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. 

[Ted307]

@Anonymous I sure do hope that the cleaning fee deters people who want a short stay, but I think the higher price mostly deters those guests who would not treat our places very well. I believe the 3-bedroom house probably requires more than the fee we paid to hire cleaners. I know that ours would not be high enough for the sub-par cleaning company I tried. I just do it myself.

We have a 2 day minimum to deter people who would just block our weekends for only 1 night, and we do have some guests who book for 2 nights and then leave early!

We do offer a 10% discount witch wipes out most of our cleaning fee for a 4 day booking. It has not produced any 4 day stays.

There are hosts in our neighborhood who charge a higher cleaning fee, they seem to have more bookings under the new "category" system than we do.

Chris

[Gillian166]

@Rhonda301 
We have a similar situation and this kinda drives us crazy too. 2 of our listings have 3 bedrooms, and we often get bookings for 2 people, who then use 2 bedrooms. this of course increases your turnover time, the laundry time, and general costs. 

Solution:
for our guest suite in our main house we have a listing that is just for 1 room, 1 bathroom (we were also finding people who occupied just the one bedroom were using 2 bathrooms) and priced it low, with an explanation of the situation. One room, one bathroom, and of course the lounge and dining space as normal. Then we have a normal listing, which is priced higher, and if people want to use 2 rooms, so be it, we have it priced $40 higher. 

We can't really do this so easily in the cottage so i nudged the price up a bit, which is bad for couples who do share a room, but we've found over 50% of our 2 people bookings use 2 rooms, so we have to price for that situation.