Amenities for stock.

[Eduardo1262]

Hello fellow Airbnb hosts. I have several questions specifically to hosting. 

Which amenities do you all always have in stock for private rooms? 

Toilet paper, hand soap, body soap, shampoo

Plastic bags for trash bins.

Do I replace after they check out or every week?  Most of my guests stay more than 1 week up to a month 

What would be the most sufficient way of handling it without having to dig through my profits?.

Thank you!

[Sarah977]

It's really up to you. Hosts who do longer term bookings, a month or more, often just provide a starter pack, like enough for a week, making it clear to guests that after that, they are expected to provide their own. If you decide to do that, make sure to state that in your listing info, and verify with any guests who are making long-term bookings that that's the deal.

I'm assuming that you offer discounts for longer bookings- if it was the regular nightly price x 30 (for a month) then stocking just as you would for a short stay would be in order.

I don't do long stays for my private room listing. I only provide liquid soap, hotel-size bar soap (which I find many guests don't use, but it's there if they want it), toilet paper. I find most guests bring their own shampoo (women in general seem to have their favorite brand) and personally I think that "body wash" is just a marketing gimmick and is no different from the same soap you wash your hands with aside from the label, so I simply refill the pump container in the shower with the same liquid soap I refill the pump container at the sink.(Unscented, mild soap I buy in large bottles from Costco)

Also I find that many guests leave almost full containers of things like shampoo, sunscreen, bug repellent, shaving foam, behind. If those containers are at least half full, I clean and sterilize the outsides of the containers , open the top and clean around there, too, and have a basket in the bathroom full of those. I tell guests to help themselves to anything they need out of there, letting them know that while they aren't full containers, they have all been sterilized. That stuff does get used by many guests.

@Eduardo1262

[Eduardo1262]

@Sarah977 yes so I do have weekly discounts and monthly discounts. Yes I definitely need to write it on the descriptions some where.

Do you put plastic bags inside the trash bins at all? Keep that in stock?

I have 5 trash bins in each room and a bigger one for the kitchen. Did I over exaggerate?

[Sarah977 · Accepted solution]

Well, the number of trash bins provided depend on the amount of space. I assume you mean a trash bin in each of 5 rooms, not 5 in one room. If guests have a trash bin handy, it's more likely to be used. My guests just have a private room/bath and share my kitchen. So I have a small bin in their bathroom and one in their bedroom- neither of those have plastic bag liners- I try to be as environmentally conscious as possible and prefer to just wash out the bins.

Even for my own kitchen, I don't buy garbage bags- I have a smallish kitchen garbage bin, as opposed to a huge one (no food waste goes in there, as I have a compost bin out in the garden) and just reuse plastic shopping bags for them (I know plastic bags are phased out in a lot of places, but here in Mexico, I still end up with a sufficient amount of them) , empty dog food bags, whatever I can repurpose.

Personally, I've never considered a one week stay, or even a 2 week stay to be worthy of a discount (and I have a 2 week maximum), but that's partly to do with the nature and location of my listing- in a destination tourist beach town, so 1-2 week stays are the bulk of my bookings anyway, I don't need to try to attract them by offering discounts. But I realize that's not the case in many other locations where you're trying to encourage longer bookings because they're less work than constant changeovers.

@Eduardo1262 

[Eduardo1262]

@Sarah977  ok great yea I can always tell my cleaner to wash the bins.  As for bed  linens and such for the individuals that stay longer ,do they need to wash their own or do I accommodate them or wash them until they leave?  I definitely do not have a washer that's big enough to fit the bed cover it is super tight in my washer. Is it possible for us to talk or communicate via phone? Thank you

[Sarah977]

It's not a good idea for guests to wash the bedding and towels themselves- because if there are things on them that will stain if not pre-treated, your linens will be ruined. For instance, blood comes out easily if pre-soaked in cold water and the spots treated with hydrogen peroxide. If those things just get thrown in the washer in hot water, it will set the blood stains in so they never come out, at which point your nice sheets and towels become relegated to the rag bag.

Considering COVID precautions, I'd ask guests to put the used bedding in a plastic bag for you, leave it untouched in your laundry room for a few days before handling (which means you'll have to have spares of everything to exchange), and give them clean sheets and towels once a week (if you leave a bunch of extra stuff in the unit, some guests are likely to take advantage of that, using a clean towel every time they have a shower, so better to just exchange dirty for clean).

I'm not sure what you mean by bed cover, but I don't see any need to wash bedspreads, blankets or comforters mid-stay for a guest who stays for a month- just the sheets and pillow cases. Some hosts don't use top sheets, just a duvet, in which case you'd just wash the bottom sheet and duvet cover.

