How to Start & Run a B&B BandBED2eBook-1 | Page 28

by being charged an “extra” £15 – “paying extra for seemingly using less” as the Daily
Mail puts it. So unfair!
But hold on a second – what is the B&B offering? Bed and Breakfast, of course: (1) a
room, and (2) breakfast. If we say breakfast in our example accounts for say £8, our
couple are paying £16 for breakfast and £54 for the room (£70 - £16). That is the
‘standard’ price, as of course most bookings are for two sharing the room.
Our single traveller, paying £50, is thus paying £8 breakfast and £42 (£50 - £8) for the
room in single occupancy. The same room that couples pay £54 for. So in reality, the
B&B has given the single traveller a discount in this case of over 22% (£12 on £54). And
yet the single booker, encouraged by the ranters, may well feel resentful at paying an
“extra” £15! If they were truly paying the same for ‘bed’ and ‘breakfast’, the single
booker in our example should pay £62 (£70 - £8), the double price less one breakfast.
Anything less is a room discount.
So don’t be apologetic – and try not to encourage the single-occupancy supplement
myth by only quoting “per person”. Let’s try to help guests understand that a
“supplement” is often in reality a discount!
The fact is, though, that there is a general market expectation that a single occupancy
rate should be discounted by much more than the price of one breakfast as compared to
the double occupancy rate.
As this is the market expectation and your competitors are likely to be following suit,
you will probably not be able to avoid giving single people what amounts in fact to a
room discount.
This is an instance where you can be hit with a “substitution” effect: if someone books a
double or twin room for single occupancy, you lose money compared with booking that
room as a double. It follows that you will always rather sell every room in double
rather than single occupancy.
To even the playing-field as much as possible, you should set your single occupancy
price as near to the “double less one breakfast” level as you can, though if this leads to a
net loss of bookings (ie you do not gain double bookings to make up for the loss in
singles), then this may need adjusting because, as we can’t repeat often enough, “an
empty room is a dead loss”.
Just as s single occupancy booking is a negative factor against the double or twin
“standard”, you can gain positively by selling higher occupancy – eg adding extra beds
to make a triple or “family” room. Here we must be consistent with our stance on
single occupancy: based on fundamental economics, if the third person occupies an
“extra” bed in a double or twin room, you cannot charge the same per person for the
third person, as this would in effect be a 50% supplement for the same room. The third
person is having a breakfast, and an extra change of linen and towels, so the
supplement should reflect this. At the time of writing, we charge £33 per pe