Add two more bathrooms?

[bluedragonflyinn]

I never thought about asking about room setups, so I appreciate everyone pitching in their experience in a previous post. My setup is two rooms at each end of the hallway, let's say two suites with a full bath between each room. If both rooms are occupied, the bathroom is shared. I've had just a handful of people with issues with a shared bath pre-covid. I'm usually only booked that heavily during the summer months, with 95% of my bookings being associated with Philmont Scout Ranch. Summer of 2020 they were closed, but opened summer 2021. It was a madhouse, but everyone was totally cool as they all knew the Covid protocols in order to even attend the Ranch. I expect the same this summer. My question is, if so few people have issues with a shared bath(it's all over my booking sites), should I even worry about adding two more? It would involve some serious reconstruction, so not an easy or cheap task.

 

[gillumhouse]

How high is your occupancy rate with this set-up? Are you booked a lot?

All I can say is my experience. I opened with 3 rooms with a shared bathroom in 1996. I expected my guests would be using the rail-trail who would be pretty much OK with shared. I had a deadbolt lock on the bathroom with ME having the only key. I found the rail-trail was NOT my guest base and although I tried a lot of things, hit a wall year after year revenue-wise. FINALLY in 2006, I was able to get Himself to agree to signing for a loan to create a bathroom for my largest room.

I took half of my storage room (the 4th bedroom originally when the house was built in 1912) to tie into the existing plumbing. The claw-foot tub was moved into the new bathroom AND also a 48-inch shower. The tub was replaced in the original bathroom with a 60-inch shower - it remains a shared with that deadbolt and me with the key, but now for just 2 rooms. My revenues went up by 33%. It is still the most rented room, but I DO get budget hunters for the others (AND for an extra $15, making it within $10 of the rate for the ensuite, it can be a private bathroom and the other sharing room is not rented which does happen). The contractor reamed me but I did get him paid off and it WAS worth the cost. The rates on ALL the rooms were increased a lot (especially the ensuite) and again when I got a king for that room and removed the last full-size bed replaced with another queen.

Only you can decide how it can be done and will it be worth it. Look at not only the initial cost, but how it will affect your reservations - and raised revenue - in the future. IF you already have plumbing at each end of the hall, you are ahead of where I was and am. There is no way I could EVER get plumbing to the 2 rooms that share. Good luck with it.

 

[Morticia]

It may just be your market that is ok with this, but it’s not standard to have to share a bathroom. We had one room with a detached bath (Not shared) and we finally figured out if it was the absolute cheapest room in town we could book it. So, when the motels were charging $199, we could get $149.

But, we still got complaints.

 

[GoodScout]

That's the issue we have. We have an 11th room with an on-suite bath we could book as a guest room.
But its very small, and it's right off the dining room. Guests couldn't sleep late because the very first breakfast guest would wake them up.
We thought about making it out "cheap room" but knew we'd still get bad reviews no matter how well we alerted guests to the drawbacks.

As I always say, "the loudest boos come from the cheapest seats."