I don’t understand why US guests are not understanding the seasons.
In Italy - in UE countries - we have to respect, in summer, the lower limits of temperatures, in the apartments average temperatures could not be under 26° C = 78,8 F°. It’s a limit fixed by law.
We do care environment and in summer we use suits for summer and in my apartment guests find expensive linen fiber (pure linen) sheets on the bed. To stay fresh, not to stay chilled.
I always explain this limit (reasonable limit) and frequently guests allowed themselves to open reserved part of wardrobe when I store perfectly clean and packed (vacuum packed) blankets and the inner stuffing of duvets (all the weights /spring-fall/ and winter different materials (wool, artificial fabris) and sizes.
I do hate this behaviour.
Could you please tell me what is the reason of this? When you go in a hotel room do you sleep at temperatures that in winter you would not accept?
Please help me to understand, I’m going to buy a remote control with limit of temperatures but I’d like to understand.
Thank you!
Claudia
PS the same about the fridge.
Put a lock on the cupboard or put the duvets elsewhere. You don’t want them taken out in Summer when you have worked hard to launder and vacuum pack them. A blanket would be sufficient.
I am from the UK. If I were in Italy I would hope to get Aircon down to about 20 C just for sleep, and I would never use a duvet at that temperature. At home in the winter I have a feather duvet and I turn my radiator off. My bedroom probably gets down to 15 C. The cool is lush it’s like a mini hibernation. It’s hot for us here now and I cannot sleep if it’s much above 20 degrees at night. My Fitbit says I only slept 4 and a half hours last night.
Oh my! It’s never that cool in my house except in winter time.
I’m an American who likes really moderate temps (happiest low 60’s to about 76 Fahrenheit). I’ve also hosted people who crank the AC to extreme colds and then pile additional blankets on the bed 
Until Americans pay as much in energy bills as the rest of the world, we’ll probably still see this irrational behavior.
While I’d have a hard time sleeping at 78.8, I think you should set limits on your thermostat that make sense for your region and communicate it in your listing. Lock the winter weight blankets and linens away and just leave some cotton or other lightweight blanket options.
Maybe hand them literature on global warming if they complain! https://xkcd.com/1732/
20 degrees is the temperature we heat buildings up to in the winter!
78 is very high for US lodging standards. If you walk into your average hotel the room will be set at 71-72 degrees F. Could be high they are turning the temp down.
Thank you all for your help.
The law limit is too warm for me to and (the AC is oversized for the apartment) if you set at 23-24 (it’s ok for me and this is my advice to guests) you’ll feel more cold than fresh but it would be reasonable and suitable for your health. You need to activate AC for half an hour and you will sleep well (why in winter some guest sets temperatures at (crazy) 27° C 80 F° and that means that in the apartment temperatures could arrive up 28 C?
There’s no sense to sleep in Venice, in summer with blankets after having created an artificial environment… I have an apartment on Dolomites at 1260 m. there you use duvets, not in summer in Venice.
I showed the guests some light blankets, the bed is equipped with linen fabric sheets and a cotton bed cover.
I’m not worrying for my blankets in the cupboard but I can’t stand this style of living and the limit is clearly written (I mean the 23-24 setting (73-75 F)). Temperate zone… not a oven or a fridge.
Thank you again for your replies and advices I wish you a nice day/night :)))
Claudia
Yep those winter temperatures are crazy. In the UK we are advised to aim for 21 degrees. How insane they get the temperature up to 27 in the winter but won’t put up with that in the summer. For me 27 is always too hot but I do love swimming. I suggest some sort of control on the heating and air-conditioning. You only need a range of about 18 to 23 degrees.
Refrigerator temperatures should 34-38F for health (prevents bacteria growth), and food preservation but not as low as 32 (you don’t want things to freeze). The freezer should be between 0F and 5F.
We’ve had plenty of discussions here about temperatures and I don’t think we’ve ever agreed.
Because I live in South Florida, I’m a person who loves the heat. Anything less than 76 degrees is definitely chilly for me and I’d want to wear a sweater. Other people see 76 as being warm. No-one is right, no-one is wrong.
Sometimes here I’ve been wearing a sweater, socks, boots, a woolly scarf and a hoodie and guests from cooler places have been sunning themselves on the dock in speedos. And I have goosebumps.
In both our rentals guests can control the AC to whatever they wish. Some choose freezing (70 degrees or even less) and some don’t use the AC at all meaning that they are living in 80 or 90 degree temperatures. Both are fine as we price the rental based on annual power bills.
I wouldn’t want to stay anywhere where I can’t control the temperature but that’s just me.
