Question on bedroom use

[Rhonda301]

Hi we host a two master bedrooms 122 farmhouse all updated.  When we get a couple, the  house holds 4 adults,  we expect them to use only one bedroom. We ask for preference letting them chose which en-suite but is it unreasonable to expect them not to use both bedrooms?  

the current guest told us she changed her mind after one night and used the upstairs.  Both have identical mattresses both are charming but I wondered if it’s reasonable to expect guests to not changed bedrooms. Are we wrong?  She said it was becasue of the windows but there are fully lined curtains in that room and we are so rural no one can see inside any of the rooms we have 15 acres surrounding us plus each farm around us has enough trees we cannot see their properties

is it a bad idea to lock off the bedroom not chosen?. We have ample photos to represent the amenities of each.  I wonder if they didn’t have other guests to stay undisclosed. 

[Helen744]

@Anonymous Its not about beds at all Andrew its about how many guests stay and how much you charge per guest.I usually charge for the first two guests as one guest and after that at three guests I charge an extra  twenty dollars per  guest .The old way of charging for two guests as one is built on the travelling couple concept and hopefully since we have more or less passed the mad cleaning of covid I will now re think that,but during covid it was necessary to change unused linen a lot. but now I have no intention of changing three sets of linen for a couples stay. They can sleep in two beds but not three , most reasonable people can understand that and I will no longer charge a couple fee but a fee for guest number two . Every linen change costs time and money and I am not a charity. H

[Helen744]

Oh and Andrew , some people say that after two children you might as well have ten , thats not true either. H

[Anonymous]

@Helen744   That's kind of the point - guests know that you're not a charity, and they presume that you've already set your prices to make a tidy profit. So some of them will reason that they might as well use everything that they paid for, even if they don't really need it. 

They might also quite reasonably feel that their sleeping arrangements are none of your business.

But if you'd rather not change three sets of linens, there's nothing stopping you from listing the house separately as a 1 or 2 bedroom unit and locking off rooms for those stays as needed.

[Helen744]

@Anonymous if I was able to Andrew, as I am trying to make some money from my hosting, I would prefer to rent to the number of people that the house can provide for and not have couples or singles but when you set a baseline in a three bed house it is for a single person not my maximum at five, and it is not about adequate pricing,but variable pricing because it is a house with three beds.My point being that couples cannot rent three hotel rooms for the price ,and I suspect they do not,but they have suites in hotels where they may use all the beds or whatever they do. I am not interested in what they do or why except as far as my hosting goes. Sometimes I suggest to people that they may prefer to rent a two bed room house or a single room as I would prefer my place to be full. H

[Helen744]

also it again comes down to if you are the person who washes all the linen and remakes all the beds .My house is not small and I love to provide lovely linens ,lovely sleeping arrangements and privacy for all my guests but my main customer is not the 'couples retreat 'people  or in fact the romantic weekend people although I am sure there is more than one way to have a romantic weekend Mostly I deal with the grumpy snoring variety guest or the school teachers who are going on singing weekends or fisherman ,who luckily dont kill fish but throw them back or soccer mums and dads or tourists who come in pairs or my main stay customers ,families, more Enid Blyton than 'what the au pair did on the weekend", but there is  a contingent here is Australia of baby boomers who have already been doing 'the romantic weekend away'  for way too long and honestly they are low in manners and high in expectations and really I wonder why they are now looking at Airbnb because it is mostly not here to provide romantic high jinks to rusted on dinosaurs.I have board games and coffee and a nice place to sleep so you can get out during the day and explore and anyone swinging from the chandalier will be paying for it.H

[Helen744]

@Anonymous I should add that I live about a 45 minute drive from the most intensley romantic couples retreat town in the known universe. Daylesford . I cannot compete with that and I do not try H

[Gillian166]

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@Anonymous wrote:

@Helen744   If you book a three-bedroom home, you are literally paying for three bedrooms. If the host has priced incorrectly because they "made an assumption," that is not the guest's problem.

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@Anonymous  No, you aren't. A 3 bedroom home occupies 6 and I charge for 6 people. I don't charge 2 people $380 per night. I started out like that but then had people complain it was too expensive, so i dropped it back to a base rate of 2 people (occupying 1 room). 

