5 Travel Etiquette every guest should have - do you agree?

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Hosts, do you agree with this? Personally as long as they don’t wreck my place I’m happy enough as a host!

If you haven’t stayed at an Airbnb, this popular mode of vacationing is often more exciting and unique than your typical hotel visit. Airbnb offers a personal atmosphere at a reasonable rate. As a guest, you’ll have a host that is committed to a pleasant experience, making your stay comfortable, and filling you in on what the local scene has to offer. Here are some basic guest etiquette suggestions to ensure a smooth and relaxing visit.

As a Mannerly Airbnb Guest…

Read host reviews.
Since each Airbnb host offers a different experience, read the reviews before booking the space. You’ll learn about your host’s preferences and personality, what to expect as a guest, and make an informed decision as to whether you would be a good fit. Similarly, at the end of your stay, take 3 minutes to leave your host an exceptional review on the Airbnb site after you’ve enjoyed your time. If there was a notable problem, let the host know as soon as possible. It’s unfair and unreasonable to publicly complain about a broken toilet issue when it has not been reported.

Arrive and leave on time.
Hosts often work or stay busy with their own life. Be mindful of their time by letting them know when you plan to arrive and depart. Determine the check-out time and adhere to it. New guests often show up a few hours after your exit and your host needs time to prepare their home for the next visitors.

Swap schedules.
This is important if you’re house-sharing with your host. Let them know if you plan on leaving exceptionally early for your Grand Canyon hike. Or, if you’re sharing a bathroom, be efficient in the mornings with your wash routine. If it’s busy in the morning, apply make-up in the bedroom or wait until evening to shower. Ask your host what door they prefer you enter when you arrive home late at night and their sleep schedule is 9:00 p.m.

Respect their home.
It might not be as easy as the golden rule. Your host may want quiet time after 8 p.m. when you’re used to watching your late-night shows at full volume. Honor their home and the items in it. Be considerate with clean-up expectations, going above and beyond. Decide to leave the surroundings better than you found them, if possible.

Money and tipping.
Don’t ask to pay cash. Airbnb charges a percentage on top of the reservation fee, but this is to protect you and the host in case anything goes wrong. Tipping is not necessary as they are not acting as a service provider, instead equally existing in the home in most cases. A cleaning fee is often built into the cost or as an add-on. If you want to share your gratitude (which is always appreciated), a small gift or handwritten note is a nice gesture.

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Tom, I have to ask, are you an airbnb employee? You keep dropping airbnb marketing articles here, but then acting as if you have no expectations from your guests. And we are to believe there is a girlfriend that also feels the same way about the arrangement? Seriously now, as long as they don’t trash your home? So they can arrive any time? You will just happen to be there ready at all hours of the day or night happy to let them in without prior discussion and everything is always prepped to go, or have them hanging about hours after checkout? Because I have had guests arrive at 12pm for a very clear 4pm check in, and checking out at 1-2pm at 11am checkouts without any prior discussion with new guests arriving, and I (and I imagine others with other things going on in their lives) find it a rather large inconvenience. Of course I didn’t accept the 12pm arrivals, but it was irritating anyway that they didn’t read the rules. I usually always message this again, but as we know all the comms take time. Often I am still doing the finishing touches to cleaning our huge 4000ft space (that guests have access to). I know it is different for everyone. I absolutely require people communicate arrival time. I may not hear the doorbell up on my third floor if I am upstairs and they are coming late (which happens a lot), if I am not texted an ETA).

As far as respecting the home, that’s pretty much similar to what you say a little more immaturely with ‘not trashing the home’, but in my case it goes further as I host a few guest rooms at once, so one rowdy and disrespectful guest can ruin my other guests experience. It’s highly important that guests are respectful and aware of the noise levels, and others around them. And I don’t expect to have to tell them.

Obviously your set up is different. But all this anything goes stuff, is just so silly. Maybe for people that have empty apts with a few cheap bits of furniture in them. Maybe young people renting that don’t care about beautiful floors, walls and historic doors and finishes that would be a tragedy to get destroyed and cost a fortune to fix. It seems that some people just don’t get those of us who have homes that are more than just you cheap condo.

