Should we charge for extras?

Charging for extra services in your holiday home may prove to have a negative effect on the total annual bookings. It may well be more beneficial to be seen to be adding extras for free. These days most people are asking for 24 hr free internet connection during their stay. It has become the norm and the annual cost to you as the home owner is coming down all the time. For example I discovered that this offer is available: Online Exclusive - Plusnet Fixed Price Unlimited Broadband & line rental £19.99
You may feel that you would like to ask a small fee for this, but perhaps it is better to include it in your overall rental fee, or absorb it. The same could be true of adding Netflix or Sky. This way your guests will see immediately what the holiday will cost instead of having to add all the extras to find out what the actual final cost would be.
You could argue that by not advertising your hidden extras allows you to display lower prices... personally I do not like the 'starting from' prices, which are there to entice you further.

Try also adding "what's included in your stay" to illustrate the extras you are not charging for such as free towel and linen service, free cleaning service, free logs for the fire, free baby high chair, welcome goodies and soaps.

The one extra that we decided to add to the overall price was a flat rate refundable damage deposit. Since guests have no intention of damaging your property they will happily pay this as they know they will get it back at the end of their stay. You can read more about why we decided to have a damage deposit in a previous article: Are there bad holiday guests?

Holiday home statistics

It's not only important to keep a record of all your guest details but also of all your overheads, net and gross income. Using this information will help you improve your holiday home business for the following year.

Compiling records 

I even calculate costs of water, gas and electricity per booking by taking meter readings on each changeover. Do families with infants create more costs or less? What percentage of guests come from outside of the UK and do they provide a higher or lower percentage of income per head? What about the difference in costs per booking from clients from the various booking sources? Which of those booking sources takes the highest fees from your advertised rates? How many last minute bookings do you get? How many queries have you had for short breaks and were they profitable enough or did they make a loss?

Maintenance costs will vary from year to year 

Perhaps it is wise to make notes of which bookings created damage above and beyond normal wear and tear. Consider how to make changes to avoid the cost happening again.

Annual costs

The overall general costs of utilities, mortgages, services, insurances, fire and safety reports, taxes etc., can be divided by 52 weeks per year, by the amount of weekly booking, or perhaps more accurately per booked night. Doing this I worked out the average number of weeks required to break even and to decide how many weeks we should aim for to make a profitable income. This gives savings to use for rainy days or perhaps to make a bigger dent in any outstanding mortgage.

These are all things that you can use to target your marketing for future seasons, decide on your minimum nights stay, the lowest rate you are able to accept after giving discounts, which type of guest group to avoid or deter.

Services and supplies 

Many service providers and suppliers will increase prices year on year. Using these records you should also be able to find areas where costs can be reduced such as finding cheaper deals on insurance, switching to new energy providers and telephone/ internet providers such as this: Online Exclusive - Plusnet Fixed Price Unlimited Broadband & line rental £19.99 for 12 months plus £50 Reward Card and £5 activation fee
also
Plusnet Fixed Price Unlimited Fibre & line rental £23.99 for 18 months with £9.95 activation fee

Switch your energy provider to Octopus, and you'll probably save. We've always switched so we are already on a good deal, but this one will save us another £60. Use this link to sign and up split £100 with us.

Split £100 | Octopus Energy

Join Octopus for cheaper, greener energy & £50 credit