Hi @Sue11,
As someone opening up a small business, it will behoove you to do the footwork, as it sounds like you have started to do, to understand about the pricing for what you are offering, and to price yourself in line with prices in your region, as well as to be very clear to yourself about what you are interested to offer guest, and what you are not interested in providing to guests.
Here is a post I've created with some basic Tips for New Hosts that might help you.
Your question actually has a 2nd issue hidden within it, which I am not sure that you are aware of. Namely, you have stated that you offer one thing, and now you have a guest who is asking for more. WHo is essentially asking for something that you have NOT said you would provide -- such as cooked breakfast, use of laundry and iron. Be cautious about such situations, and in fact you might also want to read the Red Flags for Hosts which I have written, because what you have here, whether you realize it or not, is a RED FLAG situation. Namely a guest who is asking for or perhaps even demanding, more services than you provide. THis does not mean that this guest will definitely be a problem guest -- but it is a suggestion thereof, something to be cautious about, and to take into consideration with all other presenting factors, when you decide if you want to host this guest or not.
So it will help to step back and realize that, and also ask yourself -- DO you want to provide cooked breakfast, laundry, iron, and potentially even more things that this guest is going to demand in days or weeks to come. You do not have to provide anything you dont' want to. So first check with yourself and decide if you are comfortable with this. Many, many experienced hosts have found that guests who demand extra services, tend to be problematic. That may not end up being true in this case, but hosts need to develop radar to try to detect and steer clear of problematic guests.
As far as how much extra to charge, look around and see if other hosts in your area (or even in other cities )provide such services and what their rates are. Cooked breakfast to me sounds like at least $30 extra per day, to cover both your time and the food. ANd be aware of how this offer to cook breakfast could lead to more and more problems -- for instance, you offer to provide cooked breakfast at 8am to 9am, but then the guest snipes, that that just won't work for them, they aren't up until 11am, and you find yourself being forced to stay home a couple extra hours, now waiting on your guest to finally get up and have breakfast. In which case $60 extra a day might not be enough to cover all the time you have to wait for the guest to stroll into your kitchen at their leisure. So when you consider offering extra services, as you can see it is important to consider all the potential drawbacks or additional complications that this may bring up. Such as -- you are offering the service during certain specified hours, but the guest does not find those hours convenient, and demands other hours.
Offering cooked breakfast can also open up a whole other can of worms -- such as, the guest doesn't like what you are offering, and wants something else. Now you find yourself not only spending the time cooking for them, and possibly waiting for them to stroll into the kitchen in the morning, but also having to go out shopping just to get the very specific things they demand to have for breakfast. And so now it's soon approaching $100 a day extra you will need to compensate yourself for all the extra time you spend on this. So as you can see, offering a cooked breakfast could be a great way to start off being a "doormat" instead of a host, and it's something hosts need to be very careful to watch out for. My advice would be, that unless you are good at saying "NO" and drawing solid lines around what you are willing to provide and what you won't provide, stay out of this realm of offering cooked breakfasts. Its' a quagmire for the softies in particular.
YOu can either ask guests to use the local laundromat or let them use your laundry -- you can charge by the load or maybe add about $2-5 extra a day for laundry use, I would think.
Long term stays -- you can either allow guest to use kitchen, or not. ALlowing guests to use the kitchen, be advised, they may take over the kitchen, particularly if there is more than one guest. And they may not clean up to your satisfaction. Not allowing guests to use kitchen, may discourage longer term guests, and some hosts have found that when they prohibited kitchen use, guests snuck in anyway to use the kitchen. Definitely charge more if you allow kitchen use -- it should be not hard to look at listings in your area and price yourself similarly to those who either allow kitchen use, or don't. Some hosts start off allowing kitchen use to guests, and later on withdraw it after they find it causes problems. Some allow guests to use only part of the kitchen, such as refrigerator and microwave, but do not allow cooking on the stove or oven. Others allow stove and oven use, but no heavy cooking or greasy cooking. (Which may essentially mean, "if you make a big mess on my stove, splattering grease all over, you are DONE using my kitchen" ) SO there are a number of options here and you can experiment and explore what is best for you. Do take into consideration your own needs, because if you overlook your own needs you can become burned out as a host.
When setting up a small business, it is important to do the research which involves comparing yourself to other similar small businesses in your area. You can learn a lot that way.
