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We have partners that offer services at our villa (housekeeper will cook, and we have a driver that partners with us). Both of them recently raised their prices a little.
We have an AirBnB guest for early April that I contacted over AirBnB a few days ago to inform her of the price changes. I asked if she wanted me to email those to her (I don’t have her email address) or send her a link to our website where the new prices files are located. I also offered her a full refund if she did not want to stay after reviewing the new prices and cancelled within two weeks (we are on Strict so she’s only entitled to 50%).
In earlier messages, she said she wanted to use both the driver and cooking services, and I gave her the driver’s contact information. I see that she read my message about new prices, but she did not respond. Should I try texting her or just let it go?
Quite honestly, I don’t think you should have contacted the guest about this at all. Guests shouldn’t have prices raised on them after the fact, and I would suggest you pay the difference for already confirmed bookings.
If it were just a matter of a guest having asked you for the average cost of a cook or driver in your area, then letting them know that people have raised their prices, it would be different, but these service providers are part of your team and an optional bookable amenity you offer in your listing.
If a host raises their prices, or changes anything on their listing, it can’t be applied to confirmed bookings, only bookings going forward. I realize that the cook and driver are separate optional services the guest can book or not, but it would still seem unfair to me to change the price on already booked guests and could easily run the risk of leading to a bad review.
If it were me, I would message the guest again and say you have rethought this, and will cover the increased cost yourself.
We get booked up to a year in advance, and I tell all the guests when they book that the prices are set by the housekeeper and the driver and might change before they arrive. I don’t allow them to change prices without at least 90 days’ notice and I allow guests to cancel for a full refund if they don’t like it.
Ah, thanks for explaining that. In that case, I would maybe wait a few more days before nudging the guest to reply.
While the issue for you is getting the guest to cancel ASAP so your calendar opens up if the increased services costs aren’t amenable to them, the guest likely isn’t thinking in those terms and may not be considering cancelling over it, but thinking there is no rush to decide if they want to use a cook and a driver, since their booking isn’t until April.
So if you message her again, which I don’t really see as “bothering”, I would let her know that it isn’t necessary at this point to commit to the extra services, as far as whether, or how often she wants to use them, but that if it’s a booking deal breaker for her, she needs to cancel ASAP if she wants a full refund.
If this situation ever arises again, I would give the guest a timeline on responding in order to get a full refund. As in, "If the increased cost of the optional services is a deal breaker for you, and you want to cancel, I am willing to give you a full refund, rather than the 50% you would normally be entitled to under our Strict cancellation policy, as long as the cancellation is done by XX (date a few days in the future). "
Because the housekeeper and driver are not tech-savvy and I create their pricing documents for them (with the prices and terms they want). And communication is not always clear with them. For instance, if the guests contacted them directly for pricing, the odds are they they would get no answer at all, or “$150” to a question “how much for cooking [driving]?”
90% of guests ask me about how much driver and cook services cost, usually before they book or shortly thereafter. Some potential guests even ask me to price out cooking and driving for their entire stay. I ended up creating the files so I could send it to guests, and, sorry to say, because some guests (years ago) cheated the cook and driver because the prices were not written down.