One little story about communication for you. A guest, whom we asked repeatedly this winter if the temp in their room was ok. We keep the house at a low temp when guests aren’t here as the whole home is 6000sq ft, and it costs a fortune, but warm it for guests. He kept saying at breakfast it was fine, despite U.S. Hearing the ceiling fan on. A couple of weeks after he left, my husband heard a constant drip drip drip in the parlor. We located it coming from a gap between the wood in the window area. A constant amount of water had created a huge puddle. After tracing it to the source, we found that the guest (who wanted to be left to drink with his girlfriend the whole time so didn’t want to communicate) had tried to turn off the old fashioned water radiators in the bedroom (that are not designed to be turned off or down. As a result, it sprung a leak, which ran down into the wall, for two weeks. Within a couple more days, the damage showed itself in full. Beautiful plaster and lathe walls and ceiling, done in a rounded style not done anymore fell off in huge chunks after reaching saturation point. Thousands of dollars later, enormous messes, and inability to book out, we got it somewhat fixed. Airbnb did pay, but it was nothing close to worth the stress. Communication and respect? Yeah, I think they’re important.

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@Sandy these are not marketing articles for either pro or anti AirBnb. I post articles that are relevant to hosts. I put it out there to see what other people’s reactions are.

We have a self check-in system with a combo lock for the keys so check-in times are really not a concern.

With regards to the floors, we’ve install vinyl planks so it’s completely waterproof so there’s no way anyone can wreck it.

Sorry to hear about your guest, I guess it really depends on each house and each situation. We don’t live in a new place but we have no radiators or anything like that to cause issues.

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I’m sorry, how can check in times not be a concern? Does the apartment clean itself? How can you honestly say you don’t care if something major like a broken toilet isn’t reported? This could mean major damage in any kind of apartment? Are good reviews really not important to you? I thought recent good reviews was how this system works?

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Clearly it seems that what we really have is a lot of people using their investment apartments as airbnbs. And that will obviously be different to those set up as, well, bnb’s, which is kind of how the idea is marketed, you know, get to know a friendly face as you travel, lalala. But what people really want is a hotel experience for half the price. Obviously it varies greatly. But it really does seem that the business model is markedly different now from how it started, as more and more people work out how to cash in. This article is obviously written about the more original style of model, where you actually stayed with the host. I feel these investment apartments offered for cheap everywhere are giving guests the idea that airbnb is just like a hotel and not someone’s home, which is very likely why the guests we are getting this past year are far less polite and respectful, and more of the just give me the keys variety, and tend to treat our home as you would a hotel room. Except it’s not, and these people are in our home. And they are carrying on as if we aren’t right upstairs, privy to the more noisy goings on. Not all, but many many more than the first year, which was a sort of honeymoon phase for us.

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well I would say breaking a toilet physically would constitute wrecking my place so that would be an issue.

with respect to check in, as long as they check in after 4pm after the cleaners are done then it’s fine with us.

I guess you are right…maybe Airbnb should have a section just for “Traditional Bnbs” vs. “Hoteliers”.

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Hang on now, you said ‘check in time is not really an issue’. Which is it? Does the guest need to check in after a certain time, as the article and I said, or ‘is the time not really an issue’ - the interpretation of which in light of the article which mentioned paying attention to the hosts arrival time is ‘I don’t care if guests don’t pay attention to my listed arrival or departure times’ because as you later clarified, you have a key box.

The broken toilet idea in the article and in my reference is one that happens as these things sometimes do, not something that guests did. So no, it doesn’t fit your ‘trashed’ quote. It is relying on respectful guests to let you know when something goes wrong or isn’t working in the room, bathroom or whatever space they are paying for. Anyone that owns places knows that things break down on their own, plumbing, items, and it doesn’t take someone to ‘trash’ them for this to happen.

Basically what I am saying, is that hosts that never meet the guests, have made their rent-a-space break proof, and don’t give the dickens about what went on there, so long as it isn’t trashed, and give the idea that hosts that expect a better quality of guest, a more respectful guest, one that isn’t looking for a hotel but cheaper in their home, but a different experience, you know the thing that airbnb is marketing like crazy on tv right now, are asking too much is frustrating. Then we have endless articles from airbnb saying that when receiving these cheap guests, the hosts should run themselves ragged, and spent next to the last penny supplying things you don’t even get in the ritZ? Ugh.

How long have you been an, ahem, ‘hotelier’? If you haven’t encountered any of these issues so far, my feeling is it is early days, and there are more adventures ahead.

By the way, I am not sure if you know what the definition of a hotel is. I don’t think your vinyl floored apt. qualifies by the regular definition. Even my six roomed historic mansion (seven counting mine upstairs), with grand entry and sweeping staircase might come a little closer to it than yours in definition, certainly in the old days when the business begun. But I’m pretty sure nobody on airbnb considers their places hotels. If they did, they’d be, well, hotels.

