Lay My Hat

I am about to have my small bathroom re-done. Currently I have a bath with an overhead shower.

It has been suggested that I should replace the bath with a large shower. My instinct is to keep my present arrangement. What do others think??

Just over half my guests are from the UK. Second biggest group are from Australia.

Its not just nationality. Young kids typically means bath is essential.

Definitely have both. I know I would lose some people if I didn't have a shower and somebody would lose me as a guest if they didn't have a bath and certainly when you have small children, an almost essential.

My biggest dislike of my own apartment is the lack of a bath. I tend to shower most of the time, but the option of a soak after a day skiing would be amazing. I would have both if I could.

Aside from catering for the very young family market, the general attitude goes towards showers.

A shower person will often cut up when confronted with a bath and will not always be that happy with a shower over bath. But a bath person will usually put up with a shower.

A shower over bath does not have a feeling of generous quality that a shower, alone, can afford in the same situation. It is a toss of the coin but if your market does not have a significant number of young families, I would go for a high quality shower and dispense with the bath.

I'm renovating the 2 bathrooms (we also have 2 shower rooms) and decided I needed at least 1 bath for 2 reasons; kids (we now cater mainly for families) and resale value. I wished we had the leeway to have both bath and seperate shower but just couldn't get it to work.

However if I had a UK rental property, and it had a small bathroom I would consider just putting in a shower if I didn't cater for families. But that's mainly because I hate small bathrooms and therefore I'd rather have a luxurious shower room than a cramped bathroom. I wouldn't think a bath is a deal breaker for most holidaymakers.

Mouse
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Edit; good points Charles!

Clearly it's "new-bathroom-time-of-the-year".

I'm also doing ours in our tiny sleep-two apartment. I don't take children so I'm changing from shower over bath to a spacious, glass-enclosed shower....and hope my regular repeats approve.

Doesn't really matter what we owners think/prefer, two choices are always going to be better than one.

If you have space have both.

You can put a shower over a bath but you can't put a bath under a shower!

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tavi wrote:Clearly it's "new-bathroom-time-of-the-year".

So true! We close most of November to catch up on maintenance and refurbishment ( and have a break ourselves) and have just had a new larger shower ( with shower walls) and floor installed in our shower room/cloakroom. We have made it all non-slip as I get some quite elderly guests - non-slip surface on the shower tray and some lovely grey Italian stone tiles on the floor. Now home ( from Rome, where we are enjoying our break) in a few days to finish it off ourselves and hoping the electrician has turned up to do the new lights...

Totally depends on your market - when our kids were pre-schoolers I wouldn't book anywhere without a bath. However, if you attract elderly guests then a walk in shower can be better.

One of our cottages has the shower over the bath and it's quite a step up to get into it. Because of that (and the steep stairs) we say that the cottage isn't suitable for anyone with limited mobility. We have discouraged a few potential bookings - usually a couple bringing an elderly parent on holiday with them.

In the future we might be able to install a shower room downstairs - if that might be an option for you then maybe put the bath in with the shower over for now and look at a separate shower somewhere else later. Then you can take the over-bath shower away, leaving just the bath.

In our current home, when renovating and considering re-sale in the future, our master ensiute has walk in shower and spa bath, the spare room has a shower and the other two rooms share a very smell bathroom which we fitted with a shower bath, 1500 I think, but has a semi rounded shower end at the tap end making it more spacious to shower in and with a curved shower door. My daughter loves it as she can still occasionally enjoy a bath (all be it filled to the brim!)

Sam V wrote: other two rooms share a very smell bathroom

Have you thought of putting in an extractor fan?

greenbarn wrote:

Sam V wrote: other two rooms share a very smell bathroom

Have you thought of putting in an extractor fan?

Well spotted! Yes! We have extractors!

On a slight tangent, we returned home from Portugal after midnight last month to find our bathroom plagued with cluster flies.

FWIW I surveyed guests 7 years ago about this very topic. Out of the 39 british respondents, 34 said a bath was essential.

But your survey sample was of guests who had already bought into the deal. It did not cover potential guests who chose to go elsewhere.

Its a bit like asking buyers of sports cars if they approve of no or cramped back seats.