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In a SHARED situation, so where guests share the house/apartment with the host and possibly other guests, what is the maximum amount of sets of guests that is sensible to put together? Supposing you are not being limited by the amount of space in your current home. Taking into account group dynamics, security, guest satisfaction, … (added) supposing that guests and host have to remain happy about the situation and enjoy a full authentic AirBnB home sharing experience.
A set can be a single person, a couple, a few friends, a family of 4, etc. …
Please participate in the poll and feel free to leave comments and discuss .
Currently we only have one room available for Air in our house and it has a private bath. We are currently looking for a new home with a floor plan that will allow up to 3 Air rooms with a combination of shared/private bathrooms.
We have always wanted to have a traditional Bed and Breakfast but life intervened. Now AirBnb is allowing us to modify our dream within our budget.
I don’t have a traditional job but do various freelance projects so making the time to do it right is possible.
If money were no object, I don’t think we would go beyond 3 - I enjoy the personal interaction and would start to feel like a hotel if there were more than that.
As @SandyToes says on the other thread, looks like the key determinant is bathrooms - whether each set have their own bathroom or they have to share with other strangers.
I stayed in an Airnb in Lisbon that had 5 rooms for guests, two bathrooms, a kitchen and living area. The hosts lived in an apartment next door. Each room had a locking door. The hosts were in and out of the unit day and night, it appeared to be their full time job. Great hosts, friendly and helpful, offered to hold one of my suitcases when I went out of town for a week. They also let me check in hours early refusing my offer to pay extra. Nothing was any trouble for them. It was an inexpensive place, 20-30’€ a night.
This only worked because of the hosts’ energy and personality. What was most important was their generosity of spirit. I do find some hosts who post here are very stingy and mean in their comments and attitude towards guests, I’ve had a few unpleasant and nasty guests, but I don’t take that out in the other guests.
I rent a 3 bedroom place, I’d never have thought of locking off a room or two if only a couple booked. I did have a couple who slept in two of the rooms. All I lost was washing another set of sheets. If a couple want two beds and rent a unit with more than one bed, they should be able to use more than one bed,
Sufficient bath:guest ratio - 2-3people sharing a bathroom is manageable, 4-6 is okay so long as they can coordinate shower times. I can’t imagine anything over that being workable unless you have a hostel/gym locker-room type setup.
Sufficient host to guest ratio - that someone responsible for the condition of the house/property is monitoring things closely enough that they can enforce house rules and maintain a cleanliness standard. I don’t think shared listings where no host is present would work very well as it puts guests in the uncomfortable position of calling another guest out on bad behavior.
If those two things are in place, then it’s just about fridge/kitchen space. Judging on work break rooms, quite a few people (30?) can use a fridge/coffee space so long as they’re only heating things up or storing a single pre-prepped meal in the fridge. If cooking, they’d either need to do communal dinners or be really clear about who has use of the space at different times.
There’s really no limit as long as the place can accommodate all guests comfortably. If you have 50 private rooms with their own ensuite bathroom, sound proof walls, and 5 kitchens/dining rooms, 5 living rooms, elevators, front desk, etc. and everyone is happy - then I don’t see the issue. Maybe I misunderstood the question??
This topic was inspired by you saying in another tread: Only one set of guests for 1 host.
Maybe my question wasn’t clear and it should have included: What is the maximum set of guests for 1 hosts, supposing that guests and host have to remain happy about the situation and enjoy a full authentic AirBnB home sharing experience.
I will add this to my original post .
If the host is also living there we should consider it a home, or a business endeavor within a home.
Yeah…it wasn’t clear that just one host would be there. I was envisioning all the possibilities of turning the Biltmore House into an Airbnb…when you mentioned having unlimited space
I’m sorry I wasn’t clear. I kind of f#@$é€ up my own topic and poll. I just added: .…supposing that guests and host have to remain happy about the situation and enjoy a full authentic AirBnB home sharing experience.
With 50 private rooms, I guess one would get more of a hotel feel than a AirBnB feel. Whatever that feel may be exactly. I realize this is also open for interpretation and up for discussion .
I’ve said ‘two sets’ because that’s my experience! You don’t specify whether the separate guests have to share a bathroom and that’s the real clincher. I sucessfully rented out two rooms in my house - shared bathroom - to separate groups of guests. You have to drop the price accordingly, of course, but it worked very well for me. Now I have a long-term lodger in one of the rooms and do Air in one room. Anything is possible as long as you are explicit in the listing and are on hand to manage things. There are many listings, particularly in big popular cities, that are run like mini-hostels. For example, a four-bedroom appartment that is let out by the room. No host is ever present, everyone shares the bathroom, the cleaner comes every other day if you’re lucky. Such places generally get terrible reviews. I think Air blocked accounts of some such “hosts” in my city because they’ve disappeared.
If you’re an on-site and hosting in your home it’s a completely different experience. When I was listing two rooms I always made sure that both sets of guests knew about each other beforehand. Sometimes they made friends! Mostly they didn’t even meet, though, as the house is big enough to avoid each other. It does take a lot of work, though. Always being there to ensure that one set of guests isn’t annoying the other by leaving the bathroom messy, being noisy, monopolising the dining room etc., Damn, so glad I only do that for a few weeks during peak times these days!
Hmmm ok I understand now. I said the only model I found EASY was one set of hosts one set of guests.
Rated moderate to advanced is having more sets in a property. I wouldn’t want the dynamics personally however if you’re able to provide guests with a consistent, secure and pleasant service, why not? My point was more about ease and as an inexperienced hosts I’d default to one set of guests until I knew more about what I was doing.
One of our recent guests told me that this kind of setup exists. And apparently there are a lot of them here in Lima. I never knew and it shocked me: To me it feels like the worst of all worlds and I would never ever stay in such a place.
Each to their own. I stayed in a place like this is San Sebastián (Spain) during the film festival and it suited me. It was cheap compared to hotel in same location (about $80 a night, vs $400, right on the beach and next door to main film festival cinema). I never sawone other guest though the other rooms were booked and it was a bit anonymous and cold and the bathrooms were not my standard. I also didn’t like the hosts deferral of responsibility about bathroom to other guests with a stupid sign, something along the line of ‘bathroom only as clean as the other guests leave it’ eg not their problem.
I prefer my own space and anonymity when I travel as I have unusual sleep patterns and as I have seen on here, that bothers some hosts or at least causes them concern to comment or intervene or it disrupts their routine so this set up suits me as I don’t have to deal with a live in host and their routine, or the expenses of a hotel or whole air listing. However, if I were staying with a host as friendly as you that would be better!
I look forward to telling you all about my Airbnb at my first stop in US in December, SFO, there is a drum kit in the ramshackle room and everyone in the house has a medical marijuana license!
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and I would never ever stay in such a place.