Guest Dues

[weishuhn53]

A group of us have rented a house in the Valley for a bunch of years and I was wondering what others do about charging guests who come up and stay the night on either a bed or couch.
Do you charge? How much? Has it gone up over the years or kept it the same rate?

Oil (and other expenses) is obviously not getting cheaper so I was wondering what others do.

Thanks.

[random_ski_guy]

I use a rather complex formula myself. I refuse to reveal the exact factors but I can tell you that the rate I charge to use my couch increases for such positives as snowfall, % of the mtn open, clear skies or snowy skies, length of stay, amount of luggage in tow, number of cars, amount of food and bev consumed, etc. Of course there are negative adjustments such as for rain, people who bring gifts (adult beverages, etc), people who amuse me, etc. Pricing out the coach is never complete without allocating utility usage (switching to a 100% coinop house next year to end these squabbles), allocable local property taxes and auto depreciation. If the stay is long enough to affect my federal and state income taxes, sometimes I ding the guest for this too. Anyways, most of the time the entire formula nets to zero. :P

[MntMan4Bush]

At our house we've adopted the policy of not charging. If a housemate has a friend they want to bring up then the only rule is that people who own a share in the house have dibs on a bed. After all the share owners up for the night have a place to lay their head it's first come first serve for guests to fill up on remaining beds, cots, couches or floor space. Usually the guests try and offer money or to buy dinner/food/beer, etc. We never accept cash, but if they want to donate to the mighty beer fridge I never look a guest (gift) horse in the mouth. (That's usually because I'm too busy staring at their chest). If however you end up having the same guest frequent your place more then the share holders I think you would be well justified to ask them to cough up some coin.

[Treeskier]

We charge $35.00 bed breakfast and lunch.

[jwt]

guest fees! We charge $25 per night, never charge kids - but all open beds go to paying guests as long as members have beds.

We have frequent guests, and once, when renting a house on Lincoln Gap Rd, the owner of the house actually had a ski house in Mt Snow, (because his ski buds did not want to drive from Parsippany NJ to Warren!)
He had escalating charges 1st weekend $35, 2nd $50, etc! but that's Mt Snow for you.

We have a $25 food fee for the weekend and some of the best Sat night dinners in the Valley. 2 breakfasts/2 lunches/Sat dinner. Not mandatory at all.

We cook Sat night only. Each one takes two weekends a year.

The guest fees cover all utilities for the year -plowing/ wood/gas/electric/hot tub maintenance/cable.

Some years- dividends! Or rollovers. Most are break even.

Even though they have to put up with a bunch of tree nuts, most guests return. Food is that good most of the time.

And hey, $75 all your food and a bed for the weekend? Raised the price $5 once since 1994.

[madhavok]

Guests should provide 1 dinner per weekend; additionally bringing beer definitely increases your chances of being invited back.
Personally I would never expect or ask guests to pay cash for their stay, I think it's a tasteless and unclassy thing to do.

[jwt]

We run a ski house. If we didn't have guest fees, we'd have 15 people every weekend. The members pay to have a bed and ski with their families, if you have a house with few friends, great, we have 10 members with 20 friends each who want to come , especially when it snows. Only way to keep the floor free of people on weekends.

Besides, NFOPD, we have really have no friends anyway, they just pretend to be so they stay and ski cheap - sure we take them in to the trees, but then we have to kill them.

[outofshape]

And guests were clearly instructed to clean up after themselves.

If it was another person's guest, the house made sure to give the person hell if the guest was not considerate or helpful with things (stocking the woodstove, helping with dishes, etc).

I simply do not have the extra cycles to deal with guests now.

Funny what kids will do to shift priorities.