Why don't holiday cottage companies do these things? AIBU?

[TheStroppyFeminist]

I have been searching for a holiday cottage for next year and so far haven't found the right one but FGS, why don't cottage companies:

1. Show you a floor plan? I want to see where each bedroom is in relation to other bedrooms because of snoring etc
2. Show you the bathrooms properly? I want a huge walk in shower and I want a separate attachment as well but you can hardly ever see whether there is one
3. Insist on a 10am checkout and a 4pm or later check in? It's annoying and we sometimes leave the day before to avoid getting up early

I also won't empty bins or strip beds, I'm on holiday! AIBU? What are your self catering hates?

YABU, understandable, they CBA
YANBU, they really should provide this info

This!! A group of us rented a huge place in Wales recently - fabulous house for a party, but 1 tea towel and no basic kitchen utensils eg tongs, spatula etc. Made cooking breakfast for 20 an interesting experience!!!

I don't think a floor plan is standard or really needed. Good photos though. Agree check out could be at least 11 am and check in three pm.

We hired a cottage that slept 8, plenty of space in the lounge, dining room, terrace etc and sleeping space for 8, but the kitchen was tiny! (Admittedly there was plenty of glasses, plates etc) We ate out 3 times but having 2 people making breakfast in there was crowded

If a place has a really nice bathroom they'll show lots of pictures.

If there's no pictures of it at all it'll be awful.

Never considered a floor plan

Most places offer a cop out fee for cleaning, but mostly the level of cleaning required takes about 10 minutes if there's a few of you doing it

What you want is a hotel.

A place we stayed in on the Isle of Wight had the owners of the house and their dogs staying at the end of the garden!! No mention of this on listing and it was bloody expensive. It was awful. Watching your every move...

Should have added they were in a caravan and gave the distinct impression that they were renting out their house under sufferance

A staycation is staying in a holiday cottage in the UK - so no. I don't do the beds. I make my bed every day, but I'm not stripping the beds etc.

I like to know bed sizes - whether a double, king or super king (ideally).
Whether owner lives on site. Doesn’t matter too much either way but I just want to know!
Whether facilities like washing or garden are just ours or shared with other guests or the owner.
If we’re going to be asked to strip beds etc (prefer not to).
Whether we need to bring essentials like loo rolls, washing up liquid etc.

I sort of understood the stripping beds thing during lockdown (although I didn't travel then so wasn't directly affected) but why is this still a thing?

I used to consider holiday lets before all this crap. These days, I book a hotel. It's usually more expensive, but I can check out between 11am and 12noon, I don't have to do the laundry/cleaning, I know whether non-service animals have stayed in the property before and I know I'll get a decent shower. These are basic requirements for me, so it's hotels all the way now.

Fair enough for holiday lets to change their rules. Fair enough for me to refuse to stay.

In the 1980s/ 1990s we went to some truly dreadful places, I'm pretty sure there were less regulations back then and sometimes a paragraph of text was all you had to go on. As kids we usually thought it was exciting or funny but looking back, my mum spent the first day cleaning and my dad would be in a phone box up the road calling the owner to sort out the daily power cuts!
One place was a sort of bungalow in the carpark of a co-op, the owners had 1 part, we had the other. Another time the owners had converted the garage to live in themselves but me and sis (teens) found it really awkward because their windows were at right angles to our bedroom window.

Emptying the bin is fine as long as there is somewhere to put the rubbish. I once stayed in a town centre apartment, with no parking and they expected us to take glass bottles to the bottle bank by the out of town supermarket (they also specified no glass in the general waste). That was a no. I’d come by train. I wasn’t doing a 4 mile round trip for their convenience!

It's a good point below around expectations of having to do these things. I'm sue it wasn't as big a deal as it seems to be now.
Of course there are people who won't leave it tidy or abuse the place , but maybe the owners should do the deposit thing they have abroad for holiday let's , as that is a good incentive in order to get your money back especially if it's 100 pounds or 150 or something like that.

