Multiple private rooms offered in my residence

[Janice1]

I wish to offer multiple private rooms to one party of guests. 

I actually have successfully rented my home in this way by listing it as the entre home.   Because my husband and I live in the home I’m just not comfortable with classifying my rental in this way.   I’ve gone to great lengths to explain the situation in my listing,  and so far I have received fantastic feedback 🙂  It’s just wordy and a bit confusing to explain.  Also, I’m concerned I could be setting myself up for a miss understanding.  Or perhaps I’m just out and out breaking the rules, I’m not sure.

To test other options I have gone so far as to create multiple listings under my profile.  I’ve listed each of the bedrooms separately as private rooms at a cheaper rate.  Unfortunately, I’ve only rented the single private room once compared to nine times for the entre apartment.  Many of people I host are filtering for 2 bedrooms, 2 beds and accommodating 4 guests.  Also, some solo travellers and couples are taking advantage of the extra space and privacy I’ve created with a sofa bed that transforms the 2nd bedroom into a guest lounge. 

If the private rooms had been successful I would consider removing the listing for the entre apartment.  However, it’s the entre apartment that brings me my guests.  Furthermore, under the stats tab I often have no views on many days for my private rooms.  As a test I dropped the price of the private room, with the queen bed and balcony, down to $40NZD with no luck (this is cheapest by far in the area).   I wonder if Airbnb are blocking my private room listing in some way?

I’m open to suggestions from the community.  Failing that come on Airbnb give me a break.

[David126]

I would do whatever you think is best, sort of surprised as I would have thought the who house would miss out on trade, but you nest know your market.

[Janice1]

Thanks David.  As time goes by I am learning.

[David126]

I have 3 rooms and have only once had them all taken by one group, I would like my listings grouped but the way AirBnB is set up is from the perspective of a single host with a single room/flat/house whatever to let.

I can see some things could be tweaked, but allowing a house or room option and keeping the Calendar up to date maybe complicated and not something of concern to most hosts.

[Mary-Ellen0]

I have had the same challenge and requested multiple times that Airbnb add the ability for guest to indicate how many rooms they want to rent.  Airbnb's answer is to create multiple listings which is a hassle and difficult to manage for both hosts and prospective guests.  

I have had a posting for my large private master suite for several months with no takers.  When I list as a whole house with the first floor suite I get plenty of business.  I indicate extra rooms available for larger parties and ask that inquiries be sent before booking requests so I can reply with the special offer option for correct pricing.  Special offer option used to be available with each booking request.  It seems that now a special offer is only availble when an inquiry is made.   It seems that most people want the privacy of being the only guests....

[Janice1]

Thanks Mary Ellen

Certainly seems to be a grey area between multple areas in an annex within the house and fully self contained.  I like your notion of a suite within the whole house.  

Yes, booking as the only guests is popular...but I get a lot of positive feedback around interaction with hosts.   I think private room listings get filtered out without the  guests even seeing them or considering requesting other rooms as special offers.

Cheers

J

[Stephanie-and-Andrew0]

Let's get a count here and perhaps AirBnB will actually respond with some action.

Please, AirBnB, allow hosts listing under "Private Room" to be able to show seperate beds in separate bedrooms as you do allow for hosts of Entire Home/Apt listings and not force Private Room Hosts to use the inaccurate work-arounds placed upon us by a seamingly arbitrarily limited functionality.

It appears from this thread there are alot of us hosts who have the same concern:

- We Host/Post as Private Room

- but have multiple bedrooms available for the guest groups,

- each with beds,

- We set up that way to accomodate expanded guest groups and families (extended or otherwise)

- We don't want to be filtered out for not listing that we have multiple rooms (read PRIVACY) because airbnb functionality won't CURRENTLY allow it. (When was the last time you wanted to share a room with your in-laws?)

- don't want to inaccurately post as Entire Home/Apt

- Prefer one "guest group" at a time

- Don't want to run a boarding house with multiple listed rooms (which could cause us to be filtered out as well)

The newly created functionality is there.  PLEASE AIRBNB, expand its use to enable clarity and accuracy for both Guests and Hosts.

I find it interesting that this thread has had no response to date from AirBnB online managers.  Clearly, if this many hosts have taken the time to express this concern, there needs to be a response from Corporate.

Thanks,

Andrew

Search terms at issue: Rooms and Beds Bed Details Private Room

[Ed-and-Hugh0]

As long as you link the calendars of each room with the all-the-rooms listing, then it shouldn't be too difficult to manage. If someone books an individual room, that would automatically block someone else from booking the whole place, and if someone booked the whole place that would bock the individual rooms from being booked. It takes a little bit of setup up front, but after that, it should be easy to manage and pretty much automatic.

