What’s a fair way of sharing the cost of this holiday cottage?

[meaniemaybe]

Group A have booked a holiday cottage for £2000 for 10 nights. 2 adults.

Group B are staying for 3 nights 2 adults and 1 child.

Group C are staying for 4 nights 2 adults and 3 children.

One way to split cost would be per person per night so overall there are 49 ‘person nights’ which you could price at £40.82 each so A would pay £816.40, B £367.38 and C £816.40 as well as there are 5 people in group C but for fewer nights?

Or could split by rooms - A will use 1 room, B 2 rooms, C 2 rooms plus sofa bed in communal area?

Or is there a simpler way we’re not thinking of?

Off the top of my head, I’d say A pays half and the others pay a quarter each?

Ok, I’ve worked out another way:

A - 1 bed x 10 nights = 10
B - 2 beds x 3 nights = 6
C - 2 beds x 4 nights = 8

Total 24 bedroom nights

A pays 10/24 = £834
B pays 6/24 = 1/4 = £500
C pays 8/24 = 1/3 = £666

Does that seem fair?

Oops sorry, just seen @W1h already suggested the same.

What are the others offering to pay @meaniemaybe?

You could do it by couple nights so it's 17 nights in total.

2000/17=117.65
Couple A 117.65x10=1176.50
Couple B 117.65x3=352.94
Couple C 117.65x4=470.59

I would then round up/down for the sake of a few quid.

Plus there's only 2 of them! Rude if you're trying to be 'fair'

Group A should pay for the whole thing and stop quibbling about money.
The others can buy food/ wine.

Hmmm. I think your later comments about going only to “entertain “ Group A are mean.

Group A don’t need three bedrooms - they are booking so that they can accommodate YOU. So you should be offering to pay substantially more than your other sibling. And at least as much as Group A.

You’ll be taking up 3 rooms, including communal space so it behaves you to be generous, not carping.

This!

You do sound quite mean about it @meaniemaybe

If you want a big sibling family get together why didn’t you organise it?

Try to juggle every ones dates, travel times, how many bedrooms, where you all want to stay?

Even if you all generally get on and are easygoing about these things, it’s not easy. Stop carping.

but I don’t want to pay as much as A because of the ‘person nights’ construct.

But what you fail to accept is that they’ve had to book a 3 bedroom house simply to accommodate you and when your family is there you’ll be dominating the communal space as well.

So you should be paying roughly the same as Group A. Next time, you do the work of organising.

Would be cheeky to ask for the same amount from group C when group A get 10 nights!

What you need to do is set up FPS or CHAPS payments as follows:

A to B - £2,000
B to C - £2,000
C to A - £2,000

Everybody needs to set them up as a perpetual digital payment, leaving your accounts several times a day. That way the £2,000 will hit A's account and stay there for a while before leaving, but then come back again fairly soon. If you set these up so they are happening fast enough each of your accounts will look as if they have £2,000 credited, ie £2,000 x 3 accounts = £6,000. That is a whopping £4,000 profit. That way you do not even need to worry about splitting the payment. Quite simply you will have nothing to pay at all!

Don’t be ridiculous! Why should one couple pay for the other 9 family members to have a holiday!

Am I the only 1 thinking group A are at best generous sharing a holiday cottage for 7 out of 10 nights with children when they don't have any?!

But I agree with the person who said split the cost per night - so £200 per night.

You can either then split per room per night or per family.

A: £1000
B: £400
C: £600

No idea about how to split costs, but this sounds like a disaster in the making! As well as quibbling over accommodation costs there will be who gets the best room, who pays/eats more of the food, who does the cleaning, who does more of the childcare, etc. It sounds like hell to me and the opposite of what a relaxing holiday should be, but I'm an only child and massive introvert so it would be!

This!

Group A have presumably had to book a cottage 3x the size they need to accommodate their siblings and children?

Why should they suck up that cost?

Personally I would do room nights. And ignore the 3rd child on the sofa bed

So that's a total of 10 + 6 + 8 so 24 room nights. Divide the total 2000 by 24 and times by the nights

So group A is 830
Group B is 500
Group C is approx 670

but they could also have booked something much more reasonable - plenty of places where you could get a few rooms in same place for different stays.

I imagaine a 3 bed place has a lot more facilities than a 1 bed place. ie its nicer for Group A. they probably get an en suite for example.

i can't think a 3 way split would be at all reasonable if not agreed in advance and in fact all going at same time- which is £666 each. so £1000 for A and £500 each B/C seems much better as A are there most of the time.

if they wanted 50/50 splits they should have done 1 break with B and 1 with A and agreed B&C would pay more as had kids (but as the no kids side of my family, i would still go 50/50 with my sister as i have more cash just due to having no kids)

Why is that bonkers? There are only two people in the 'family' staying for ten nights and five people in the family staying for four nights.

Yes this.

A pays half
B and C pay a quarter each

I was thinking exactly this earlier today. I was thinking of booking a holiday rental for extended family .. my adult children . However i don’t think they will want to contribute as they are all quite hard up. Also thought about inviting my sister and her family. Also hard up. It’s really difficult to know what her to ask as I don’t think it’s fair we pay for the whole thing. Last time we did that we bought all the food and ended up cleaning the place at the end whilst they sinned themselves.

£1000
£400
£600

We hired a 3 bed villa for 10 nights for 4 people. Normally we would hire 2 bedrooms for 3 people. So it has cost more because of extra bedroom. I say just divide whole cost by 4 even though 4th person only stayed 8 nights. We had to pay more for the extra bedroom which we didn't need after 8 nights. What's the verdict?