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Because it needs to be something tangible @Eberhard_Blocher
ie I don’t feel safe having this guest stay because he has been physically violent towards me or because he brings guests who haven’t booked into my home
not a host saying I don’t feel safe because the guest has an Afro-Caribbean heritage
Excellent wording. Thank you.
Feelings are never tangible, in my opionion. That’s why they are called feelings, not facts.
Please don’t get me wrong. I had hundreds of guests stay with me, in my own private home, for the last couple of years, and I got along pretty well with all of them. However, just because I don’t have any bad feelings towards other people doesn’t mean that I cannot accept other people’s feelings, which might be different.
If she had just left without saying anything about feeling unsafe, (which she is entitled to do) we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
correct, i did walk through my neighborhood today as i always do and i thought about how fortunate I am to live here and how nice it is for my guests who have all reviewed the neighborhood very positively. I’ll enjoy that and let this incident rest. I appreciate this forum.
The guest in question was not excluding someone else from anything, whether based on race or other consideration. She was excluding HERSELF, based on her own sense of whether she felt safe. No one was harmed, the host got paid, yet complete strangers have decided she needs explain herself, or needs to learn something. That seems a bit intrusive and unnecessary to me.
If you decide to respond, keep it professional.
“Guest X decided to leave early for personal reasons. We are proud to offer comfortable accommodations in a colorful urban space, with a vibrant mix of sights, sounds and cultures. Widely diverse options for food, drink and entertainment are available to suit all tastes.”
Hmmm…I should get a job writing copy for travel publications. 
Hi,
Maybe because I am a safety conscious woman, by her comments she could just as easily mean that since you leave keys in the door, anyone could have copied them and have a set of keys to easily enter the premises.
The only way to know would have been an in-person discussion, nothing like seeing the look in people’s eyes and lilt in their voice.
I would not continue to leave keys in the door, get a lockbox and change the code with each guest to match the four last numbers of their phone number, everyone remembers it and is highly secure.
Good luck with continuing to host!
No disrespect intended to the OP but for some women, it could have been this:
Maybe an inexperienced female travelling on her own found that a man doing that seemed a bit creepy?
@Mountainclimber17 it’s not clear whether you met her at the subway when she arrived. Maybe that gave her the impression that she needed a ‘male escort’ because of the area?
yes I have that exact system. Keys were to the internal door then the guest takes with them.
It was just a courtesy that i offered.
We have a very “mixed” neighborhood. By that I mean different socio-economic backgrounds. I have, for the most part, very nice neighbors that mind their own business. But from the exterior, some people would call the neighborhood “rough.” It is a far cry from the suburbs I was raised in, there’s paint chipping off the neighbor’s house, and there’s one house that is unoccupied. We’ve got lifted trucks, a few hunting dogs, and a Hawaiian family that knows how to party, and us ( 4 chickens, ducks, rabbits, and a lazy dog)- all in the same block. So yeah, I could see how someone might perceive the area as being unsafe. But my house is well maintained, and hardly anyone even knows our road exists so it is super safe! There are lots of triggers to a feeling of unsafeness, I wouldn’t be so quick to judge that it is based on race. It may be based on loud streets, boisterous people during her walk, there are so many other factors. BUT this is a great learning experience for you as a host. Take the feedback and look at your listing description. Are there things you can do to set a better expectation? I had some location feedback that left a bad taste in my mouth too, so I wrote this on the listing:
Like many neighborhoods in Hawaii, we are in a very mixed income area. We have some fantastic neighbors that are good hard working people and we ask that guests step into a ‘judgement free zone’ here in Hawai’i nei. Most of our favorite spots in town are within walking distance- which is why we just love our home!
It sounds like you did everything you could do. And you can’t please everyone all the time. But maybe, just maybe, there is something you can do better to avoid this in the future.
I’m curious where you aRe but I can picture it. I thought you were in Hilo proper??
I live in a beachy neighborhood with small custom homes on small lots. It’s also a little country and rural, and because it is so far out I get complaints about location. It’s not walking distance to clubs or starbux folks!!!
Now as for diversity, I am currently dealing with bad neighbors who are renters. The last several super bad problem neighbors have all been renters.
The ones giving me fits now are a young mixed couple who have a baby and a toddler. He is super local and speaks in rapid fire pidgin with lots of F words. The two of them fight and brawl and are verbally abusive to the kids at times. He coughs and hacks every morning and bangs around the carport every single GD morning at 5:30!!! . All this crap blasts into my house and my guest suite and I am fed up. Just heard they are moving within two weeks and couldn’t be happier!
I’m all for diversity, but really hate rough language and domestic abuse. Guests have noticed and I have been marked down for neighborhood noise. One of my guests is a social worker and wondered if she should call cps. I have personally,called the cops on them three times.
Thank GOD they are leaving!!!
I’m behind the burger joint 
My ducks are getting raised up a little while longer at the house until I can move them to our farm in Keaau. I hear ya, we had a neighbor go through a round of pidgin and F bombs…my guests thought it was a guy and a girl. They laughed when I told them that it was 2 guys, the one guy is sick of his brother being a scrub and mooching off him. They go through waves but thank goodness nothing really really bad. We have a rooster we’re trying to catch because he’s moved into the neighborhood. I have the guest suite decorated with roosters and supply ear plugs
Black person here. Call her out on it. Be direct, even offensively so because if not, you are just going to have unresolved hurt feelings over it. Don’t let her ignorance ruin your day or week.
Hello, it seems she didn’t feel safe because when she got there “the keys were in the door”. That was her first impression. I always take people at their word. So who else has copies of the keys, who else could be in the space waiting for her… I have found that that just because a host does everything right it cannot overcome someone’s fear and fear is not always based on prejudice. Though I am an experienced host and traveler, I stayed at a place not too far from my own place. My plans were to walk but the hosts ended up giving me a few rides to my test center. I was so overwhelmed being in someplace new, walking in a strange neighborhood the stress of something new but none of this had anything to do with them. If I could have bunked with a friend I would have just because there were so many other factors going on that if I could keep one constant I would prefer that.
Perhaps the 5 min walk to the subway late at night did it for her… Checking in late at night and then walking in an unknown neighborhood at night can both be scary. I don’t know how many of us have done that lately. Also, before arriving to your neighborhood, did she get driven through some other, less nice areas?
I think that @Yana and @anon67190644 would agree that our rental is in a wonderful area. Close to shops and restaurants, close to the beach but nevertheless quiet and secluded. And the views are incredible. But despite this, we have several four star ratings - and even a three star - for location.
One guest dinged us substantially for location because there were roadworks on the road to the beach (like it was my fault!) so the car journey was six minutes instead of three. It happens…
My go-to in these cases is to look up Fawlty Towers and the herd of wildebeest on You Tube 
Some of you are so keen to see discrimination/racism where none exists that you’ve missed the very clear reason she left so abruptly, a reason that has nothing at all to do with the neighbourhood. Her message was " just don’t feel safe there. I’m coming to pick up my things. I’ll leave the keys just as they were when I got here, in the door. Thanks so much".
Note the emphasis on the location of the keys. THAT’s why she left, and so would I under those circumstances. You can live in the safest neighbourhood in the world, but if someone with bad intentions comes to learn that you routinely leave keys in a door, then, even if that door is somewhat hidden on your property, they could remove and copy them and that would freak a lot of people out.
That’s not what happened, as I understand it. The host went to meet the guest from the subway and walked her to the appartment. Apparently that was ‘creepy’ according to some - bizarre attitude, if you ask me. Forgive me, you say you are an experienced traveller but you were overwhelmed by staying somewhere not far from where you live? Something doesn’t compute on that.