Wondering what unique services you offer in addition to renting your place?
I used to have wine available for purchase until someone put in the review:
Late checkout for a fee, wine for sale? Seems kind transactional…
No more wine, no more early or late checkout.
RR
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Also selling alcohol requires a liquor license.
I don’t like the idea of upselling things to guests. They have already paid you for accommodation, and many guests might feel like your reviewer did- that the host is trying to extract more money from them.
However, I don’t see anything wrong with hosts having some additional service a guest could take advantage of if they chose. For instance the host is a yoga instructor and offers yoga classes for a fee. Or area tours.
I think that would come across differently than charging for food or drink.
But charging for food and drink could be viable depending on how it’s done. One host I know who lived within short walking distance of a park on a lake, offered, for a fee, to provide a picnic lunch for guests. She had a little menu they could choose from, where they could indicate what beverages, types of sandwiches, fruit, etc. they preferred, and packed it all attractively in a nice picnic basket, complete with a cloth to spread out and nice cloth napkins.
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I would be concerned about the potential for liability, not so much as violating a liquor license law but the potential for me to be sued if the guest’s judgment was impaired by the liquor and got into an accident, hurt someone/themselves, fell off the wagon, that kind of thing.
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We say not to respond to reviews but it’s so tempting to say, “of course it is, just like booking the Airbnb was.” Every time you post about that person I think not only did they piss you off but they took money out of your pocket. Maybe you weren’t profiting from the wine (ya know, you aren’t really selling it if you aren’t making a profit and you want to stay on the right side of the law) and the early or late check outs were perhaps more hassle than you could charge for. But it seems to me that they more than “got even” for their gripe.
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I saw on TikTok someone offering decorating services, like if it’s an anniversary or birthday trip, decorating the Airbnb with balloons, flowers, etc. so I’m not really talking about charging for drinks or snacks
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Our housekeeper offers cooking services.
We have a driver that partners with us.
And our housekeeper’s niece will come to the villa and give guests massages (she’s a certified masseuse).
We don’t take a cut on any of these. We’re fortunate to be far more well-off than our employees/partners, and we make enough on the rental cost to pay the mortgage and expenses and even make some money.
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We have a ‘full’ kitchen and I’ve thought of offering a service where a cook would be familiar with our facilities and be able to coach a guest on simple recipes they could make here, farmers markets available [I have a list].
My idea to test this concept was for me to initially just offer this as a freebie (I was hoping to pay in the $50 ballpark for a free 30-45 minute telephone or Zoom session) with the guest paying thereafter. If I found there was demand for the service I’d re-price it to at least breakeven if not make a profit. I’ve contacted one online nutritionist/chef I liked but she said she was offering her services to name-type companies where the potential was much greater.
So I haven’t pursued this further yet.
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Cool ideas!! Do u advertise this on your Airbnb site? Does Airbnb take a cut from it?
Bahahaha yes because it is a transaction. Geez how annoying.
But yeah as an anthropologist I am very aware of how gift economies work within capitalist economies, and having a gift transaction within a capitalist transaction creates a new set of expectations for everyone.
So, if you explicitly charge for wine, even if they don’t buy it, they’re thinking: “She wanted to charge us for wine!” BUT, if you provide a bottle of wine “for free” but incorporate that into your pricing structure, then some guests won’t even drink the wine (lots of mine leave behind half the things in the gift basket I provide), but EVERYONE will think to themselves, “Wow, how nice, they left me a gift!” Even though that gift is part of what they paid for.
And then, on top of that, they now feel obligated toward me (this is the basic principle of gift economies: a gift appears to be free but in fact creates a sense of obligation that is more powerful than any market transaction). So they now feel more pressure to keep the place clean, as their “gift” back to me, and also to give me a good review.
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Honestly it is easier not allowing late/early check ins and even though I had the wine out for a dozen guests at least nobody bought it so there is that.
RR
I would love to read more about this. Is there a book do you recommend?
In particular I really like how the airline and hotel loyalty programs provide something that costs them very little but is very valuable to the consumer.