[Robin-And-Sue0]

Some of the solutions above are difficult and convoluted.  The option of a 'Private Space' should simply allow more than one room - our space is a large living room, with brekky bar, lounge and dining areas, TV, Air Conditioner, plus two nice bedrooms and a private bathroom for our guests. We are currently putting a door in the hall to completely separate the 'customer space' from the rest of the house.  We listed as a whole house/apt (banking on the 'apt' bit 🙂 ) and have had two comments about 'oh - this is shared'.  Only the kitchen and laundry are shared.  Our Basic Listing says, in the very first line "You get exclusive use of a large private space in OUR house, consisting of...", but some people still don't read it.  One could say, well, that's there problem - but we lose stars because of 'accuracy' even though our guests love their space.   Come onn AirBnB - it's NOT a difficult thing to do - Allow more than ONE bedroom in a Private Space.

Best Regards, Robin and Sue Freestun, Melbourne, Australia

[Marc46]

Ed & Hugh,

Am I understanding you correctly that you are able to link the calendars of each room with the all-the-rooms listing?
How? Manually managing each calendar or automatically syncing?

[Jade85]

Airbnb has an option to Link Airbnb calendars. I have 3 listings: 1 for the entire apartment and 2 for the private bedrooms. Linking them means that if the whole apartment is booked then the both rooms are blocked for the same dates. If one bedroom is booked it will block the Entire apartment listing on the same dates. 

To get to that option just go to Availability settings and scroll down to 'Linked Airbnb calendars'

[Sheila332]

This is what we want to do when we open our Airbnb.   We have a large separate area downstaris with two bedrooms, non ensuite single bathroom, a LARGE living room and extra space for larger eating tables to be set up for large groups and/or playing board games/cards, and a kitchenette with microwave and hot water pot.   There is a separate "coffee corner" with a Keurig coffee maker and all the fixings.   We live in a very touristy area with MANY breakfast/lunch and lunch/dinner restaurants so feel it is not necessary to provide  full kitchen.  We are not going to provide access to our laundry room, but will provide ways to do hand wash laundry and there is a laundromat one mile from our home.   We want to adveritise this space access to a downstairs apartment with two bedrooms and futon sleeping couch in the living room.   But we also want to adverise the availabilty of renting each bedroom separately.   Because we also have several foam sleeping pads and an inflatable single mattress - and the space to place them for sleeping purposes in the "extra area" in the living area, we can theoretically sleep 8 people easily and comfortably.   We live near a popular space museum as well as a private college and our downtown historic district is rated in the top 5 for trendy small downtown main streets, so figure whole families might want to visit our town and rent the downstairs.   *We also have a large lap pool and hot tub.  We would also like to post an amount for two people and charge additional per person if a large group books the downstairs.   Does this all sound feasible?

[Michael194]

Janice, I was glad to find your post on this. I have run into the exact same issue.  I have a loft that I live in, and rent out 2 other bedrooms.  I have it under "entire house" but have gone to great lengths to explain in the listing description that "I also live here too" even to the point of repeating it several times.  I've recently had 2 reservations that for some reason booked without reading the entire description and understanding this point.  I considered placing them under the "room only" section but figured trying to manage the calendar for all three options would be cumbersome...but I did see in the comments that there may be a way to sync that.  If you don't mind review my listing and provide some feedback, I'm going to look at yours too from a "guest" perspective and see how I interpret it.  Thanks for posting on this topic. -Michael

[Linda108]

I am joining the conversation as I also have recently added another bedroom and now have two bedrooms available for a single guest party.  I already have several bookings for the music festivals that here in the desert.  I include in my description that guests can book one or both rooms.  If only one room is booked, I offer a 25% discount but do not book any other guest party in the other room.

Having done this, I am still unable to change my base price to correctly reflect the room price I have manually entered into the calendar.  The base price that appears at the beginning of my listing is so inaccurate I feel that I am engaging in a "bait and switch" situation when a potential guest is searching within certain pricing.

Also, I notice the pricing tips on the calendar is not taking into account that there are two bedrooms since the listing is under "one bedroom".

I hope more hosts with this issue will continue to post their problem with the current limited listing options.  Let's get a long, long conversation thread.  Should catch someone's attention.

[Mohammed7]

I am also interested in fixing this issue. I have three bedrooms available (two guests per room for a total of up to 6 guests). Why shouldn't I be able to allow guests to choose multiple rooms within my house? Limiting it to 2 guests per room in the search greatly reduces the number of inquiries I get.  The guests should have the ability to choose multiple rooms without me having to do an "entire apartment" listing because there are those that might be traveling with 4 guests and that would mean the 3rd room would have to stay empty. Doesn't make a lot of sense the way it is currently set up.