What was I thinking?

[MIke]

It already being established that I'm stupid to let our anual trip to paradise evolve into an exodus,how do other short sighted forumites handle the allocation of villa rates among unequal familes.
We have my family of 5,another family of 4 and one of just 2.I know how I would like to divide the tab but I was just wondering how other people have handled the issue.Prorating the bill to the number of people or just dividing by the # of families.
We are either staying in 1 villa or I hope I can convince them to get 2 villas next door to each other.
I'm just looking for opinions for the ensuing battle.

[mbw1024]

we do a family thing in Maine every year and it's divided by the # of adults. We only have one child and we don't charge her rent
In your case maybe divide my # of bedrooms? If your family is using 2 bedrooms you pay X and so on?

[Ksea]

Last time we had two couples and one teenager and we just split everything 50/50. The teenager did not have his own bedroom, he slept on the couch and shared a bathroom with Mom and Step Dad. I think the idea of splitting it by # of bedrooms seems fair.

[flip-flop]

This trip we are dividing by bedrooms. I am paying for 3 bedrooms (hubby, baby & myself - gramma & 5 year old & sitter's room) & our friends for 1.

We have also split it per adult in the past.

If the villa doesn't charge extra for the kids, then they don't count in our financial equation usually.

[PA Girl]

We do it by bedroom.

We are facing the same issue as there is another couple that wants to join in the next, next trip, which will be in the summer, and they have 2 teens. Because they will need two bedrooms, they are squaking at the cost. Their attitude is that the kids will "just sleep where ever..." but I don't think the rental agencies allow that. Anyone run across this?

I believe I will follow RickG's advice....

[flip-flop]

PaGirl, Not sure what agency you are using but some start charging for kids over 6 (some actually charge for kids under 6). Once the girl is costing $$ in the rental, I would expect to pay her share. Unless she can get a job

What was it, RickG, no whiners!

[waterguy]

# of people is the only fair split in my view. Same thing if you are throwing into a kiddy

[Ksea]

Family seems to be more forgiving about sharing costs than friends. If I were going with friends I would probably want to split the cost per person. I would not know how to figure in a baby or small child however.

[captainjay]

We do it by bedroom.

We are facing the same issue as there is another couple that wants to join in the next, next trip, which will be in the summer, and they have 2 teens. Because they will need two bedrooms, they are squaking at the cost. Their attitude is that the kids will "just sleep where ever..." but I don't think the rental agencies allow that. Anyone run across this?

I believe I will follow RickG's advice....

NO NO NO Noone should be allowed to sleep on the couch. Some friends of mine did this a couple of years ago. A last minute couple joined the trip and took the couch. They paid a full share on the Villa and everyone thought this was great because it gave everone some extra rum money. By the end of the week everyone wanted to kill them. The common living areas should be reserved for living not sleeping. They didn't want to get out of bed "couch" until noon so no one could do breakfast and even lunch was an issue some days. Put the two teenagers in a bedroom let them pay by bedroom or tell them to leave the kids at home.

By bedroom seems to be a fair way to go as alot of bigger villas are priced that way anyway.

Jay

PS Rickg gave a lone post a while back on how to handle large groups. It had info about cars and planning and trips etc. I am sure he will respond but if he doesn't find it. It was well written and based on real experience.

[RickG]

We always do # of bedrooms. My kids share a bedroom and I pay full freight for them. If the kids are sleeping in Mom and Dad's room then they are young enough that most villa rentals do not charge for them.

Equal rooms? Seriously, rooms are never strictly equal. I let people select rooms in the order that they pay up. I always pay first. Next weeks trip I actually selected the least desirable room because I wanted to be next to the pool. Since that's the only bathroom, there will be traffic through my room from the pool. That really does not bother me.

Cheers, RickG

[flip-flop]

I think this goes to being careful about who you pick to travel with. Honestly, in 4 trips we've stayed with 4 different groups/configs (no kids, 2 kids, just our kids, two sisters, two couples, on and on) and we have NEVER had an issue about $$ for the villa.

Pick the right people and you'll come up with something reasonable and fair to all.

Our last trip there were 3 very equal master bedrooms & kids didn't cost us any extra so splitting 3 ways between the 3 couples made sense. 2 couples stayed an extra night so we did the math & made sure we covered the last night of the villa.

This trip since my crew (kids & support staff ) is taking up a ton of space I thought it fairest to basically only ask that the extra couple (also added in after the house and everything was picked) pay the added cost of going from 4 adults to 6.

Some houses have only 1 master, and in those cases I could see some concessions being made to the couple getting the shaft.

Ultimately, if I were agruing with my travel mates over this I would be worried! There are different circumstances so its hard to say there is one perfect way to do it. One time we were staying a week, and Gromit & her hubby were staying 2 weeks - so we got the best room for the first week, then they moved into it the next week. It all works if you have the right people. AND Gromit traveling on her own with her hubby is no reflection on me Well at least I hope not. After two trips to STJ and MANY trips to other locales, we have decided we have this travel together thing down.

[flip-flop]

Equal rooms? Seriously, rooms are never strictly equal. I let people select rooms in the order that they pay up.
Cheers, RickG

I agree this is genius when traveling with a big group. Usually we've been part of a smaller group (max 3 couples) and we were all very involved in picking the house. I will say Ambiance is damn near perfect for 3 couples with or w/o little ones.

[Lulu76]

I can't imagine that your villa agency would dig it if you paid for a set number of bedrooms and then had people sleeping on the couch to cut on the costs. I know we paid for each bedroom and an extra person fee for the nine people we had. The extra person had an air mattress on the floor of one of the bigger bedrooms, and that seemed to work well. Except for the person who thought she was "entitled" to one of the big rooms, although we offered to switch things around a bit to accommodate her and were told things were fine.

[Ksea]

"NO NO NO Noone should be allowed to sleep on the couch."

We didnt plan on using the couch as a bed, but the 3rd bedroom was down an outside dark and scarry staircase. No one wanted to be down there! So we put the boy on the couch. Had there been a rollaway bed I would have put it in our bedroom for him. Good thing there are no whiners in our family!! It all worked out just fine.

[Sleehog]

We have had multiple trips with 3 couples and 1 single. We have always divided by number of people. It just does not seem fair to us to charge per bedroom.

Say 3 couples and a single stay in a 4 bed villa that costs $4000

Per bedroom cost is $1000
Per person cost is $571
Per couple that is $1143

Broken up per person, the couples pay a little bit more ($143) but it really makes a difference for the single to save $430. The single would take the lesser of the bedrooms as a kind of balance.

It is going to vary by number of people and little kids will definitely skew things. Teenagers would be treated as full people - period. I personally would say per person is the way to go.