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Clearly this was the case.
RR
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My listing says cooking, massage, and driving services are available for an extra cost. No, AirBnB is not a party to the transaction. I’m not a party, either, although I do provide payment services for the convenience of the guest. They can use their credit card to pay me, and I send money to the Caribbean to pay the cook, driver, or masseuse for them.
The upside is that most guests appreciate the services and not having to carry a lot of cash. The downside is that our reviews bear the brunt of any disappointments with those services.
One set of guests was unhappy that our driver picked up our night caretaker when he was taking the guests up the hill. We live at 550 feet elevation and our night guy is in his mid-60’s and it’s a hike to walk all the way up from sea level where the road starts. The wife objected, saying she paid “good money” for the taxi ride and it should not have been shared. The “taxi” was a van that seats eight and the guests rode in the back and the night guy in the front.
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OMG be careful what you ask for – I’m having to restrain myself from launching into a tedious lecture about gift economies that would immediately put most people on this forum to sleep.
Okay yeah I’m not known for my restraint or my conciseness 
, so here’s a mini-lecture:
Sociocultural anthropologists all consider one of their core texts to be Marcel Mauss’s book, The Gift. Mauss analyses how gifts have the illusion of being “free” but they are never free – in fact, they are the opposite of free, because they create a very powerful social obligation that is hard to resist. Thus, gifts are what bind society together.
One of the conditions of a gift is that it can’t be immediately returned, or it’s a market transaction. So, if your friend gives you a present on your birthday, you don’t immediately give them something back. (Think how weird that would be!) You wait until their birthday and then you gift them something. For half a year, you are expecting to have to return that gift, and they are also expecting it (even if only subconsciously). It binds you together in friendship. If someone gave you a present and then you immediately gave them the cost of that present, then that would end the transaction and you can each go your own way. But by waiting to return the gift, you are now bound in a social relationship over time, because of the promise of a future transaction.
(This, by the way, is why advice columns are always full of questions and drama about gifts: gifts that are too expensive make people uncomfortable because they have a tacit understanding that they’ll have to return that gift in the future and they’re not sure if they can, or want to. Gifts that are too cheap or thoughtless communicate to people that the friendship isn’t what they thought it was.)
Airbnb (and the tourism economy in general) is entirely premised on the enmeshing of gift and market economies. The host provides a service that people pay for transactionally, but the host also, typically, provides a social/gift exchange within that market transaction – friendliness, advice, gift baskets, rides to the bus station – that the guest perceives as a gift and that socially binds host and guest together. That’s what results in the ridiculous situation of an average rating of 4.7 stars even when people provide substandard services. People are giving ratings that assess / respond to the social connection, not to the service provided.
(And that’s why, in my neighbourhood, the worst Airbnb ratings are inevitably the listings that are hosted by a management company. Objectively, they’re probably no worse than my listing, and maybe much better. But people make a connection with me, and I give them gifts, and thus their reviews respond to that, while politely ignoring the fact that I don’t offer parking or air conditioning.)
Now to get to @RiverRock 's situation: in that case, guest and host were each operating under different ideas of how the gift economy / market transaction should be combined. RiverRock knows that we are operating businesses and rationally saw the late check out, wine, etc. in those terms. They were charging for the wine so that only people who want wine pay for it. It’s logical, and it’s actually considerate! Teetotallers aren’t having their price jacked up for wine they won’t drink.
But meanwhile, the guest was thinking, “This is Airbnb, not a hotel! I’m a ‘guest,’ not a ‘customer’! So I’m not paying for the mini-bar!” They probably got a free bottle of wine at another Airbnb and so felt cheated by the idea they’d have to pay for it now – even though they’d be paying for it one way or another.
What I’ve seen on this forum is that everyone has a subconscious understanding of the value of “gifts” in ABB transactions, even when it is simultaneously at odds with our understanding of ABB as business. That’s why so many of us provide gift baskets. We do it to build a personal, non-transactional relationship with the guest, even though of course it’s a transaction. But the facade of it not being transactional translates into better reviews and more business, just like the fiction that a gift is free is, paradoxically, what makes it the opposite of free! You don’t have to return it, which is what makes you feel obligated to return it.
