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We have several vacation rental/Airbnb properties and require a two night minimum stay. It's not profitable for us to have a single night booking due to the cost of turning over the property.
There's enough inquiries about booking single nights that we have started to crunch numbers to see what that might need to cost to be profitable. Basically it has to be close to the cost of two nights. Personally I don't think I have ever stayed at a hotel/vacation rental a single night on a leisurely trip but perhaps we are missing some work travel. Two nights seems to be the minimum standard. Curious to hear from those who have tried to book single nights or like to do that, about the ease of doing so. Is this more popular than I thought?
As a host, I set the cleaning fee to cover the cost of turnover. And we receive plenty of single night bookings. Yes it is almost always much more expensive for the traveler. I'd say the lowest price I get down to on a single night for our cheapest unit is around $105 after taxes and fees. The lowest price for two nights is about $140.
My husband and I have done lots of single night stays on vacation. We don't always stay in the same location the whole trip. Something it's just a stop over location on a long road trip, or it might just be that we only wanted to spend a day in a certain location.
Our single night hotel stays typically involve a flight that gets in fairly late or departs relatively early. Example- when we did the Utah National Parks last year, our flight was scheduled to get into Salt Lake City after 10pm and it made sense to just get a hotel nearby the airport that night and start the drive to Moab the next morning
We have stayed single nights a lot of times at hotels/motels. Never looked into it for condos/Bnb's. Usually we are just needing a clean bed to crash overnight and not there to enjoy the amenities. We certainly aren't going to unpack and make ourselves at home.
I think it's different for hotels versus Bnb's because hotels have a housekeeping staff going down the hall cleaning many rooms. Ours would just be a quick stop along the way and in some cases take less than two minutes to turn. And hotels typically have enough vacancy that a one night stay doesn't incur an opportunity cost.
I do it all the time. I had four one-night stays last year. Two were in the LA area before and after a cruise, just because we wanted to spend time in the area (not really due to time issues), one was when I was visiting a friend and wanted to see a town about 1:45 away, and another was a waypoint for a road trip. This year I will probably go to a city about 1:45 away from where I am now because I need to stay at a hotel to keep my points alive and have never been (and don’t have vacation time to take off work), and next year I anticipate at least one one-night stay before another cruise.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Profitability as an A.bnb... do what you must . Which we know you will do anyway..
Of my 12 homestays so far this month, all but one was one night. $20 max. most were free. Excellent stays of course, great food (free) and travel / local advice and tour guides (free). By the end of next week, will have been in 11 states this month alone. Can't stay in one place too long at the moment. During farm harvest we will stick around as long as our hosts desire our free help. We can drive tractors, combines, and semitrucks if they need or desire. Or we can cook for the harvest crews and run errands. (Free).
Do what you need to, to rake in the green from your clients.
We've had at least thirty one-night stays in the last year.
We've wandered around the midwest, to the southwest, and are now making our way up the west coast.
Usually, we have a destination and timeline. We do short drives and stop to swim or sightsee along the way.
We don't even look at airbnb for fewer than three nights; the cleaning fees make them so much more expensive than hotels.
We have several vacation rental/Airbnb properties and require a two night minimum stay. It's not profitable for us to have a single night booking due to the cost of turning over the property.
There's enough inquiries about booking single nights that we have started to crunch numbers to see what that might need to cost to be profitable. Basically it has to be close to the cost of two nights. Personally I don't think I have ever stayed at a hotel/vacation rental a single night on a leisurely trip but perhaps we are missing some work travel. Two nights seems to be the minimum standard. Curious to hear from those who have tried to book single nights or like to do that, about the ease of doing so. Is this more popular than I thought?
Seems like you are trying to benchmark your travel habits as those for your customers. It also seems like most of the responses show that whether people are on a road trip or flying into a location single night stays are quite common whether for business or pleasure. As the first response showed it is easy to cover your cost of flipping the unit through calculated use of the cleaning fee even if your business model includes paying others to do the dirty work while you just reap the profits.
We have several vacation rental/Airbnb properties and require a two night minimum stay. It's not profitable for us to have a single night booking due to the cost of turning over the property.
There's enough inquiries about booking single nights that we have started to crunch numbers to see what that might need to cost to be profitable. Basically it has to be close to the cost of two nights. Personally I don't think I have ever stayed at a hotel/vacation rental a single night on a leisurely trip but perhaps we are missing some work travel. Two nights seems to be the minimum standard. Curious to hear from those who have tried to book single nights or like to do that, about the ease of doing so. Is this more popular than I thought?
We rarely stay for just one night but it happens (maybe 10% of our stays?). In most places we’d rather settle down for a few days but at other times it makes more sense to just spend a night. I doubt it has much to do with business travel, but it’s probably heavily dependent on location. I doubt single night stays are very significant at beachside towns but places with less tourists will see a lot more.
As others have said, if it’s just a cost issue then you can easily deal with it through pricing. If you personally deal with the turnover then you will obviously need to consider whether the extra time is worth it.
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. Which we know you will do anyway..
