Work from Home and WiFi in remote areas

[Carrie-And-Bay0]

Hey Guys!

This is going to be a very specific topic that may not apply to those in major cities. 

We live in a remote area.  People come to our place for the remote feel, overlooking the basin.

Nowadays with everyone doing school and work from our place, the internet bill is racking up!

Again this will sound crazy if you live in a large city or suburb, but there are no unlimited plans for our area - so we have to keep purchasing extra data.  Everyone's usage varies, but more and more the Zoom calls eat up our plan, the highest amount possible in the area, so we have to constantly buy data - as high as $50 per weekend.

Any suggestions on tactful approaches with guests, or has AIRBNB any ability to help Hosts in remote areas in these changing times?

[Clay]

Hi @Carrie-And-Bay0 - meant to reply to this one sooner and lost track. Hopefully the response is still helpful.

We generally try to avoid unexpected fees for guests in Plus listings. I would suggest sharing with guests in advance that internet in your remote location is expensive and charges by the amount of data used, and if they expect to use lots of data (Zoom calls, etc) you can ask if they're amenable to a reasonable additional charge, which you can request via the Extra Charges functionality.

Feel free to follow up on this thread (and please use the @ feature so I get a notification!) if this approach seems to be unsuccessful.

Thanks for being a wonderful host, and we wish you all the best.

[Carrie-And-Bay0]

Thanks @Clay !

Appreciate you responding.  I know you guys are busy.  

As advocates for Hosts that share their home, it is something I feel AirBnB needs to get in front of, for this era of "work from home", especially in unique stays, that are frankly not tied to cable and fiber in a city center.

The cost has only worsened for us, at $75 for 25GB, you can imagine, that can be blown in 2-3 days.   That is a significant cost for us.

Further, I want to upgrade and offer the new 5G network in our area - what a great experience for our guests!  But the data costs and overages at $10 for 2GB (!!) would negate us lending the home!

I once tried to humbly propose extra cost to a guest and was met with hostility, and honestly, the first negative review we have ever received.

So if there was a way to propose the cost upfront, it would help calibrate the experience expectations. 

Happy to work with a team member to find functionality to allow Hosts to list this as an add-on fee Perhaps a "Work from Home Experience"option, etc. 

thanks!

[Clay]

Hi @Carrie-And-Bay0 - you have brought up some excellent points, and it's good to know that there was at least one guests who wasn't willing to accommodate the as-needed additional charge.

Given your circumstances, I'd suggest you add details about the cost of wifi to your listing page and/or house rules, and also notify guests upon booking and at check-in of your policy. You can tell guests that you are charged $30 per 10gb of data, and that you will send over additional charges as they are incurred. It would make sense to provide some reasonable amount of internet for free, with the additional charges kicking in after the first 5gb, for example.

In order to implement this policy and process, you'll need a way to track usage data per day, for fairness to your guests. This can either be done through your ISP (ie logging in and recording your bandwidth used every day), or via your router - but tracking via router is somewhat more complicated.

Ultimately, I think your unique circumstances allow for a unique policy, but it's one that will have to be fairly and transparently implemented to your guests. If you come up with a good system, please let us know, as we may come up with some standard "best practice" regarding bandwidth costs, assuming other hosts are experiencing similar issues with more remote work happening globally. Happy to chat more through some of the concepts we've each mentioned, so just let me know!