How much should house guest offer to pay?

[Goldfishonabike]

Just that. We just had house guest for three nights, they’ve never visited the country we now live in before, so we took them out to show them the place, asked them what they’d like to do and took them
to those specific places as well as a few we chose. On all occasions they either paid for themselves and we paid for ourselves or we paid for us all. Not once did they offer to treat us to anything - like standing in a queue for ice cream they ordered for themselves no paid for themselves, on another occasion we ordered for us all and one of them said “do you want me to pay?” Just like that, and because if the way it was phrased I said no no I’ll get it don’t worry. we provided all meals at home, including one take out. They’re a family of five, so it wasn’t a low cost either.
They’re both working and own a home while one of us are unemployed and we are living in rental accommodation.
I would like to be a generous person and generally consider myself as such, but I’ve never experienced anything like this before. Usually when we have house guests, people offer to pay for a meal out or to pay our entrance to touristic places (which we anyways only visit for the visitors benefit) and when we are are house guests we always make sure to get groceries and drinks and if we go out we offer to pay for the meal.
do you think the behavior of this guests is normal? Also, do you think maybe it could be some misunderstanding, as on two occasions they did offer to pay, but to
my mind very half-heartedly aka “do you want me to pay?” And as soon as I said I’ll get it just accept it. Do you think I was too over eager to be generous or is it normal
ti expect the hosts to pay everything?

When they said 'do you want me to pay'? You should have said how generous thank you.

If you invite someone to stay in your home you don’t expect them to chip in for groceries, that’s just basic hospitality. Other than that I’d expect them to pay for themselves but not me, it would be nice if they offered something like buying a takeaway.
what is bonkers is that they offered twice you turned them down. You wanted them to pay but you still offered to pay for everyone! Why did you do that? Why not just accept their offer however it was phrased? It’s a bit poor form to rubbish them for it now when you didn’t say what you meant at the time

You know it’s ok not to invite friends to stay who are shit guests don’t you? It doesn’t mean you can’t still be friends, just don’t invite them to stay again.

One is British, one is southern European but has lived in the UK all her adult life! It’s us who are less British, really. I lived in the UK most my adult life but am originally Scandinavian and left UK four years ago. DH is Eastern European.

Yes that will be my plan from now on…plus put more rules in place in the future for guests I haven’t hosted before

They only offered to pay once and was turned down. The other time the offer was accepted by me, but DH didn’t hear the conversation and went ahead to offer to pay and then the mum just accepted it despite having just told me she’d pay!

As you're not sure whether you want to stay friends with them after this (I wouldn't) I would actually ask them to pay their half now. Send them extracts from your bank statement where you clearly paid for everyone (entries to attractions, restaurant meals). Say "normally I don't mind treating but on this trip it got a little out of hand, which I only really noticed when I got my bank statement. We'd like you to pay your half please. Would you like to send it via PayPal or bank transfer. Of course we are happy to treat you to the meals we ate in etc and loved having you in our home". If they argue back just drop them.

I suspect the half-hearted offer to pay once was to give them plausible deniability and your message will take that away from them and they'll have to decide whether to lose face and be outright users or apologise and pay up. I also think the fact you only went to see their friends when you visited them and had to pay for taxis is very telling.

I love to be generous with my friends and wouldn't stay friends with anyone I had to watch my back with to ensure I didn't get massively taken advantage of.

That is shocking! I’d not have them to stay again, if they ask why, say you can’t afford it this time.

I agree that it’s very weird to ask ‘can I pay’. They should be insisting to pay at least 50% of the time. or even better, just grab the bill and pay before you notice. It’s the least you can do as a guest in someone’s home.

If it makes you feel better, I had a guest bring her new partner to stay in our home, he drank lots of our alcohol from our booze cupboard in secret and we only noticed after they left. Think nice whiskey etc. I would have sent him to the shop if I knew! People can be very rude 😅

I think it depends. When we visit my sister she’ll get in nice food and drinks, and maybe organise a trip out or two. We’ll get a takeaway or a meal out to say thank you. When they come to visit us the roles are reversed,so perhaps they’re expecting to treat you when you visit them.

