Airbnb welcome packs: I priced bought-in vs bulk-assembled across five flats

For three years I bought pre-made welcome hampers. Local Brighton supplier, £22 a hamper, delivered to the flat on turnover morning, shrink-wrapped in cellophane with a hessian bow. Guests loved them. I got so many photos on Instagram tagging the flat that I stopped asking for reviews — the hampers were doing it for me.

Then 2025 happened. The supplier put the price up twice in eight months and stopped doing Sunday deliveries. At one point I had a cleaner driving to the depot in Hove on a Saturday night to collect three hampers because the Sunday slot had been cancelled. That was the weekend I started thinking about doing it myself.

A year in, here's what I actually pay, what I used to pay, and the thing I didn't expect — which is that bulk-assembled is cheaper but quietly worse, unless you get a specific bit right.

What the bought-in version actually cost

£22 per hamper is easy to price. For my two Brighton properties at roughly 45 turnovers each, that's £1,980 a year in hampers alone. Add the cellophane, the bow, the card with my handwriting in it (the cleaner writes them now, frankly), and you're at about £23.

Per-guest cost, assuming an average party of 2.3, about £10.

That sounds like a lot and it is. But I stopped buying a separate fruit bowl, a separate bottle of wine, a separate chocolate box, and an amenity kit — the hamper covered all of it. So the incremental cost over my previous ad-hoc system was smaller than £22 suggested.

The thing is, £22 delivered means someone else is doing the sourcing, the packing, and the labelling. And they're not doing it for free. So I figured there had to be a number that worked for me at my volume.

What I built to replace it

I started sourcing the components individually and assembling on a kitchen worktop in the Brighton flat once a month. Ten hampers a month per property, a morning's work if I'm organised.

The components settled into this list after a few months of trial and error:

• One 500ml bottle of still water, local brand — about 65p in bulk from a Brighton wholesaler
• Two bags of Seed & Bean salted caramel chocolate — about £1.40 each at trade price
• A small jar of local honey from the farmer's market — £3.20 wholesale if I order 24 at a time
• A Brighton Pier-branded biscuit pack — £1.80
• Two Yorkshire Tea teabags in a little branded muslin bag I ordered from a printer — about 40p per sachet including the bag
• A handwritten card on decent recycled stock — 30p
• A mini Molton Brown shower gel for the bathroom (moved here from the amenity basket because guests preferred it in the hamper) — about £2 at trade
• A paper box and twine — £1.50 including the twine

Total components, per hamper: roughly £11.50. Per-guest cost at 2.3 average party: about £5.

Labour: I do it myself, so I don't count it. If I paid a cleaner to assemble, she'd do ten boxes in an hour at £18/hour, so £1.80 per box. Still cheaper than bought-in.

So why does it feel worse

Here's the bit I wasn't expecting. The first three months of bulk-assembled, my review mentions of the welcome pack dropped.

Not the review scores overall — those stayed at 4.9. But the words changed. The bought-in hampers used to get specific language in reviews: "beautifully wrapped," "local products we took home," "the hamper on arrival was a lovely touch." The DIY version got "thoughtful welcome" and "nice snacks." Less specific. Less photo-worthy.

I went back and worked out why. It was two things, mostly.

First, the presentation. A shrink-wrapped hessian hamper with a ribbon looks like a gift. A paper box with twine looks like a delivery. Guests were getting the same products but reading them differently.

Second, the signature items. The bought-in version had a local Sussex cheese, a small bottle of Brighton Gin, and a jar of marmalade from a Lewes producer. I'd dropped those because they were pushing the per-hamper cost to £14 and I wanted a round £10 or under.

So I added two of them back. The Sussex cheese (a soft rind cheese, about £3 trade for a 50g round) and the Brighton Gin miniature (£4.50 at trade if you order a case). The Lewes marmalade stayed out — too much palaver, too perishable.

Back up to £18.90 a hamper. £8 per guest. Still cheaper than bought-in by about £4 a hamper. And the review language came back within two months.

The maths on 45 turnovers a year, one property

Bought-in at £22: £990 a year.

My DIY version without signature items, £11.50: £517 a year.

My DIY version with signature items, £18.90: £850 a year.

Saving over the old system: £140 per property per year.

Across two Brighton properties, call it £280 a year. Not life-changing. And I'm doing the work myself, which is easily four hours a month including the sourcing trips.

So if I value my time at £20/hour, I'm losing on this. But I've been honest about that from the start. The reason I kept going is the supply chain. I'm not waiting on a Sunday depot run that might not happen.

What I'd do differently if I was starting now

Four things.

One: get the wrapping right before you get the contents right. Seriously. The contents are maybe 40% of the guest's perception. The wrapping does most of the rest. I spent a month chasing the perfect tea sachet and ignored the fact that my paper boxes looked like takeaway leftovers. Spend £2 a box on proper presentation before you save 50p on the chocolate.

Two: always include one thing the guest can't buy down the road. A local cheese, a small-batch gin, a bakery item from a place with no online shop. This is what ends up in the photos on Instagram. Branded national items don't. Yorkshire Tea is nice; Brighton Gin is memorable.

Three: source from one wholesaler where possible. I was driving to three places before I consolidated. Now I do one run to a wholesaler who stocks about 60% of my components, and the rest comes via weekly Amazon Business orders or a standing order at the farmer's market. My monthly assembly morning is two hours, not a whole day.

Four: keep the bought-in option for long stays. Seven-night-plus bookings in the cottage get the old hamper supplier's deluxe version (£40, bigger, posher). It costs more but the per-night cost is lower and long-stay guests tend to leave more detailed reviews — the hamper pays for itself in specifics.

The rural and Edinburgh versions

The Lake District cottage gets a different pack because the components change. Less Brighton Gin, more Cartmel Village Shop sticky toffee pudding. I buy the sticky toffee pudding in packs of six and freeze them; cleaner takes one out the morning of a turnover. Works fine.

Edinburgh gets a smaller pack — £12 component cost — because the flats are smaller, the stays are shorter, and the guests skew business-y. Shortbread, a couple of Tunnock's, a small bottle of Scottish gin, a single mini jar of Mackays marmalade. Still handwritten card. Still a paper box, but smaller.

The point is: the five properties don't share a welcome pack. They share a welcome-pack template. Each is local, each has the same presentation quality, each costs me roughly the same per guest. The guests don't know they're part of a five-property portfolio, and they shouldn't.

The bit that still annoys me

Alcohol in welcome packs is a pain. Legally fine in the UK for a host to give a guest a bottle of wine or a gin miniature on checkin. But platforms occasionally flag listings that mention alcohol, and I've had to edit a listing description twice to remove the word "complimentary wine" after it got caught by some automated filter. Now I don't mention it in the listing at all. Surprise is better than promise anyway.

And children's hampers. I keep meaning to build a separate pack for stays that book in on a family rate. I've got a rough list — juice carton, kids' biscuits, a little drawing kit from a Hove stationer, a sticker pack — but I haven't pulled the trigger yet. One for this summer.

If you're running a welcome pack and it's costing you £20+ a box, there's usually £6-8 of fat in there at your volume. The trick is not to strip it all out. Strip half, reinvest the other half in something local and presentation. Guests notice.