If you want to take this discussion off the public forum, we could communicate via the private message section of the forum here- just click on my profile and then "Send message". I live in Mexico, so phoning not really feasible.

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Eduardo1262 

I think @Sarah977 has provided you with great insight and suggestions. If you need more ideas feel free to check out my listing description, but remember, no two listings are alike.  - https://www.airbnb.co.kr/rooms/17214396?s=67&unique_share_id=66ed01f5-7ad3-4047-9f31-f62469f503a1

My listing is also a single occupancy private room in my main residence, and up till last year (before covid) I used to host a lot of long-term guests; mostly international exchange students for up to 4~5 months. You should think about what makes sense for your own hosting situation, and what you feel comfortable doing vs. allowing guests to do on their own. For us, it made sense to provide all amenities throughout the entire stay (we budgeted for VERY generous usage), and we did not trust guests to wash towels or bedding to our standards so we did it all - and we charged enough to cover our time+effort and expenses for all this so we never felt like the cost of laundry or amenities  were ever 'digging into our profits'. Since we targeted longer stays, we made sure that the monthly payout was more than enough to cover all costs plus leave us with our expected level of profit. 

Here are some links to posts that talk about long-term stays. Hope this helps~~ 

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/How-do-you-break-down-your-costs/m-p/968103

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Longer-stays-cost-me/m-p/736315

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/First-Time-Hosting-and-It-s-Long-Term/m-p/1367085

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Guests-taking-rather-too-many-liberties/m-p/1355727

[Eduardo1262]

@Jessica-and-Henry0 thank you so much. So on average what should we be charging for the cleaning fees? I have it at roughly $25. I do not personally live at my airbnb. I live in another house. I definitely want to make this passive when it comes to running this airbnb business and I have a cleaner. Should that $25, dollars go to her or what do yall suggest. I am fairly new to  hosting on Airbnb but did have some guidance on how to optimize the listing etc. 

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Eduardo1262 

It's really up to you. FYI, I don't have a cleaning fee and have built it into my rates. We do our own cleaning, but we "pay ourselves" so if we were ever in a situation where we needed to get a cleaner it wouldn't affect us by much. 

As I'm sure you are aware, the cleaning fee is only charged once so if you have a $25 cleaning fee set, then regardless of whether you have a 2 night stay or 2 month stay the guest will pay the $25 cleaning fee only once. 

One thing I will add is, for longer stays (imo, exceeding 3 weeks) no matter how clean and tidy the guest was, you will almost always need to do a more intense clean than for a short-term stay. Since we both have day jobs, Henry and I usually block anywhere from 2~3 days up to 1 week after a long term stay so that we have plenty of time and are not rushed. 

[Eduardo1262]

@Jessica-and-Henry0 So in my area everyone pretty much has a cleaning fee on their listings. So I will definitely keep it.  All the information you provided is useful thank you. 

Howndo you handle alterations when they shorten a booking or push it back  couple of days out? 

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Eduardo1262 

In case of long-term stays, there is a well know bug where if you try to change the check in/out dates, the monthly discount is not applied properly. We always mention this to guests in advance. 

Since Henry and I usually block up a 1 week for a deep clean after long-term stays, if the guest wanted to leave early, we'd leave it as is and use the dates for cleaning or if they want to extend, we just block a few more nights after the booking in addition to what we normally do for cleaning anyway. 

Based on the host payout, we divide by # of nights and calculate the nightly rate we are getting from that specific guest. This would be what we base our refund or request for payment on - we explain all this to the guest in advance and no one seemed to mind. 

If having accurate check in/out days is important to you, my understanding is that when the guest sends a request for alteration, hosts can send a "special offer" which reflects the correct price in case there is a problem with the total that Airbnb shows. 

Like everything else, it's up to you to decide how to communicate with guests and how to handle these things. 

[Eduardo1262]

@Jessica-and-Henry0  great insight thank you!

Last question. Let's say I have 2 guests who booked on the November 19th  until the 19th of December.  A month stay. That payout is specifically for November that money would not roll over into December? Would i be losing money for the month of December or how does it work. 

Because I am leasing this home and have a monthly lease to make.

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Eduardo1262 

Monthly payouts for long-term stays will happen on the same date of each month, based on the check in date of the booking. Here's an example of payouts I received for a long-term stay and imo making sure you can pay the lease would be more about balancing your checkbook, rather than the different payout dates you will encounter. My experience was the payout usually showed up in my account anywhere from 2~5 days (incl. weekend/holidays) after Airbnb payout issue date.