Here are three articles you might find relevant: https://www.timreview.ca/article/1215 and Purchasing Behavior in Embedded Markets | Journal of Consumer Research | Oxford Academic and Place Attachment in Commercial Settings: A Gift Economy Perspective | Journal of Consumer Research | Oxford Academic . The first one is free (see what I did there? haha I mean it’s open access) and the second two are behind paywalls but if anyone wants to read them, let me know and I’ll download them through my university library and can e-mail to you. Just a gift from me to you 
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A year or so ago @JJD ran a poll on this forum that showed that ~37% of those Hosts responding offered free treats. We hadn’t been doing that but did have some pantry items for the guest who might have arrived too late to grocery shop (though we offer at no charge to take in and put away groceries ordered by, say, Instacart). Yet we didn’t seem to get any ‘credit’ for these free pantry items and very few takers on our offer to take in groceries.
So we started putting treats in a three-tiered kind of basket on the kitchen island. We put KIND bars, jerky, peanut M&Ms, mint patties, Biscotti cookies, some nuts, dried fruits, even Altoids (peppermint!) and gum. Also a local Worcester treat: Mrs. Marconi’s ice cream. All of a sudden our reviews’ comments talked about how generous we were as Hosts, and about the treats even when many guests didn’t partake or much partake of them. So I see this as an example of the gift economy.
We also went out of our way to create a house manual with annotated pictures showing how to use appliances and remote controls, including also QR codes on appliances that linked to manuals or even YouTube videos on using the appliances, as well as labels that prompted how best to use, or where to push a button. I think guests see this as a kind of gift, a demonstration of caring. [Guests love annotated pictures.]
Reciprocity is basic to human nature. So when you do things like this people reciprocate. We’ve received comments in private feedback that could easily have been used to downgrade us but guests usually have chosen not to do so because, I think, they see that we’re trying hard to please them.
None of this is a guarantee; nothing is. But in more than five years of hosting we’ve never had a food smear on our sofa. Of course, we could simply be lucky and incorrectly concluding that our actions were the cause of our luck – that’s a common cognitive bias. But I really think that the ‘gift economy’ approach has validity and helps. In the long run, I think such freebies – gifts – reduce our costs and increases the perception of value.
I also discovered that presentation matters. We don’t seem to get credit for pantry items or even Mrs. Marconi’s ice cream in the freezer, but we do get outsized credit for that three-tiered basket they see first thing when entering the property.
Others here have remarked the credit they get for a simple board saying ‘Welcome [name of guest]’. Like any gift, it really is the thought that counts (but it costs about the same to make it really good).
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Unreal. I’m so glad I don’t get entitled guests like this. Maybe she didn’t like the “type” of person she had to share the ride with, hm? Riding with “the help”.
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These were people that missed the numerous references to “the staff”. I also went above and beyond by bringing two bottles of “champaign” (his spelling) from the US for them and our housekeeper arranged for a dozen red roses for the wife’s birthday to be at the villa when they arrived. They reimbursed us for those but didn’t pay us for our time.
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My family and quite a few other people I know have gotten away from the feeling of obligation to buy gifts at times like Xmas. Between overconsumerism, climate change, and difficult economies, this holiday gift giving had gotten out of hand, like you go shopping with a list feeling you have to get a gift for this person but if you give this person a gift, you also have to give that person a gift.
And it’s not like you’re just out shopping and just happen to see something and think, “Oh, Susie would love that”, buy it, stash it, and give it to her when her birthday rolls around. It’s like a chore, going shopping with a list of people you have to buy things for.
I like the thing some families do or friends do which is to put everyone’s name in a hat and you just buy one gift, for that person. So everyone buys and gets one gift.
In my family, we decided years ago that Xmas presents were only for the kids, not the adults. Getting together for food and drink is plenty good enough.
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This guy sounds like chamPAINintheass.
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