Additional costs

[Jo620]

Help please. 

Ive got a request for a couple with a six month child .That's fine.My enquiry is at the moment my cleaning fee is £10 a,stay.Now,they are staying for 4 weeks do I change the additional costs for the use of the oven and change of bed sheets a week? If,so how do you do this please?

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Jo620 we consider that a long booking like this means we have a higher occupancy than we would get with more, shorter stays and that this more than cancels out the additional laundry costs.

Oven usage being an issue makes no sense to me as it independent of stay length.

[Sarah977]

@Jo620  Charging extra for use of the oven and linens is a great way to get a bad review or have guests report you to Airbnb. You can't limit or charge more for basic amenities just because a guest is staying for a month.

Things like toilet paper, soap, paper towels, coffee, etc, are often things hosts only provide a starter pack for on long term bookings, say enough for a week until they can get to the store. But that has to be made clear to the guests at the outset,  and should be mentioned in your description if you are going to take long term bookings.

[Jo620]

@Sarah977 @Mike-And-Jane0 Thanks so much for your input ,I understand what has been said and   appriciate  your comments.....they are my very first guests who wish to stay a month with small child...still learning ! x

[Sarah977]

@Jo620  As I see you have a private room listing, it would probably be a good idea to hash things out with long stay guests like this, such as a kitchen use schedule. You don't want to end up feeling like you can't get in to cook your own meals if they are the type who spend hours in the kitchen preparing meals.

I don't know whether you have raised kids yourself, or are familiar with being around them, and know the stages of child development, but a 6 month old is usually just at the point of being able to sit up on their own. So not yet mobile by themselves.  But depending on whether the baby is an early developer, he might be on the verge of crawling, which presents more safety hazards, so it would be a good idea to discuss this with the guests- you may need to child-proof things a bit. 

If they use disposable diapers, you are going to have to work out the garbage routine- you won't want smelly diapers sitting in the indoor garbage cans. If they use cloth diapers, there is going to be mounds of laundry they will want to be doing. 

[Helen744]

@Jo620  there is currently no way to add weekly cleaning fees . It is important that you send a request for payment either each week after explainig what it is for, to your guest or for extra funds up front for four cleans or three plus the one already in your fee. H. We need to request that Airbnb provide a system that allows a weekly cleaning fee H

[Linda108]

If your place is not suitable for infants, why would you make an exception?  Or, are you considering changing your rule?  As to long term versus short term, you are obligated to continue hosting a long term guest unless their behavior rises to the need to cancel.  Are you ready for that? The use of the kitchen is confusing in your listing for me.  You list it as an amenity yet list a rule that the use is limited.  The system allows you to add limits to amenities.   Being new to this platform is a challeng and kudos to you for reaching out to other hosts for feedback.  Linda

[Helen744]

@Jo620  If a couple with a six month old baby are wanting to book a room to live in for four weeks that raises red flags to me all over. There are so many things anew baby needs that you could not possibly deliver. Better start talking to them and stop worrying about the oven. H

[Sarah977]

@Helen744  A 6 month old isn't a "new baby". And what are the "so many" things they need? I travelled around Mexico back in the 70s with my 1 year old on my hip and a backpack. She didn't "need" anything but diapers (I travelled with 4 cloth diapers I washed out every night) and some clothes. She was still breastfeeding and otherwise ate whatever food I provided her. She slept in bed with me.

She had a few toys, but babies that age can be entertained by almost anything. She could play happily with some empty containers and some pebbles for an hour. 

All the things people think they "need" for babies these days is not actually necessary. Most of it is just  consumerism.

[Helen744]

@Sarah 977 I get where you are coming from Sarah but there are a lot of assumptions about this young couple built in there. That the mum is breast feeding would be the biggie . at six months babies start to need to eat small amounts of food and or have bottles of formula and also need naptimes and still wake frequently thru the night necessitating trips to a kitchen generally plus bathing washing ,lots of washing and this lady does not provide use of the lounge for breast feeding or down time,there are only so many hours in the day a six month old can spend in a car. I travelled to Ireland with my daughter and her twelve month old but she was wholly breast fed and could sleep anywhere but if she had been colicky as they still can be at that age and not a 'sleeper ' I hate to think. My then husband and I shared a house with another couple from when our children were born until six months old and it is something that it would take a strong person not used to children to endure.  H.

[Sarah977]

@Helen744  Well, the host here did say she was fine with accepting guests with a baby. So the baby will either be an easygoing one who barely cries and is a good sleeper (one of my three slept 8 hours through the night by the time she was 3 months old) and the hosts might really enjoy having the baby around, or it will be a fussy one who cries a lot and the hosts will say to each other, "Why on earth did we agree to this?" 🙂

[Anonymous]

@Jo620  I hope that a stay this long is within your comfort zone. For homestay hosts, I always recommend setting a maximum stay that's the longest time you can live with people you just can't stand without going crazy. For me, 2 weeks is the cutoff.

Have these guests clarified their reasons for staying with you for a whole 4 weeks? They're obviously not just doing tourism, so they'll probably be using the home more heavily than short stay guests who spend most of their time out doing stuff. If one or both of the parents plan to work remotely from the house, they're probably getting it too cheap. But it wouldn't be appropriate to ask for extra money for amenities that were listed as inclusive, especially the kitchen. You don't have to provide linen service; long term guests may launder their own sheets, and having a spare set on hand to change their bedding themselves as needed should be sufficient. 

[Helen744]

@Anonymous  I certainly would not want guests laundering "their own sheets' as you say because ultimately they belong to me and could be wrecked .I prefer in this type of situation to do all linens belonging to the house and allow the guests to do their own personal washing,otherwise any type of professionalism goes out the window and towels assume an amorphous identity ,standards slip and a dogs breakfast ensues.this ultimately leads to the guests devaluing the service they have checked in for. A booking for four weeks with a small baby unless for a good reason seems odd to me. H

[Anonymous]

@Helen744  I can certainly understand your preference for guests not to wash the house linens (which is one of many great reasons to set a short maximum stay). Given the choice, I'm sure most guests would rather be given freshly cleaned sheets and towels during their stay than be left to do the work themselves. But personally, if I were renting an entire home for a long enough stay to merit interim linen changes, I would find it way too intrusive to have a host coming around to handle the laundry. I guess it would be different in a homestay situation, but even then, I don't want the host entering the bedroom to uphold their bed-making standards, and I'd probably take offense to being told I can't be trusted to wash my towels correctly.

[Helen744]

@Anonymous some people of course do become attached to their dirty laundry but do prefer a freshly made bed and magic disappearing dirty linen. It does involve trust and generally occurs when the guest is out. I also do kitchen and bathroom cleans and vacumning . Not any different to hiring a cleaner to your own home. H