New here, should I add more beds to increase nightly rate?

New here, should I add more beds to increase nightly rate?

I just opened my home for Airbnb guests and I want to rent out the space as an entire house rather than individual rooms. Currently I have a king bed in the master bedroom, and a queen bed in one of the other rooms, and one room empty (was used as an office). I'd like to increase the nightly rates I charge. The only way I thought it would make a big difference is to add more beds in the house. I'm thinking a bunk bed in the third room, and possibly a day bed in the master bedroom.

 

What are some other ideas I should consider? 

19 Replies 19
Emiel1
Level 10
Leeuwarden, The Netherlands

hello @Vivian119 ,

if you add more beds, you can accomodate more guest. Your price now is allready for the entire house, max is 5 guests. You could consider adding a fee for extra guests:

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1507/how-do-i-add-a-fee-for-additional-guests-to-my-listing

Allways be carefull when renting a whole house, avoid the party people and set a deposit in your listing (it's not there now)

Best regards, Emiel

Robin4
Level 10
Mount Barker, Australia

@Vivian119

Hello Vivian,  I have had a look at your listing and the problem you have at the moment you have set a nightly price for the listing that remains the same regardless of whether one guest books or 5!

 

What you need to do is set a 'base price' in 'Pricing'  on your listing editing page and then set an additional guest charge as per this screenshot....

setting extra charges.png

 

You have currently set a listing price of $164 AU per night!

What I am suggesting you do is set a listing price of, say, $160 AU per night for up to 2 guests and then set an additional guest charge of $15-$20 per guest for each additional guest over that two. 

You can't charge by the bed Vivian, you can only charge by the number of guests.

 I hope this is of help to you Vivian....good luck.

 

Cheers.....Rob

Louise231
Level 10
Manchester, United Kingdom

Agree with the others hear about charging different amounts per people.

 

I would say though, yes add another bed in the spare room, otherwise its dead space.

 

Also consider adding locks to the bedroom doors, if a guest books for 2 people and mentions ' me and my husband coming for the weekend' etc, then i wouldn't hesitate to lock the other rooms from being used. Stops them making a mess in the other rooms, stops extra people from staying for free.

 

Add a note to tell people if you want to do this, if it's in the house rules you can charge per room. So there's a price for two people in one room, or two people in two seperate rooms. Make it clear to guests then it's a win win for you both.

Robin4
Level 10
Mount Barker, Australia

@Louise231 @Vivian119

Louise, you can state that in your house rules but, that is possibly a bit difficult without  requesting additional money once the booking is confirmed Louise!

You can't automatically charge by the bed with Airbnb, only by the guest on a particular listing! You can set your property up as a number of listings and then charge by the bed with each bed being a seperate listing.

 

So to pick an example....

1 guest in one bedroom = $100

2 guests in one bedroom  = $100

2 guests in two bedrooms, still $100....it is not the bedrooms that are being automatically charged, it is the guests.

I have this problem frequently! I have a main bed and the lounge becomes a sofa bed to accomodate that extra child or person. So, I charge $85AU for the main bed and I charge an additional $15-$30 when there are 3-4 guests for the person/s using the sofa bed. That works well but, quite often I will get a mother/daughter, or a couple of friends travelling together and they would prefer to sleep in seperate beds, and the system does not allow me to charge that additional amount for the second bed when there is only two of them. It is still just two guests and they get charged at the guest base rate that I set. 

When this happens I just suck it up and cop the extra cost where the servicing is concerned. 

Sure, I can request additional money that is seperate to the standard booking charge but that just antagonises people so I just take the hit.

 

Cheers.....Rob

 

 

Louise231
Level 10
Manchester, United Kingdom

@Robin4@Vivian119Yeah, that's why i say pop locks on the doors.

 

Mention it in the listing, and in the house rules. When guests book they have to confirm the house rules before they make a payment so they can't say they didn't see it. Then you just leave the door locked unless a guest pays the extra for seperate beds.

 

Because otherwise you end up with a fair amont of people who book multiple room listings for two people but use several beds. If you are a guest looking for two beds then you generally have to go for a whole house listing because most private rooms are double beds (not all but most are) so you will end up somewhere that charges a lower rate for 2 people vs 4 people. Which means you end up somewhere like this.

 

If you want to discurage this, then add something like 'Extra Bedding Pack' -£30. Which i've seen on quite a few listings. Guests know that two people is one bed, if they want a second bed made they have to pay for it, because cleaning is different when you use more than one room.

 

@Louise231   If you advertise an "Entire House", you can't lock off bedrooms and tell people they can't use them.

Louise231
Level 10
Manchester, United Kingdom

@Sarah977Yes you can, i've stayed in places where storage rooms have been blocked off, or places that just don't have guest access, like on office they want kept private, even though you're renting the whole place.

 

It's 'entire house' because it's private, as long as you're not planning on letting anyone else stay in the rooms you're blocking off then the guest still has an entire house.