They are rude.
when I have house guests they usually bring presents, buy one or two meals out (depending what we do) and/or pay for a take away one night. Our last guests we paid for one visitor attraction (as I pre-booked the tickets all online), they paid for the lunch there. They paid their tickets for another visitor attraction and paid for Sunday lunch another day. Brought nice presents too and bought small gifts for DC in the gift shop at an attraction.

It was 3 days , not 3 months. Did you want them to stay and did you not see your invitation as an invitation to host. They seem to have paid much of their own way. I'm surprised if you are close enough to have them stay you haven't already got the measure of them and known what to expect or how to play it, ie not offer to pay for things they should. Just buy yours when in a queue, it's not hard.

Also I am sorry to say some people
are very tight. I am from a very generous culture and background and it gets abused so easily. My DGM used to host friends for 2 weeks every year (she lived in a very popular tourist area), the wealthy friends brought cheap gifts and invited everyone for ice cream once during the holidays. My DGM cooked every night. When she visited them (once every 10 years as their area is not that attractive), she went to bed hungry as they didn’t cook enough food.
and these are wealthy people - different culture, different values!!

Exactly, that is what I would normally expect! And do in return. Sadly, their behavior has ruined the friendship for me. I don’t like being friends with people where I have to watch my back, as @RokaandRoll says. I don’t think I will ask them to pay up as I can’t be bothered with the back and forth and potential bad feelings. They live in UK and we now live abroad, so letting the friendship fizzle out is fairly easy. What I just don’t get is why on earth they’d behave like that, and expect to stay friends? That is the true mystery to me.

Yes I think this is very very true. Some wealthy people can be extremely tight! So horrible. Well, let them be lonely and rich, can’t imagine many people wanting to put up with that behavior. As they say, it’s better to have a hundred friends than a hundred dollars, and I won’t waste anymore time and effort on them, but instead focus on people who know how to behave and are kind and generous.

As a three-day guest I'd bring wine etc, but probably wouldn't offer to pay for meals provided in the home. I don't think their behaviour was all that unusual, but obviously it's up to you what you want to tolerate / whether you'll have them to stay again. I think you needed to be explicit about what you wanted them to pay for.

For ice creams ? They are a family of five. Do you want me to pay ? Obviously they didn't want to pay else they would of insisted. Can only assume the posters saying OP is unreasonable are similar types of tight people.

As a rule of the thumb in my close environment a guest brings presents.

Generally the guest will offer a dinner meal invitation that can be materialize or not depending on weather, time etc and we give the kids the odd tenner for the piggy bank

I would expect them to pay for their tickets, taxi, etc. Drinks and ice cream Idk I suppose that one time each or each one their own. Although we tend to spoil the kids a bit so any guest is allowed to buy them a t shirt, a toy in the museum whatever. That works for us.

Basically what we provided is full board accomodation, amenities and other expenses are not provided and we show the gratitude giving back a little.

I think you guests are tight. However you should have accepted the offer to pay.

M

I think if you ever have these folks to stay again you need to not be so generous OP. So they are possibly from a culture which is far more pay your own way, they may even have been embarrassed or overwhelmed by your generosity and not known how to deal with it .. hence the rather awks "do you want me to pay".
I think lesson learned and next time you just need to be super clear with them, " let's split the bill like this ", "I have bought tickets to xx, your share comes to £yyy", "can you please buy some wine for dinner".

Yes I would never expect guest to chip in for food or petrol or local transport, all of which we usually pay happily. But I do expect friends to pay their half at outside meals, and for them to offer to chip in for takeouts as well as to offer to pay something smaller outside as a thank you for staying over for free. That is what I always do myself. Usually I also get groceries for the house and bring nice gifts, not everyone does that and I can live with that, but at least I was expecting them to pay for their half of our outside meals. They were very sneaky about it too - we were in a food market and all had to line up at different stalls as everyone wanted different things and they said to DH “are you going to get x?” (The most expensive thing) and he went off to get that assuming they’d get the other main thing, and again I didn’t hear this conversation, so assumed they gone to get that food so said shall I’ll get y (the other main thing) and they just let me and just went and got the cheapest and smallest contribution to the joint meal.

