Should we do whole house or separate rooms?

Adam687
Level 1
Goshen, IN

Should we do whole house or separate rooms?

Help! Advice needed. We're getting ready to leave for a year in Egypt. We will have a trusted manager who lives only 4 houses down the street who will run our site and clean our house when guests leave. We have a big rambling old home in the Midwest, in a city of 35,000. Main events near us that draw people to the area include Notre Dame football home game weekends. And there are Amish tourist attractions in the area too. 

Here's where it gets tricky:

We have an attic apartment separate on the 3rd floor. That one is easy enough as a stand-alone (although if they want to do laundry that's on the 1st floor in a common space.) On the second floor we have four bedrooms-- three of them could be like a BnB or hostel, individual private rooms but sharing one bathroom. And the fourth BR is our master suite that has an adjoining bathroom, so it could be separate. 

On the first floor we also have our home office that could be converted before we leave to a small BR too. So, we could make it simple-- 2 units, Attic-- sleeps 2, and Lower two floors, sleeps 8. OR, we could get a lot more complicated and rent six different spots.

There are so many configurations but I'm guessing that "Whole House" (ie lower two floors) is our best bet. It means we may have rooms sitting open, but I figure people would rather pay for privacy.  I would love to hear from someone in a smaller city who has tried both multi-room configurations as well as whole-house. What worked best for you? 

1 Reply 1
Ben551
Level 10
Wellington, New Zealand

@Adam687  I recommend looking at what other hosts are doing in your area with similar sized properties. Ultimately you don’t want to add an option that confuses the guest market, so it will depend what others are doing.

 

In my area, I notice that hosts who are not living at a property don’t list individual rooms of a place, they only list the whole thing. When a host lives at a property though, I commonly see them listing out (say) bedroom 1, bedroom 2, then a third listing for bedroom 1 & 2 together.