usually use two towels, run the heat or AC more, drink more bottled water, eat more snacks, leave more garbage make a bigger mess, etc. My rate is in the $40-50 a night range. I host many one night guests and have no cleaning fee. If I got $110 a night and had a two night minimum with a $40 cleaning fee I wouldn’t bother with a $5 per night extra person charge.
Why not just charge £40 for the space, whether one person sleeps there or two? Makes more sense – charging for a room to sleep in, not whether one or two people sleep there.
I tend to agree with KenH, guests are renting the space and it would make more sense to raise the price, unless, naturally, most guests stay by themselves and not with a travel companion…
@southendbootboy The new home set-up should probably not reflect on a higher rate but on higher number of bookings as not every traveler considering your property would have wanted to share a bathroom with the hosts…am I wrong?
Ken - we get a 50/50 mix of singles and couples. One of the most pernicious things in the tourist industry is singles saying “why should I - a single person - pay as much as two people do for the same facility?” Our costs of hosting a single are less than they are for hosting a couple, so it’s only fair that should be reflected in the price.
MissMiami - thanks - as I said in my posting, we’re elderly (70+) and a bit infirm. To be frank, at the moment we get as many bookings as we can comfortably handle - 12 to 15 nights per month - we don’t really want more bookings as then AirBnB would start to get like a full-time job and, being both retired, we have quite a few other activities we wish to pursue. We’re quite old school, I think.
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Yay Lancaster! Eccles here. Now that I am in Canada I found a lot of people from the Middle East and South Asia want private loos. Whether they will pay more is moot, but give it time. I stand to be corrected, but is this a private unit? Does’nt overlap with any of your space? Definitely a bonus.
Go for the increase. It’s perfectly reasonable to charge at least 6 pounds more.
You having said that, I would definitely charge more, personally, I’d be happy to pay more to not share a bathroom.