Should You Offer Friends and Family Discounts?
BY MIKEL HUBBARD
FORMER HGTV PRODUCER | CO-FOUNDER, THE HOST CO |
OWNER, TIMES EIGHT PROPERTY & DESIGN
Your friends want to come stay. Should you give them a discount? What’s customary and what’s the best way to work it? We’ve got the skinny!
Uh, can we come crash at your Airbnb? You mean my boutique hotel business? Totally!SET A FIRM LIST OF PRICES AND DON’T MAKE EXCEPTIONS
Here’s what’s ultimately gonna happen: you’re gonna give a close friend a SCREAMING deal and then your other not as close friend is gonna find out and want the same deal. Pretty soon friends of friends find out that you’re practically giving away your Airbnb rental if they just ask. Now you’re running a charity, not a hotel.
Set a firm friends and family discount, whether it’s 20% across the board or a certain price for weekdays and another price for weekends/holidays. It’s OK to give away nights last minute, but set rules around that too like ONLY if it doesn’t book day of or max you can reserve a week from the date.
READ MORE: FIVE NEWBIE MISTAKES WE MADE WITH OUR AIRBNB - THAT YOU CAN AVOID
Can’t afford an $80 cleaning fee for two nights? I think there’s a hostel down the road…Don’t feel bad about telling your friends and family that holidays are off limits and so are weekends. That’s when you make your money and you know you’ll book. If you give them a $200 discount, you literally just gave them $200 out of your pocket. It’d be cheaper for you to put them up somewhere else!
I’m totally a clean person. Oh, I mean who wipes out the fridge? We barely used it. Uh, huh.BE FIRM ABOUT MANDATORY, NON-DISCOUNTED CLEANING FEES WHEN FRIENDS/FAMILY STAY
If it’s last minute and your place isn’t booked, it’s much easier to give it away to a friend. Remember, you are GIVING them a free hotel stay. It’s OK to tell them they have to pay for a cleaner for that FREE hotel stay. They don’t want to pay it and clean themselves? Then they should stay somewhere cheaper.
Friends and family will tell you they can clean themselves. They can’t. They probably don’t own an Airbnb and so their idea of clean is probably not your future guests idea of clean. Rather than get pissed at your friends for leaving your house dirty after they just stayed for free or at a discounted rate, just make them pay for a cleaner! It’s not too much to ask.
READ MORE: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE OPENING YOUR AIRBNB
Nice reviews don’t pay the bills people.YOU CAN LIMIT THE NUMBER OF TRIPS PER MONTH OR YEAR
Remember, you’re running a business. If you can’t afford to do more than one FF discount per month or 3 per year, that’s totally ok! It’s all about setting boundaries to make sure you’re not being taken advantage of. You’re not a billion dollar company that can afford to give away free stuff to your friends. You’re just a small business owner trying to make it in this crazy world. You deserve to make money!
How do you handle friends and family discounts? Let us know in the comments!