What would you do in this situation?

[Paul Sandhu]

Suppose there is a flood coming to your town in the next 24 hours.  You're pretty confident that 3 of the 4 major hotel/motels will have several feet or more of water on their ground level floor for the next few days.  It'll take them 30-60 days to recover.  You have 3 unoccupied STRs.  You normally charge rent for the real beds in the real bedrooms, and there is an extra bed or two in every house that you don't charge for if the real beds are all paying money.  Would you start charging rent on every bed, not just the real beds, when people start showing up?  

The people you and the hotels rent to are refinery contractors, not vacationing people.  They all get a per diem around $500-$600 a week.  You charge $200/week per bed.  A $1200 house becomes a $1600 house.  A $600 house becomes a $1000 house.

This scenario is probably going to happen in Coffeyville Kansas.

[Julie McCoy]

First of all, I'm sorry to hear that flooding is imminent!  I hope it doesn't end up being too bad, but the way things have been going lately, I'm not going to hold my breath.  

If you advertise the extra beds as free/bonus, I wouldn't change your format.  If you don't and there's no reason for guests to expect that the extra beds are free, by all means charge for them!  And props for not jacking up the price per bed just because you can.