Additional Charges - Option of additional per ROOM or per guest needed for ENTIRE HOUSE RENTAL

[Francesca-and-Dave0]

After a 3 year hiatus, I have re-activated one of our listings here on the Air BnB platform and I notice an issue that was raised in re booking options by several hosts at least 5 years ago has not yet been addressed and I’m trying to understand the rationale for this limitation. 

The situation: I have an entire house rental that I rent via non-AirBnB venues as either a whole house rental with ONE bedroom or a whole house rental with TWO bedrooms or a whole house rental with THREE bedrooms by locking and unlocking the extra bedrooms depending on the number of guests and how they want to use the bedrooms.

This allows us an option to provide more affordable accommodations to a single traveler or a couple traveling together who need only ONE bedroom, but still want a whole house rental or people traveling who need two, but not three, bedrooms and still want the whole house experience. One bedroom is less cleaning time and less cost for utilities and supplies with fewer people than 2 or 3 bedrooms so we can pass those savings on to guests who can pay for only what they need and want. I charge a base rate for the whole house and one bedroom and add an additional charge for each of the two additional bedrooms when guests want to reserve them. This has worked beautifully for us for years — except on Air BnB.

For example, a couple traveling with their child who want a bedroom for themselves and a separate bedroom for their one child, or a separate bedroom for each of their two children, can easily be accommodated by a PER ROOM RATE while a per person charge will NOT meet the guests needs. Another example is two or three friends, or two or three couples, traveling together who each want the whole house AND their own separate bedrooms. With a per person charge I have NO IDEA how many bedrooms our guests want — unless there are a six people which would require all 3 bedrooms. 

When I have addressed this issue with Air BnB their suggestion is to use the per person additional charge, which is useless to us in this situation since it’s NOT the number of people that matters, but the the number of bedrooms our guests want/need that counts. Air BnB has also suggested I list EACH bedroom as a totally separate listing that stands on its own, which is even more useless to us since it means parents traveling with kids, or friends traveling together, must somehow magically know they need to hunt down 2 or 3 separate listings and then make two or three SEPARATE bookings to get the bedrooms they need for their kids, or their friends, in addition to the whole house they want.

It also means we end up with people constantly trying to book ONE of the bedrooms at a very low rate for that one bedroom with its separate listing without understanding they can’t just book one separate room since it is part of a WHOLE HOUSE RENTAL and not a stand alone listing.

I have tried including several variations of instructions and explanations on our listing to help our guests book our property with the preferred number of bedrooms, but it really is too complicated and too much work for hosts and guests — especially when a simple solution exists. 

The last suggestion I had from AirBnB was that I just set a whole house rate and hope for the best in bookings…?! While I may not understand Air BnB’s reasoning, what I do know from having been in this business for 30 years is MY property and MY market and MY guests, which all do best with the capability to book the whole house with an option for one, two or three bedrooms. That is how we get the most and the happiest guests who feel they have gotten what they want for the best value,p.

I don’t understand why there can’t be an option under the additional fees section for ADDITIONAL ROOMS as well as additional guests since having BOTH options makes the most sense to the most hosts and guests. Is there a specific reason for not allowing this — especially after it has been requested for at least 5 years? Has anyone else had this issue or found a solution for it here on Air BnB? With the New Host Tools I wish they address REAL issues that hosts are concerned about and which hosts have raised repeatedly. 

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Lisa8784 I was thinking something like thi

Prime-Line Security Oil Rubbed Bronze Mortise Lockset 1-3/4 in.

I can't postthelink but look on the ACE hardware site

[Lisa8784]

Thank you SO much! 

[Marc13480]

With the suggestion from @Mike-And-Jane0 to create separate listings and link the calendars so both show unavailable when either is booked, with one listing set for request to book and the other set for instant book. Does that mean when either listing is booked, it will be a request to book? This is the behaviour we're looking for, as we're brand new to doing this and using ABB, and we would want the opportunity to know who is renting our cottage because we live 2h away (at least until we're more comfortable with all this). If someone books the listing that is set for instant book, will it be instant booked, or is the ABB platform clever enough to realize that the linked property is set for request to book and ensure that request to book happens?