At another occasion we were queuing for a treat for the kids and as I was starting to see their ways, I deliberately let the wife go ahead in the queue to encourage and see if she wouldn’t order and pay for all the kids, but she just ordered for her kids and paid for them, leaving my kids to wait their turn.

The puzzling thing is I can tell from their messages that they are thinking everything is great and they also invited us to come stay with them soon. Won’t be doing that though. I did have a sneaking suspicion they may be like that but I always like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and as when we visited them, we just stayed at theirs and visited their friends, I thought maybe it was just on that occasion there wasn’t much occasion for them to pay for us, so perhaps if there had been, they would have. In the past when we lived near each other and first made friends we mainly met in parks and playgrounds and when we came to each others houses it was just for a cup of tea or whatever or in a pub and there they did do rounds okay, as far as I recall.
But now I also recall that there was an instance where I had given a fairly expensive baby item to another friend if of mine when we left the UK, and somehow had agreed with the wife that they could have it when the other friend was done with it, and she did swoop down on that very quickly, went to pick it up and used it and now I come to think of it, she never asked me if I’d like it back or if she should sell it for me or what she should do with it when done using it, as the first friend did, which is how I came up with the idea to pass it on to this mum. She may have sold it on, as it was too nice to just give away. Even if she didn’t she should have asked me what to do with it, I would have told her to pass it on or sell it and keep the money but she should have asked. I always do that when something expensive is passed on to me and if Ian explicitly stated that I can keep it for good. In the light of their behavior on this visit I am sadly seeing a lot of other things more clearly. But then, when my youngest was born, they did bring a nice gift, so sometimes they can be really nice, which is what is confusing.

I can see you feel a but confused a bit confused this OP- technically the guests don't owe you anything (I would expect groceries to be covered hy the host unless discussed beforehand/guests made demands) but it feels very ungenerous and most people I'm friends with would have brought a gift/paid for a meal out etc

Regarding the 'offer' to pay- the problem with phrasing it as a question 'do you want me to pay?' puts the recipient on the spot- this question steers them towards saying no. It's better phrased- 'let me cover this as a thank you for hosting us'

For background, when visiting friends for a 3 night visit abroad and staying in their flat, we treated them to an evening meal and a breakfast out

Yes that is what I need to do. In the food market also should have just made it clear each go and get what they need. But like I said, one is British and one Southern European so I thought I knew these cultures to be fairly generous and often take turns to pay for each other…but especially DH’s culture is very generous and I see how that gets taken advantage off.

It’s so hard to know what’s going on for me…because maybe they just did feel
overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do with our generosity, but then, when I think of having been in similar positions myself, visiting someone who turned out to be extremely generous, once a couple of situations had occurred which made me realize they were being very generous and were doing the “we pay sometimes you pay sometimes” thing, I immediately adjusted to that and started counter offering and insisting to pay for things, I didn’t just go ahead and let them pay for everything. Similarly, if I stayed w people and realized they were expecting me to chip in for groceries or pay exactly half of everything, I started doing that. With these we should have said you can get this and that there, and when we got takeout should have listed the prices and tos then your orders come to x. Not only that, their son is very picky and ordered a special meal, he was barely touching it and I asked can I try a slice, and he said no! And the parents didn’t say anything. If that had been one of my kids I would have told him to share.

Just interested to know , did the family of 5 travel to you in another country only to see you? Or were they in the area and dropped in? Presumably if the first there was a cost and effort to get to you. Also from your updates how many times did you go out or pay for things over a 3 night trip, seems a lot , they coveted their own for some abd you covered another 5 in total . Did they budget for all of this for 5?

I wouldn't expect guests to pay for us, nor would I offer to pay for them.