Hi Legends, I just found your property on Air and read the reviews. What a lovely space you have there! It looks really idyllic. I’m going to forward it to my cousin in Boston.
I was trying to get an idea of why guests would select your location. If guests were hanging around during the day to get a “farm experience” then offering the pool during the day would be a perfect activity for them and your hours of 10-6 are great.
But if they were visiting the area and using your place as a home base for touring around other nearby spots they would likely either want to use it later in the day or possibly not at all.
It looks like you have a mix of guests - some like the peaceful tranquility of getting away to a farm, while others are using it as a home base. So there doesn’t seem to be an obvious one-answer-fits-all in your situation.
If it were me I would give guests the option of day-use from 10am-6pm, OR 5-7pm evening use. That would give you a time that you can use it yourselves and/or maintain it. That might help to meet all of the possible wants of your guests.
I would offer the option of using the pool at an additional cost. Mention it in your listing, rules, wherever. If you were to charge $5 per day per guest to use the pool and pool towels it is an added benefit to those guests at a reasonable cost. Then your guests who not able to use the pool won’t feel like they are still paying for it.
Some hotels impose a “resort fee” to ALL guests, which I hate - but I wouldn’t mind paying IF I were using those services. At our Air, if guests want to swim in a pool they can go 2 minutes down the road to a beautiful community pool that would cost ~$5. We’ve stayed at non-hotel type places that also charge for those guests who use the pool - nobody in our travel group has complained.
Regarding your home-baked bread and honey… your reviews indicate that the VAST majority of your guests really appreciate you going that extra mile. After all, you have a fairly unique “farm experience” to offer and it seems to me that is part of it. Even though you seem set on not offering it anymore, you’re removing something that has set you apart and may bring back repeat guests. That’s a shame that those few ungrateful idiots would ruin it for the many that love that feature about their experience with you.
(IMO, your “extra guest” fee is a little high, but people were getting added benefits, like the bread and honey. If you remove those perks and raise your base rate you might want to lower your extra guest fee.)
Then once again, I’d suggest that you offer that back in as something that people can “order” from you at an extra cost if they want it. Your working farm already has saleable items with your goat milk soap bars and honey. Why not send an order sheet for them to order those items to have ready for their arrival, and also offer a breakfast/snack option of home-baked bread (specify the type so there are no complaints, i.e. white bread, rye bread), butter and farm honey? If you also offer goat cheese that would be great combo! Then your repeat guests can still opt to have that experience.
One last thing… your listing shows as 1 bedroom with a queen bed in the den. It looks like a normal 2nd bedroom to me - I would change the description to a 2-bedroom.
Best of luck! Please let us know how it goes.