working from home

[Margaret549]

What is a reasonable house rule to include in my listing about working from home (wfh). I am happy for a reasonable use of the internet for wfh but how can I politely indicate that I will not particularly welcome guests wfh all day thereby ramping up the electricity usage. Especially if they are booked in for a few days. It will be polite if guests will let a host know upfront but if nothing has been said in the house rules, disclosing the intention upfront doesn't really mean anything?

Has anyone had to deal with this issue and can advise please? Thank you.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Margaret549 

your price should cover electricity usage, even if they use A/C the whole day and night at 21C and let all the lights on.  We are off-site hosts and I have no idea if guests are careful or abuse and overuse it but my prices cover the bill.

If you prefer an outdoor type of guests who will wake up and then spend the entire day in the city and just come to sleep then you should write it in your description. I've seen it before. If you ban kitchen use and remove any table from their room it might help too :)))

[Gordon0]

It's a tough one, @Margaret549, and has come up plenty of times before. I guess the point is we're not traditional B&Bs (where guests were despatched at 10am) so it's hard to manage.

While I know it's less of an issue in the summer (we don't have the luxury of A/C, @Branka-and-Silvia0), I suppose it can be more costly in the winter.

In terms of your location, I don't imagine you get the die-hard tourists, so perhaps your guests want to hang around more?

Personally I don't allow kitchen or lounge access (there are a hundred cafes within minutes of my front door), but one way for you to discourage lingerers might be to offer kitchen/lounge use between 7 and 10am only?

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Margaret549 

I have to agree with @Branka-and-Silvia0 that it's best to always plan for max usage. Also try to write a description that will attract your target guest type. 

My experience is.... it tends to even out over time. Some guests are never home whereas others will never leave 🙂

[Sarah977]

@Margaret549  My experience is that some guests almost never use the internet connection and some use it a lot. Where I live, my internet is cell-based, and metered, not unlimited, so I not only have to factor in the added electricity, but the cost of the increased internet usage as well. And some guests will leave lights on all the time and some will be conscious to turn them out when not in use, some use hair dryers, which are major energy sucks, some don't. As others have said, it tends to even out.

The thing to do is to monitor your electric bills over a period of time, compare to what they were before you started hosting or during low seasons when you don't have a lot of guests, and decide if you need to up your room rate to make sure you're covered for the average increase in your bills. Electronic devices and electric lights are not, in fact, huge consumers of electricity- irons, hair dryers, toasters, are. Anything which heats up really hot really quickly are energy hogs.

[Beth80]

@Margaret549 There are also routers available that you can set to "snooze". Designed to help parents keep the kids off line at certain times. Then you can set yours so it only is available at certain times. 

[Margaret549]

Thank you all for your very helpful suggestions, every contribution has sincerely been helpful and we are very appreciative. We only recently started hosting and are learning as we are going along, so it's good to know how others deal with some of these issues. 

As suggested, we will keep an eye on our bills and hopefully things will even out over time. I will regard my question answered and conversation closed.

thanks again.