As a person who stays in a rental or AirBnB with utilities included,?
Can I possibly say a bit from the hosts side? In general guests are entitled, the reaction is, well were paying for it we might as well use it! This is a sad philosophy to have because, everyone ends up paying for it in increased rental amounts. We have to allow $12 per day in our listing charge for utility usage because, averaged out over our guests that is what it will cost! Typically a guest will arrive at 2.00pm on a cold winter afternoon, I will have the cottage air conditioning running and set at a comfortable 22c for an hour or so before they arrive. The guest will enter and say how pleasant the temp is, put their things down and go out for the afternoon and evening after winding the thermostat up to 30c so they will have a toasty environment to come back into! I had a guest who on the last morning of his stay asked if he could barbecue a few sausages he had left over from his stay to take with him! I pointed him in the direction of the barbecue and left him to it! He left at 8.30 am! That night about 11.30pm as I was finishing up for the day I just happened to walk down past the barbecue area and I suddenly thought.gee that feels warm! He had finished his cooking and walked off, leaving the barbecue running all day..17 hours, a $22 Gas cylinder virtually emptied for the sake of half a dozen bloody snags!!! In the guest bathroom I have an electric strip heater for guests comfort. I went into the cottage at 4.00pm after guests had left at 9 and not only was the air conditioning still running, so was that strip heater in the bathroom. Guests dont care, they are paying, so they make sure they use. I encourage guests to feel they can be comfortable and enjoy themselves while on our property but I would like them to treat it as they would their own.thats only fair isnt it? Now what I must add to the equation here, we generate our own power through both wind and solar, so why would we be charging for electricity? This system cost a few thousands to install, and we need to cover that. Also we get a feed-in tariff of 60c per Kw for every Kw we export back into the mains grid. Every thoughtless guest who plows through electricity needlessly results in less compensation from the energy provider because of less power we can export to cover those times when we have to buy power from the grid. If guest would just be a little bit more responsible I could lower my listing amount to everyone and it would be a win/win all round! But that will never happenguests are entitled! Cheers.Rob