Optional Items and Extra Charges at Breezy Oak Villas

Rob, why do you make things optional and charge extra for them? We often see them included for free at vacation rentals!

Thanks for your question. I’m happy to share with you details why we charge for optional items as we do.

In a business, nothing is ever free.

When one runs a business, just like in one’s personal life, everything you provide costs something… in money, time or both.

That means that somehow, everything has to be paid for, and the costs of providing anything to customers must be covered. If a vacation rental provides an amenity, and calls it ‘free’, really that is simply a marketing choice on the part of the owner/manager. Some of the money being charged for the nightly rental rate has to go to pay for that ‘free’ item. This means that every guest pays for it, whether they want to or not, and whether they use it or not.

I’ve never been comfortable with being forced to pay for something that I don’t use or gain any benefit from. Knowing as I do how business expenses work, and that nothing can be provided at no cost to the business owner, I understand that every free thing a customer receives must be paid for, and the cost of providing it along with its overhead (and likely mark-up too) must be built into the regular charges of a business.

Frankly, I would rather just pay less and receive a better value for my purchase, than pay more and in effect, pay extra for other customers to make use of that ‘free’ item that I’m not. As a customer, I don’t like this practice, so doing this to our guests is not something that I’m comfortable with.

In the case of things that some of our guests would like to have at our vacation rentals but not all will need or use; like baby items, seasonal pool heating, or the BBQ… rather than build their cost into the nightly rate, we charge separately for them, and therefor keep the regular nightly charge for all guests as low as we can. If you’re not bringing a baby with you to our villa, you don’t have to pay for having a high-chair there. It just makes sense.

We do provide ‘no-charge’ extras to our guests.

I realize I just said that nothing is ever provided to a guest for free, and that’s true. So rather than referring to something provided to all guests as ‘free’, for the purpose of this discussion, let’s refer to them instead as extras. When evaluating the value that we provide, we hope our guests keep in mind that instead of providing a bunch of ‘free’ items that a lot of guests will never use, we choose instead to provide a set of extras to all of our guests, which they almost all can make use of. And these are things which the vast majority of Orlando area vacation rentals don’t provide for their guests! We’re happy to do this (and yes, the cost of this is built into our nightly rental rate, we can’t escape that) because almost every single one of our guests can and do directly benefit from them, and it helps us provide better value, and a better experience.

So take a look here at the extras that we do provide which most area vacation rentals don’t.

You can read more about two of the most common optional items we provide here; Optional Pool Heating and BBQ Rentals.

As always, thanks for staying with us! Your patronage is appreciated!