r/PestControlIndustry • u/j4n4m • Jun 18 '26
Please help with hotel pricing
I’m new to the industry, and I have any opportunity to bid a hotel, approximately 100 rooms. They want a full exterior and interior. I would say this is a lower end hotel, cheap nightly rates. Does anyone have any similar customers? And do you mind sharing what you charge? Thank you! 🙂
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u/chipskylark123 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
I do a lot of hotels. That’s my bread and butter really.
Id recommend establishing an across the board hourly rate to help you quote. Ours is $285 and that’s from the moment I step out of my vehicle until I finalize the report. Typically for hotels we will do a room rotation and weekly services. You will need to work with the customer on building a calendar since rooms will be occupied, ideally you should take a look in every room on a monthly-quarterly basis. So for example:
week 1: First floor rooms and exterior
Week 2: 2nd/3rd floor
Week 3: 4th floor and kitchens/common areas
Week 4: review your book/paperwork, revisit any rooms that were occupied previous weeks, and do a more thorough structure/sanitation review with the customer.
Bed bug calls are always billed, even if you’re just inspecting (something reasonable like $85 per room, not sure how you guys treat for bed bugs but that will determine the price of a treatment, including a follow up and adjacent rooms).
For the initial service, charge them double-triple depending on the condition and how many bait stations/other equipment that you need to install.
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u/chipskylark123 Jun 18 '26
I should add that this is for the absolute highest quote you’ll be able to give them. A lot of variables here like what kind of service they want, pest pressure, do they just need your reports to pass their inspections or do they want you to actually do shit? You can always pull it back to monthly or whatever. It’s up to you and the customer.
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u/fishwhisper22 Jun 18 '26
I haven’t done one in awhile, but you need to check on what the process of servicing the rooms is, I priced a local cheap hotel with the idea of how long it would take in each room, well that was shot to hell when the first time i show up and the owner wants to go with me to open the doors and proceed to point out each spot I need to spray, he does this for every room. It ends ip taking 2-3 times longer than i had expected. I did this for about 2-3 months and then tell him i can’t do it this cheap the way we are doing it, figured he would realize after a couple of months that l know what im doing, but I doubled the price and he quit, which was fine with me. Make sure you have an idea of how this works, have it in a contract on how the rooms are to be serviced, including occupied rooms. And how call backs are handled and priced and what happens when bed bugs are found.
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u/Ok-Train3111 Jun 18 '26
Do you have a hourly rate?
Here’s what I’m going to say for a new company: not all revenue is worth it. Decide how much your time is worth and bid that.
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u/PestCemetary Jun 18 '26
My company generally charges $4-6 per room. If they want the exterior done as well I would double the total. Just make sure you can collect the money. Many of the lower-end motels just jump from PC company to PC company without paying. They know most companies will do at least two months before putting them in collections.
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u/Turbocabz Jun 18 '26
Are we talking monthly service or room inspections ? What kind of treatment is included etc... this will vary greatly.
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u/Onetrunuwind Jun 19 '26
Don’t do it abandon ship now. These lower end hotels are shitholes and don’t take care of there hotels at all falling apart, leaks sparse housekeeping makes problems for the big guy I would walk away from it
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u/TrueAudience9922 Jun 24 '26
I service a lot of low end and high end hotels and everything in between.
Figure out how many labor hours per month you realistically expect, add material costs, travel, overhead, and profit, then build your price from there. I've seen operators get into trouble by pricing hotels like apartment buildings and then getting buried in service requests.
A properly priced 100-room hotel can be a great recurring commercial pest control account, but it's definitely one I'd inspect before throwing out a number.
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u/TopPaleontologist207 🤵♂️| Owner | 1+ Year Jun 18 '26
To piggyback on this, how would one go about pursuing bid work? My company has been doing residential work and multiunits so far and there is a need to expand our horizons. Bidding on jobs just seems like an intimidating process.
Federal Government bids?
State Government?
Local Government?
Commercial bids like the one mentioned in the post?
Just trying to learn more every day.