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Contractors · 5 min read
Accommodation is often one of the biggest costs on a job away from home, and one of the easiest to get wrong at quoting stage. Budget too low and you end up scrambling for rooms once work has started, or eating into margin to cover the gap. Budget too high and you lose the job on price. This guide walks through a simple way to build an accommodation budget you can stand behind — and the costs people most often forget.
By Offer2Stay · Updated October 2026
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Get offers for your crewA better approach takes a few minutes longer and is far more reliable. You work out what you're willing to pay per person per night, check it against the realities of the location and the job, and then total it up so you can compare options properly.
A per-person-per-night figure is the easiest number to reason about, because it lets you compare a house for six against six hotel rooms on a level playing field. Once you have it, multiply out to get the job total.
Say you have a crew of six on a four-week job, working Monday to Friday. That's four nights a week, sixteen nights in total, for six people — ninety-six person-nights. That figure, multiplied by your per-person budget, is the number you compare every option against, and the number you put in your request.
Tip: Keep the person-nights figure on the job sheet. It makes it easy to re-check the budget if the crew size or dates change.
Accommodation prices aren't fixed, and a few factors move them more than anything else. Knowing them helps you judge whether your budget is realistic for this particular job.
The headline price of the accommodation is only part of the cost of housing a crew. When you compare a house against hotel rooms, or one location against another, add in the extras that come with each option.
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Once you have a total, step back and look at it against the job. A cheaper option forty minutes from site might cost more in lost working time than it saves in accommodation. A slightly more expensive house with a kitchen might save money once meals are counted. A budget that only works if everything goes perfectly isn't a budget — leave room for a few extra nights.
It also helps to think about who is staying. A crew on a long job will be happier and more productive in a home with space to relax than in the cheapest rooms available, and that's worth something even if it doesn't show on a spreadsheet.
Say you're quoting for a five-week job with a crew of five, working Monday to Friday and going home at weekends. That's four nights a week for five weeks — twenty nights — for five people, or a hundred person-nights in total. Your accommodation budget for the job is simply your per-person-per-night figure multiplied by a hundred, plus whatever margin you want to leave for the job running over.
Now compare two ways of housing them. Five hotel rooms near site might look reasonable per night, but there's no kitchen, so you need to add a meal allowance for every night, plus parking for the vans. A five-bedroom house a little further out might have a higher headline price, but the crew can cook, there's a washing machine and the vans park on the drive. Once you add everything up, the house may well come out ahead — or it may not. The point is to compare totals, not headline rates.
Put the final figure in your request as a total for the job, and hosts can tell you what they can offer for it.
Once you know your number, you don't have to go hunting for something that fits it. On Offer2Stay you can post your crew's dates, size, site area and total budget, and hosts with suitable homes nearby can send private offers against it.
The total you agree includes cleaning and fees, so it drops straight into your job costing without surprises. Posting is free, there are no guest booking fees, and you only pay when a host says yes. Bookings support invoicing, and companies that book regularly can apply for a trade account.
Often, especially once you factor in kitchens, parking and laundry — but compare the total for your actual crew and dates. Our guide to contractor accommodation vs hotels walks through the comparison.
Work it out per person per night, then total it for the job. The job total is what you'll compare offers against.
Yes. Post your dates, crew size and budget once, and hosts send private offers.
Yes. The total you agree on Offer2Stay includes cleaning and fees.
That depends on how firm your dates are. At minimum, ask the host about extensions before you accept so you know what extra nights would cost.
Find your stay. Let hosts make the offer.
Name your price for UK stays. Guests post what they need; hosts send private offers around the calendars they already run on Airbnb and Booking.com.