I think it should have a section telling you if the owners are within spying distance 🤣🤣🤣

we once spent a weekend being watched by the owners - I couldn’t wait to get out of there- even better , a few weeks later I looked at the reviews and a person who stayed after us had left a review on the website saying the owner let herself in at 3 in the morning to switch a light off that had been left on.
the owner had replied that she had no choice but to come in as she had rung him and no one had answered.
and the reviewer just said - I know I didn’t answer, it was three in the morning
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

@DappledThings

The check-in and out times aren't that different to a hotel.

You can usually contact the hotel and ask for early check in or late check out. Yes, there may be a nominal charge. But that's virtually impossible with a holiday let - you often can't actually contact the owner beforehand to try to arrange that kind of thing.

You also aren't expected to clean the room, strip the beds, etc.

I think this is why aparthotels are springing up. More space than a hotel room, but professional standards.

Covid also caused the early check out and late check in. Before that, things were more flexible. Check out was typically 11am and check in 3pm. And yes, having to strip the beds, mop/vacuum floors, was virtually unheard of before Covid. Holiday let owners are just taking the piss now - as someone said above, they can do it because of high demand.

This exactly.

Also photos tend to be nothing like the place. And putting lots of photos of the area isn't helpful unless they relate to the property ie showing you it's on a hill.I agree a floor plan would help.

Depends on your provider. Mine does all of this. But the properties are very, very high end only, so specialist and spendy.

Oh yes the guess the floor. I won't have a ground floor room, I end up looking at the view from the pictures of the windows to assess if it's ground floor or not!

The check in / check out times are reasonable - the housekeepers will generally be turning over 3-4 properties in the same day and have to do each house plus drive between them so any shorter and the properties wouldn’t be ready and then people would complain.

Floorplans I agree - always worth including

Shower - that’s your mountain and very particular to your requirements but you could always phone and ask the lettings company to confirm

I think we must have found the unicorn of holiday cottages. All I'll say about the location is that it is in a beautiful corner of the West of Scotland.

It's a large and comfortable modern house, with a floor plan on the website, the kitchen has everything you could possibly need, all bedrooms are ensuite, the WiFi is excellent (and essential as there is zero phone reception). There is even a boot dryer by the door. And it didn't cost the earth.

I didn't realise I would appreciate a floor plan, but now see how useful it was in planning who would sleep where.

I think guests are asked to strip the beds so that the local cleaners don't have to touch other people's used bedding and towels and just take the bags to a commercial laundry. I've stayed in cottages for over 50 years and it's never occurred to me to question that.

Have you good a good website that ranks highly in Google searches for your location? Is your website also listed on local directory sites?

You need to "compete" with the likes of Sykes, Cottages.com etc., so you need to be easily found and be on the first page of Google results for people searching the type of accommodation and location.

But why wouldn't you list via Sykes or Cottages.com - you can still have it cleaned and managed locally by your own people and just use it for advertising and bookings management?

Yes, I know commissions and other charges by Sykes and cottages.com are high, but that is usually more than paid for by having a much higher occupancy level and saves you the cost of having your own website, search engine optimisation, credit card processing fees, etc.

As other posters have said, I think that the increasing lateness of check in times during the pandemic has just been retained. I’m staying in a cottage in a couple of weeks and have just received an email which says that check in is 4.30pm. My own fault for not noticing when I booked, but I think that is too late when the check out time is 10 am.

Also, not finding out the full address until after booking (just the general area) means you can’t checkout things like road proximity etc.

Other pet peeves include no welcome pack at all in 5 star properties, one towel per person per week which can be impossible to get dry, bizarre heating timings, and uncomfortable beds and/or sofas (which aren’t necessarily old).

@HoopLaLah Thank you for your feedback. The agent hasn’t used all the photos. There are two sofas on the top floor. It’s not a huge top floor. You are right about that. Feedback shows we don’t get 6 there very often. We have tried to make it suitable for the number of users. Our neighbour squeezes in 8.

@poetryandwine Thats very kind of you,