 

The difference is 2 guests get a 1 bed house, 4 guests get a 2 bed house, and more get a 3 bed house. Unless a guest wants to book Extra bedding for a price, (which ive seen on listing's and had no issues with) or say a bunk bed for kids who are classed as free. (again not an issue if you let kids stay for free)

 

Point is, if you want to be flexible with pricing then you can be flexible with space.

 

If you point out to the guest the alternate is charging for a whole house at the max occupancy price for every night, then most guests will be happy to pay less and have 1 room less.

@Louise231  I can agree that it's perfectly fine to have a locked storeroom, but if you list an Entire House, that is going to be what most guests expect- not to find that the bedrooms are locked. By that way of thinking, you could have a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house, have someone book 2 of the bedrooms, and then you decide that they only need one bathroom, and lock the other? 

While you may have done this arrangement successfully, it seems like it would take a lot of explaining to guests, a lot of guests who felt the listing had been misrepresented (even if you were clear with them) and some low accuracy ratings. So maybe it's worked for you, but it's not something that I would personally recommend, especially to a new host- too fraught with potential problems.

I agree with @Sarah977 you can't do that. We had 4 business men from Asia stay for 4 days and we absolutely know there were no more. They used all 6 beds, only thing they didn't use was the sofa sleeper and crib lol. The term for this is "bed hopping" I believe and it does happen more often then you would think. If you say "Entire House" it has to be the entire house or you are not describing your property correctly, so if you get marked down for this category it's your own fault. Flase Advertising!

Louise231
Level 10
Manchester, United Kingdom

@Sarah977@Letti0

 

Sorry no, going to dissagree, why would you be ok with people 'Bed hopping' i've heard of people doing it before, and i agree it's more comman than people think, but why would you let people continue to do it? It's really disrespectful to the host and and it's like people booking and having someone else show up to stay, it's really not ok, and when hosts let other hosts do it, it becomes even harded to protest against later.

 

I know some hosts are happy to let 2 people stay and use 2 beds and charge the same as 1 bed, and some hosts don't care. But it's still an option to charge people for the use of the 2nd bed (its like a one time cleaning fee), it happens reguarly and guests who have clear expectations wouldn't mark you down. It's like people charging for laundry, or charging for taxi rides to the airport. You tell people its on option, the guest chooses or not.

 

But letting 2 guests use 4 beds etc with bed hopping is totally out of order. Entire house or not, they should be reviewed down, or they can stay with hosts who charge a flat rate for the house regardless of how many rooms are booked.

 

@Sarah977No i wouldn't charge/block a second bathroom, or study, or play room, any other room in the house, personally I don't think it's a good example. The point is you'd clean those rooms between each stay anyway. You are only cleaning and changing the extra bedding because the guest used an 'extra' above what they booked, and the bedding is a large part of the work for a host.

  I never said anything about being okay with bed-hopping,  @Louise231. I just think that listing a place as "Entire House" when, in fact, you want to be able to rent out whatever number of bedrooms the guest says they need, is misleading. 

 If I were a guest who had booked a whole house, I'd certainly never bed-hop, but I'd find it unwelcoming to see that there were a bunch of locked rooms. Like the host didn't trust me right off the bat.

to clarify, Entire Place means that you are not sharing the space with a host or with other guests. So, I disagree with the Everything Has To Be There idea. For example, there are pictures in my listing of my space setup with trundles & air mattresses. But if a reservation is for 2 guests, then I don't setup those extra beds, I also don't put sheets on the additional twin beds, but make up the Queen bed that can serve those 2 guests (full disclosure, I'm a giant studio, thus nothing to lock off). I also set out more snacks, more towels if there are more guests and less if there are less. I don't think that is false advertising, it is the reality of what they have booked.

Many hosts who do want to charge for any ancillary beds being used will say something like "parties of 2 who would like us to make up both the queen bed and the sofa bed need to book for 3 guests in order for us to accommodate the extra bedding". Of course if a host doesn't want to charge extra then that is their perogative, but per person pricing is a legitimate business strategy. I'd rather charge smaller groups a fair price rather than have pricing favor the larger groups just because my space can handle more -- we like a mix of large/small reservations and I think pricing each of them accordingly makes sense.

@Kelly149   I can totally get that, the way you do it. Not making up any extra beds solves the problem of bed hopping. If the guests want to bed hop, they'll have to use the bedding they've already been given, which doesn't add to the host's laundry load. And of course you'd leave less snacks, toilet paper, towels, etc. for 2 guests than for 4. That to me is quite different from guests who booked an entire house arriving to find that 3 of the 4 bedroom doors were locked. I'd maybe wonder what the host was hiding in there. It would feel creepy.

Willow3
Level 10
Coupeville, WA

Before doing this, ask yourself what kind of guests do you have now, and what kind of guests will you expect if you up the bed count.  

 

I live in a tiny town and yet yet on my square block there are two full time STRs... of almost identical square footage. One sleeps four, the other sleeps seven. One has considerate guests, one hosts parties all summer long. Guess which hosts the rest of us like better. 🙂

 

But seriously, does your area attract large groups, and of so, why are they coming? My area, the only reasons groups come are wedding parties and 4th of July - both are loud and have a lot of drinking and weed.