How should you price to Spanish Clients

[Casa Montana]

Hi,

Hope alls well.

Just wanted to get some feedback re: Spanish clients. Do they prefer 1 price inclusive of cleaning charges or do they mind it seperate??

Just quoted €200 per night €600 for a 3 night stay over xmas. Then advised there is also a €100 end of stay clean payable.

Spoke with her this morning and she says the cleaning charge is very high. Not sure she realises how long a four bedroomed 3 storey house takes to clean aswell as pay the management team to meet and greet etc.......

So thinking should i lump all in as one price with the spanish market if i'm getting that reaction??

There isn't any charge for heating either in that price. Our house is hugely expensive to heat in the winter.

Anybody else charge for heating in the winter season??

Any thoughts appreciated.

Cheers

Carl
Casa Montana

[Nightowl]

I always quote an 'all in' price. At the end of the day, if you quote the cleaning separately or not, the final inclusive price is what they pay, so how the costs are divided up makes no difference. I think that if you separate the cost of cleaning out people will often think it's too high (because they equate it to how long they spend cleaning their own house, but of course, they won't be cleaning every surface, changing every bed and generally making the whole thing spotless, they generally will be just running the hoover around and doing the surface stuff to keep the house going. )

[lorca]

We charge and all inclusive price which includes (in the winter) bombonas for the gas heaters and elex for the small heaters in the bedrooms, but not wood for the wood burning stove (although we do put a first load in. Heating is expensive for our 5 bed house an we probably don´t charge enough!

[pepsipuss]

I would never separate out the cleaning charge or anything else that is not optional, for any nationality. It is not as if they can avoid it. It would be like restaurants that quote prices without IVA (VAT) - it maddens me!

For utilities, during winter we include sufficient of everything (gas, electricity, wood) for normal usage and charge for anything used over this. As winter rates are low it seems only reasonable. We do not have aircon in our rental house but if we did we would probably do similarly in the summer because it concentrates the mind - people think twice about going out leaving all the windows open and the aircon blasting out if they have a limit on consumption.

[lorca]

For utilities, during winter we include sufficient of everything (gas, electricity, wood) for normal usage and charge for anything used over this.

Sounds great, but how do you work out what normal usage is (esp for elex), and how can you tell when they´ve exceeded it? Seriously

[pepsipuss]

We know what the historical usage is in the house based on what we used to use when we lived there, uplifted according to how many people are occupying. We tell them how much is included and how much any extra will be (at cost). For the electricity we read the meter at the beginning at the end of the let. For gas and wood we give them x bottles/certain amount of wood based on similar criteria. Our limits are generous and I do not anticipate them being exceeded but it does concentrate the mind!

[lorca]

Yes, that makes sense - sadly we can´t do that as we only used it as a holiday home (the odd week or so ) before we moved out here and had to rent it out. We do stay there when we can - often with friends and family - so I´ll have a go at monitoring it when we do.