[Joelle43]

Hello @Marc13480 

Why not take off Instant Book for all three listings which will give you 24 hours to communicate with any guests before deciding to accept or refuse.  IB is automatically activated when you create a listing but it is optional and can be turned off.  

Having to cancel a reservation is the worst thing you can do on Airbnb (financial penalty, calendar blocked for the duration of the dates cancelled and you are relegated to the bottom of the class by the algorithm) so if you want to start out slowly and control who comes into your house, this might be something to think about.

All the best

Joëlle

[Marc13480]

Thank you, Joëlle. We ended up setting up both listings as request to book. That seems to be working fine. A guest requests a reservation, we accept, the calendars for both listings are blocked off - the reserved one shows "reserved" and the other listing simply shows as "unavailable". So seems to work fine so far!

[Joelle43]

Great to hear that it's working for you @Marc13480 and thank you for letting us and others know😊

I'm also with the Request to book option - a lot easier on my nerves🤣

[Marc13480]

Hi All,

I thought I would provide an update on our listing with this configuration now that we're almost six months into it...both the good and not so good, for the benefit of other hosts out there that may be facing the same situation.

To recap, we have two listings for our single property: a 3BR listing for our cottage, and a 4BR listing for our cottage + bunkie. This has worked out fairly well in that we started listing last Nov, and felt some renters may not want to use the bunkie through our Canadian winter. We turned out to be correct, and of the 25 bookings we've had, over 20 have been for the 3BR cottage only. So I feel it has helped our bookings to set it up this way.

That said, here are some of the considerations that we've ran into:

1) Creation of the second listing looked simple, as Airbnb allows you to duplicate a listing. That was great, but I did have to scour all the configurations and compare them because not everything was actually duplicated. This isn't horrible, because it's a one-time activity, but be aware that the duplicate listing feature is not with 100% fidelity.

2) More effort to actively manage both listings (or even more). Somewhat obvious, but meaning whenever you are updating pricing, minimum stay restrictions, photos, house manual, etc., then it does add effort to do it for both listings. It's not quite double the effort for two listings, surely, but it certainly adds time and creates opportunity for discrepancies if you're trying to keep things synced like we are (e.g. updating a configuration or photos for one but missing it on the other, for example). Not an insurmountable problem, and perhaps we tweak our listing more often because we're newer and keep trying to improve things (e.g. adding seasonal photos, etc.).

3) Reviews are split among your listings. Reviews are specific to one listing on Airbnb. So our 3BR listing has the majority of our reviews, while our 4BR listing only has two reviews so far. This isn't really a huge problem, but it means that a) Airbnb's algorithms will promote our 3BR listing more than our 4BR while we would like to promote and increase the occupancy of our full 4BR property, especially over the summer months. It also means that when potential renters are looking for 4BR properties, they see only two reviews on our 4BR listing, even though our property actually has many more reviews that would benefit their decision-making. This is probably the bigger implication of this kind of configuration, especially when you are new to hosting and trying to build up a good set of reviews as they are so important to the platform algorithms and to renters.

4) Pricing - when we started hosting, Airbnb hadn't released their rule sets feature, so we ended up using PriceLabs to manage pricing, minimum stay restrictions, etc. across both listings, as it has the ability to group listings and manage them as a group, which saved us a ton of time. Otherwise, the pricing adjustments etc. and trying to keep them in sync would have been a lot more effort. Most likely some of that effort is reduced with the relatively recent Rule Sets and multi-calendar features, but for now I have everything set up nicely with PL and will continue with it.

For the above reasons, I would definitely like to see Airbnb add a feature to allow hosts to either charge for an additional room or charge for additional guests, though not both at the same time as that would make the pricing confusing for both hosts and especially renters. I have submitted that feedback to Airbnb already.

All the above aside, we've really enjoyed this journey so far with renting on Airbnb. I generally find the platform excellent to use. 

I hope another host out there finds this useful.

Cheers and happy hosting!

Marc

[Marc13480]

In addition to the above, I should also mention it is often quite confusing for potential renters who see we have 2 nearly identical listings and don’t understand why. I have had to create a quick reply for this because we anre asked so often.