[Anonymous]

@Gillian166   Believe me, I'd like for there to be a more modular pricing model for hosts like you, in which a single listing could allow guests to select both a head count and a bedroom count and get charged appropriately. You're a great host and I don't want you to be wrong about this. But if the scenario occurred where a party of any size complained that they were denied access to rooms that were presented as part of the listing, I don't trust that Airbnb's outsourced customer service reps would take your side. If that de facto rental contract lists the home as "3 bedroom" but the customer only gets 1 or 2 bedrooms for practical use, that contract is basically void.

I can tell you're a skillful communicator, and based on your perfect reviews it seems like you know how to get your guests on the same page about how your pricing works. But a newer host without a thick firewall of reviews can really screw the pooch if they don't deliver what they appear to advertise. An ill-informed assumption about guests' sleeping arrangements is not a hill I'd like to see a well-intentioned host die on. So unless Airbnb provides more options to customize the pricing structure, I'm not wavering on the position that a 3-bedroom listing has to have 3 usable bedrooms.

[Helen744]

@Anonymous I agree with you to a certain extent but I am talking about three separate rooms .Not three beds.I also offer a floor mattress made up in one of the  queen rooms ,generally used for children who travel with grandma or parents . This is just a convenience offered to guests for which they are generally very pleased as it means they do not have to share beds. this is not a charge on the guest . All of our rooms contain a queen bed and some furniture ,bedside tables lamps phone chargers chests of drawers hanging space or places to study or do makeup . They take a lot of cleaning but the not using three beds for two people is negotiated in a casual manner with the guest on arrival as these whole rooms will need to be cleaned from head to toe as the other rooms are after use . Its not about beds ,its about rooms in a whole house.If people stay longer than a few days of course then things are more flexible in case people need to move for noises or illness or other personal reasons  H

[Helen744]

Also these are already double rooms not single rooms .H

[Anonymous]

@Helen744  I think we're talking past each other a bit here. But at the end of the day, you're selling a product on the internet, on a website that values its AI far more strongly than the subtleties of human communication, and that wouldn't hesitate to wipe out your livelihood if a customer caught a flaw in your logic. It's not my job or my mission to persuade you that you're doing it wrong, but I grew up in Silicon Valley, so...good luck with that.

[Helen744]

@Andrew0 Yeah

[Gillian166]

@Anonymous  well thanks for the compliments. 😊

As a guest if i'm occupying a 3bedroom home with only 2 people, and paying a price based on 2 people, I know what they actually mean is "2 people per room" and this is hotel industry standard practice. I would feel rude and entitled to use more than one bed. Guests can clearly see that the price goes up with more people, correlating to bedroom use.  

Whilst we grumble to ourselves, we don't say anything, or block off doors. However, in the 3rd room (with 2 single beds) we often leave them made up with just a bottom sheet, a folded down doona and cushions on the bed, which should look pretty clear that the bed isn't to be used. (a couple last week took the sb doona off the bed, I assume perhaps to snuggle with on the sofa in the lounge room, so I will have to buy a special blanket to leave in the lounge room to stop this from happening). Sometimes if we've been under the pump with turnovers we might even do the same thing with the second queen room, should we be 1000% sure that the couple who booked are sharing a room. (maybe only done this twice so far).   

Reasons I don't like locking off rooms:
1. as you say, it's not good to "deny access", seems inhospitable
2. it's great advertising for return stays, a couple can see the other spaces and hopefully plan a return trip with family or friends. so having them all beautifully made up is just smart business IMHO.

[Anonymous]

@Gillian166   It's not been my experience in any business that customers intuitively know what the price they're paying for a good or service is based on, even if you give them a carefully itemized bill. Read some of the posts from guests on this very forum where they talk about how much they spent on a Cleaning Fee ("why should I have to clean?") or lost when they cancelled. They are not looking at any of this from your perspective, and they don't want to do so. They're only thinking about what they spent and what they feel entitled to.

[Rhonda301]

I asked them prior to them arriving if they needed two bedrooms. They said no. That is the point. They could have told me they needed the other room. The bed nor linens were made up. That is the point. They were a couple wanting a romantic weekend. She was upfront about that. So while I appreciate your point it is my listing and I can and shall feel comfortable with people being there.