BUT - if it’s disclosed in the listing then it should be no problem at all.
I forgot to tell you that in these days night temperatures (outside) are 19-20-21 ° C… (66-69,8 F°) just to let you have a precise idea. We are in Northern Italy, on the sea, mountains (Alps) at 80 km… not in middle of Africa.
And mentioned limits of temperature are fixed by law, you know.
But the problem is that people seem not to understand that is not setting a lower temperature that you increase the speed of the machine, so they set on very low temperature, the machine makes this temperature and then they need blankets & duvets,
Thank you again for sharing your experience and point of view, it’s very useful for me.
Fridge: fridge is new, and there is a freezer component (inside the fridge), All according with standard temperatures. In the freezer guests aways find ice rocks (I always clean the containers and change the water) and some spheres (sorry for my horrible English) with a liquid inside for refreshing what they want. Spheres are always in hot water for some minutes, and then cleaned with alcohol to be ok.
Grazie !!
Claudia
You already know the answer - people feel more comfortable sleeping in winter with the temperature at 19C and a heavy duvet/doona/quilt that a light sheet in Summer. So they reproduce that in Summer. Even is summer I need a light top sheet on to sleep and some sort of air movement preferable from a ceiling fan. It is not just Americans I get people from Singapore who have the AC on 19C in summer and 28C in winter. They may have tried your way once and had a bad sleep. Once people get used to something they are unlikely to change their habits on a short term holiday especially as the people who travel are sold the idea of novel experiences with all the comforts of home.
I don’t get the 28 degrees in winter at all. No-one needs that level of difference between the outside and inside! It’s also very dirty because it makes bacteria breed in the house. Yuk. I have never known anyone do that in the UK, I am pretty sure in almost all cases guests would be unwelcome to do so. Hot house flowers in the UK might try to get to about 24 but 27 is really out there. I mean I have a new boiler etc and I am not even sure it would get to 27 degrees.
70 is only 21 degrees, hardly freezing! At least with cooler temperatures you can put clothes on, in the heat in a sundress there’s nothing you can do! It’s hot here already this morning, my neighbour from Yorkshire was just so grateful for a breeze on the school run! Btw when are the Americans planning to phase out farenheight
I never used to understand the (alleged) English habit of only bathing every 3 or 4 days. Until i was a student there in 1990 and living in a crappy flat with bad heating (“Oh Mr Rigsby, my heater needs stoking”) in winter. If I lay on the bottom of the bath in 3" of tepid water and attached a shower hose to the washbasin “hot” tap I could just about stand it for 5 minutes. Which also explains why they ban power points in UK bathrooms as people used to balance electric radiant heaters on the side of the bath to stay warm and they would fall in and electrocute themselves. So yeah, every 3 or 4 days in winter seemed about right.
There was some momentum in that direction in the 70’s, but no longer.
Perhaps after Betsy deVoss dismantles the public education system, and things fall apart for long enough that they try to build it again from a rubble of voucher-funded private schools. And then wait until well-educated children matriculate and reach voting age. Maybe then we could have enough interest in changing to international metric standards.
Would someone from Canada or other free country like to adopt me? It’s getting scary here!
You are right, there are more important things than imperial measurements! I just find farenheight so foxing. I don’t think I can even spell it! To me as a bear of simple brain I can get my head around 0 degrees being freezing and 100 degrees being boiling with water, but F is counterintuitive. Mind you we are still into pints of beer, woe betide anyone who tries to take that away from the Brits, but then that doesn’t really affect much apart from gas and a hangover. Also slimming clubs use imperial, people seem to visualise stones better. High time the UK moved to kilometres though.
We are a little more advanced than that with heating and hot water now in the UK, but I think the Germans probably still laugh at our plumbing (and many other inefficiencies no doubt). Mostly now environmental concerns dictate our consumption, and people who wear t shirts inside in the winter with the thermostat turned right up are considered impolite. I am therefore very sympathetic to the Italian concern about Aircon. It was 24 degrees at bedtime here last night, but Fitbit says I slept 7 hours on a gel pad (like the ones for dogs lol). I am ashamed to say if I had Aircon I would have used it, even with just a cotton sheet.
Just read a medical journal article that researched best temperature for sleeping well and it suggests low 60s F.
When I was growing up my parents couldn’t afford a new furnace, we had a wood burning stove in the living room, but our bedrooms were in the basement, to this day my siblings & I like it cold year round, of course we can’t afford it during our 3 months of summer!
Yes 18 degrees C is accepted as a standard for sleep hygiene by the medics. I suppose there are cultural variations though. I love an unheated bedroom in the winter, albeit a well insulated one.