A villa is anything not being an apartment or such in Sweden. 
I do get some but our area of the world is not listed as one of the must sees of what to do when you visit Australia. Itâs a big country with vast distances between large cities. Most international guests visit Melbourne and nearby suburbs, the Great Ocean Road and the penguins. Then they move onto the next state they are visiting.
Our pocket of the state is listed well down the must sees when you visit Victoria. Our area is popular with Melbourne and suburbs guests looking for a short break close to home.
We are similar. Although we have two airports that are fairly near, many people fly into Orlando because itâs cheaper. Thatâs over three hours drive away. But the road trip in a rented car is part of the fun.
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Thank you for all that information. I really appreciate the information you have given me and the time you have taken to write it. Unfortunately Amazon hasnât been a huge success in Australia yet. It was to take off last Christmas but fell flat with high prices and other problems and hasnât become a market force here yet.
I should have added that I manage the maintenance when they owners arenât available but as they are trades people themselves with industry contacts they prefer to look after it themselves.
I based my 20% on market research I did when I opened the business and I wouldnât feel right about increasing my fees on my existing clients as we have had agreements for quite a while and they know I donât do this for the money. However I do think I might creep it up to 22% if I take on any clients in the future.
Can you copy and paste some interior photos without sharing the listing?
Is this a hot tub? Idoor or outdoor? I didnât think you could put bubble bath in those.
Do you empty and fill after each reservation?
Do you take 1 night rentals?
This is not mine but it is very similar to this but not as large: 
They are in covered courtyards which is accessed through double glass doors from the main area. They are fully enclosed and are heated and air conditioned. We supply the bubble bath and ask them to only use the natural product that we supply.
They are essentially over sized baths, between each guest they are emptied (we ask the guest to do this as it freaks the cleaner out having to put her hand in dirty bath water to pull the plug!!), thoroughly cleaned and the pipes disinfected with a product that is specially designed for this purpose.
We did have the perfectly horrible situation earlier this year where the guest messaged to say the spa was full of feces!!! A pipe had become blocked and back filled into the spa!! We moved them immediately to another place and you wouldnât believe it but they left a wonderful review and didnât mention it! Phew!
I think one of the reasons we do so well is that we do take 1 night bookings. Very few hosts in our area do and probably about 80% of ours are 1 nighters. The cleaning fee more than covers the cleaning cost, so if the guest is prepared to pay it everyone is happy including the cleaner as she has constant work.
Thanks for your questions, I think they are really relevant.
So not a true hot tub if you just pull the plug.
This one doesnât look enclosed?
True-not many would want to pay a cleaning cost of $80-$100+ for one night, especially if the nightly rental cost was rather pricey .
They actually come with plugs that you press to release the water but with all of them this has stopped working after a few months as they get such a workout! So we had to replace them with normal bath plugs.
I donât know what the difference is between a spa and a hot tub. To me a hot tub is usually a large free standing tub that many people can fit into it. Two of ours comfortable fit two people. One is round and set in the decking the other is free standing and looks like an very large bath. Another one is larger and holds 5 people and is set into the decking so is level with the surrounds.
I did say that the one in the picture isnât mine, I just did a search and found one similar.
Our cleaning fee is $80 and it is very rarely anyone ever mentions it. We consistently sit on 4.6* for value on all the properties.
Donât get me started on the location rating when 2 of the places are side by side and one sits on 1/2* less than the other! The only way I can work it out is that one is âsexierâ so people are more inclined to click 5* for everything for that one. It certainly shows the flaw in the location rating.
Well our hot tub holds 375 gallons , fits 5-6 people and it takes 8 hours at least for the water to warm to 102 degrees. We use a pump to empty it and a hose to fill it.
Wrong job maybe? This is not the most disgusting cleaning job by a long chalk.
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Maybe you missed the bit about âsex in the spaâ? How hard is to pull the plug out? I also realise that I made an error, we donât ask guests to pull the plug, but 99% of them do anyway.
I work hard to support my cleaners. I appreciate how hard work the work is and that without them I have no business. I get angry when the owners treat them as âjust the cleanerâ. None of my cleaners do this work because they canât get any other job but they do it because it suits them. The mothers can drop their primary school aged children at school and be there to pick them up again.
Totally different type to ours, it sounds like yours is more what I would call a hot tub where ours are really just large baths with jets, so in Australia we call them spas. The spa that holds 5 people takes 25 minutes to fill. They are filled like a normal bath so the water is hot instantly and the pump keeps it that way.
Lol. Yes I agree with respect, it should be a skilled job. However a bit of a strong stomach is needed surely, those of us with children and pets are used to such. Get a pair of funky pond gloves! I have some for drain emergencies.
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I had a cleaner many years ago, she lived very close and I paid her ÂŁ5 a day to feed my 2 cats for a fortnight on top of her normal cleaning fee. When I got back from holiday I discovered there had been a dead mouse left in my kitchen/family room for days and there was dried blood all over the floor. I asked her about it and she said âI donât do miceâ and I said I donât do paying to be taken for a fool. That was the end of her.
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I interviewed for new cleaners last Thursday and chose one. At end of the day I called her to tell her that she had the job, we had quite a conversation. I emailed her some documents and asked her to send me some personal information that I require. Have never heard from her again! Not even the decency to send an email saying: changed my mind not for me.
My cleaning document actually includes this:
The Bermuda Triangle â We have a Bermuda Triangle where we have lost cleaners to in the past! If the position is not working out for you or you are unhappy then please let us know. If you are planning to go to Bermuda please give us some notice and donât just vanish into thin air!
All we can say is there must be cheap fares to Bermuda at the moment and a glut of cleaners over there! The wages must be better than $25 an hour with a minimum clean of $50. I donât expect anyone to leave their house and work for less than $50.
Yes youâd think. Thatâs more than being on the check out in Oz isnât it? With the option to listen to audio books or music and not have to deal with annoying customers.
Exactly and we generally have good guests. I know that on average it doesnât take them 2 hours to clean. When they are going in and out a few times a week they donât have to dust and scrub everything, everyday and I am ok with that. They work on their own, can turn up anytime after 11, they only have to have it have it done by 3. Great job for retired people and those with young children.
I am grateful that with this one from the past week that I hadnât paid to train her and then she disappeared, as that really annoys me as it comes out of my own profit.
Hi Poppy,
Congratulations! That type of success doesnât happen without a lot of hate work and studying and knowing your customers/guests. Can you please,send the link as Iâd love to see what it looks like. Again. Well done you.
Thank you for your message. I hope you meant âhardâ work and not âhateâ work, as I donât hate my job?
I have mentioned a few times that I have not been treated well in the past on this forum, so I am too frightened to list my places in case they and my business get trolled with online abuse.
I am happy to have open discussions on how we can learn from each other to find our target markets.
In previous messages in this thread I have written about some of the things that I believe helps my owners achieve such high profits.
One of the things that I think makes us different as that we always take 1 night stays and so few hosts in our area do. If you are going to be really expensive then expect that 80% of people will only stay 1 night. If they are happy to pay the cleaning fee and I am a remote host so there isnât any costs associated with time on the meets and greets I donât see what hosts have to lose with 1 night stays.
OmgâŚsorry about that. I absolutely meant hard work because that kind of success didnât happen without a lot of very hard work! I though a lot of the replies were âinterestingâ but my first thought was, how can I learn from this to better our product!