Should I change my maximum room occupancy from two guests to one?

[Huma0]

Hello, I've been hosting in my own home, where I have three guest bedrooms, for a few years. At first, I hosted both short and long term guests and now I focus on long term, so my normal minimum stay is 28 nights. Occasionally, if I have a large gap in between bookings, e.g. three weeks, I might do a rule set to open up those dates to slightly shorter stays, e.g. two or three weeks.

As all the rooms are large enough to accommodate two guests for short stays, each has a maximum occupancy of two. However, I never intended to have two guests per room for longer stays and it was never a problem as long term guests are usually solo travellers. If they did occasionally have a partner, friend or family member visit for a few days, I would send them a separate request for the guest fee - not ideal I know, but there doesn't seem to be any way to change the number of guests for only part of a stay.

My dilemma is this, I have recently noticed more and more couples and pairs wanting to book my rooms for fairly long stays and I'm not very keen. Even if I have a couple in one of the rooms and solos in the other two, the house starts to feel too crowded,  especially as all the bathrooms are technically shared. It becomes difficult to keep the kitchen clean and tidy, the fridge and cupboards start overflowing and people sometimes get irritated when the laundry facilities aren't immediately available. I find three guests manageable, but four guests a lot to keep on top of and, with my current settings, I could potentially end up with six guests simultaneously! 

Should I change the settings to one guest max per room? I think this could A. put off potential guests who might want a friend to visit for a few days (happens quite often) and B. undersell the rooms, indicating that they are smaller than they are.

I never had this issue in the past, but I can see it becoming more common. Today, I had one couple (very nice people) move out after 3.5 months and immediately got a IB for another couple.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Huma0I understand your dilemma, been there done that... The problem is when people think if they book a room they can invite other people to stay bc the room is paid.

of course, the number of inquiries will drop if you would limit it to solo travelers. It also drops if you limit it to no children and no pets. But, if you can rent it anyway then these limitations aren't a problem.

If most of your guests want to have overnight visitors you could limit it to. let's say a max 2 nights per month and charge a very high extra guest fee. Or simply don't allow it. If they want to spend a week with their boyfriend/girlfriend they can book a hotel

[Huma0]

I think what I am going to do maybe is to change the maximum for my smallest room from two guests to one. That room is big enough for two guests for a short term stay but I think would be really too small anyway for two people long term. Then I'll see how that goes (as I mentioned, it's a bit difficult to judge with bookings so up and down at the moment).

I will also try to figure out a way to make the listing clearer about having a second (paying) guest stay over for part of the stay.

The boyfriend/girlfriend staying over repeatedly is more tricky even if they do pay, but generally, I don't want unregistered guests coming and going on a regular basis. I think the reason that this is coming up more and more often is because before I had more overseas guests (so they might have someone visit for a fixed period for part of their stay, but most often not) whereas now the majority of guests are UK based and looking for a temporary home, so they want their partner to be able to stay over whenever.

I had one girl who wanted to book a room who told me she felt 'extremely uncomfortable' about the idea of having to tell me in advance when her boyfriend would stay over. I explained that I need to know who is and isn't staying in my house and also to let the other guests know (most of my guests are young female solos) as they shouldn't be surprised by random people in the house. She didn't understand that. She said they would just get used to him. Obviously, I turned that girl away.

[Huma0]

So, I changed the max occupancy from two guests to one for my smallest room. I wanted to see how that affected the bookings.

In the meantime, I had another couple book a different room for a long term stay.

As I mentioned before, this used to be highly unusual (actually didn't happen) but now seems to be more and more common. So, I've now changed all rooms to max 1 guest capacity.

[Linda108]

If nothing else, being a host on Air BNB teaches us to be flexible and allow changes as the market requires.   It is difficult because we are just ordinary individuals without sophisticated marketing staff or intelligence.  Sometimes we make a good call and sometimes we don't.  Looks like you are making some changes as well, @Huma0 .

[Huma0]

@Linda108 

Yes, it's interesting to see how the market changes and I wish we had more information about it. Of course, if I was trying to maximise the income from my rooms, I would welcome this sudden influx of couples, but I'd just rather have solo guests.

I wonder if any other hosts who do long term stays have noticed an increase in couples/pairs. I really don't remember it being a thing before this year.

[Vickie156]

I’ve been thinking about the same thing and I did a search and your question dilemma popped up with exactly the same situation I’m in. I have three rooms in my home listed and I was just thinking today I need to change it to one person in each room because I’m overwhelmed after doing this 10 years and i need to simplify my life/stress level!. And I also have the same situation where someone stays long period and would like their boyfriend to stay some of the nights, but there’s not an option just to add a few days so you have to put two people on the reservation for Airbnb insurance reasons and then cut the extra cost or it will be for the entire reservation… Then possibly send them a bill in resolutions?

after a few couples stayed the last month. I also thought about the noise level when two people are in room and coming and going. They’re very loud where one person is not so much and there’s more interaction with me which is part of the reason I do Airbnb to meet people from different countries, I don’t know. I’m thinking about all this as you are.