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And by the way, these are definitely ‘puff pieces’ and having been in the industry, I am one hundred percent certain they are silly articles written by writers hired by airbnbs marketing department and promoters. It’s pretty obvious what the deal is here. Create these little Stepford Wife airbnb’ers with this bizarre marketing plan by pushing unattainable goals for hosts to supply for guests things that are silly unless they are paying upwards of $1000 a night - which many are, but most places on airbnb are not.

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Hi Sandy,

I’m with you. I write insanely clear guest instructions, which I send to them in a PDF document at the time of booking. I ask them to read through the whole thing, rules included, and to send any questions. I always always try to greet guests in person to go over the rules! Which have been getting longer because guests keep doing things I hadn’t thought of (burning mosquito coils inside the house, inviting strangers over to stay overnight, putting questionable items down my disposal, and on and on.)

In previous posts here I told of my nightmare guest story, nowhere near as bad as your radiator story… But two “quiet” professionals who rented my place… And not only later lied to get me to alter their reservation but were horrific guests. Surly and demanding upon arrival, (wanting to come hours early) and then proceeded to slam things around ( I could hear them pounding something down there) proceeding to hold a rager, inviting strange men over, drinking loudly in my quiet neighborhood on weeknight and then breaking my furniture and leaving a mess. All of this, going on, while I was upstairs! I had opened a case with Air when the guests’ strangers arrived so they knew this guest was being a problem. They told me they take this kind of behavior very seriously and wanted me to leave a review (which I hesitated to do in fear of retaliation) so at 9:59 on the last minute before the deadline, I submitted a scathing review of this person…Jennifer Heckman of Portland Oregon! Don’t rent to this little b*tch!!! Air tells me that now soon everyone will be required to submit verified ID so that they cannot open a new account under a fake name.

Bad guest behavior is becoming more problematic lately. Although 99% of them are good.

One thing I do hate is the nit picking reviews. As this article says, unfair to complain about things that I didn’t know about or advertise, such as my kitchen. I mean… For $79 a night they get a full studio 2 mins from an uncrowded Hawaii beach, full patio, BBQ, completely equipped kitchen. Yes I get Mosquitos in the summer, but must this be a part of every damned review? I have gotten so I hate the reviews. They always find one thing to nit pick over!!! What do they expect for $79 a night? The nearest hostel is $89 and shared kitchen and communal bath right on the highway.

I like the income Air gives me but sometimes I do feel like a revolving door and wish I could make more money at my other jobs so I would not have to rent as much. I guess I am getting jaded. :smile:

Here is my listing… So you can see I am not the Four Seasons. Just a cozy, PRIVATE studio apartment right at the beach in Hawaii. https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/36877

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Hallelujah Konacoconutz!

I thought I was going nutz myself with all these ridiculous articles on Internet blogs where hosts try airbnb and claim wonderful experiences with meeting the coolest people! Yay! And making piles of money, double yay! And well, there was one or two incidents that were annoying, but overall it was GREAT! But, after the year, they decided they wouldn’t be doing it anymore. Hang on, what?! You said it was awesome, and easy money, but now you are not doing it after such a short time with nary a reason except you’d just like to travel more - as if you couldn’t block some dates out - or want their space back? I thought you loved these people being in your home all the time?

After a while of doing this and finding my experiences quite different I got very cynical about all that. If it was all they made it out to be, they’d still be doing it.

The facts are, people can be demanding, many are the kinds of people you would never want to have to spend time with, so to have them in your home, using your nice furniture, filthying up your bathrooms, getting their ugly makeup all over your white towels and pillowcases, all the while treating you like an inconvenience is nothing that could be described as fun. Meanwhile you’re upstairs panicking about what kind of ruination is occurring down below this time. The stress at every large bump, loud front door slam in the early hours (that you have to get up and lock, because you know the drunk idiots won’t), and every time someone slings their heavy luggage on your delicate antique furniture instead of the places provided, trumps over your lovely floors with their muddy or salty hiking boots. Ugh. Fun? Even the guests don’t really like knowing you’re there. It’s obvious they want the nice room, but want you scarce, so we spend our entire time tiptoeing and trying not to make our century old floors creek.

Your apartment is adorable. Surely that’s too cheap? I charge twice that just for a room in my home with a shared bath. Your reviews are also great. But yes I know, after all the hard work of making the room beautiful, every complaint feels like a slap in the face, as if they’re not going to hurt a real person - the person that cleaned their filthy sheets, and welcomed them with a smile. And as if you can control the insects! I am horrified that the part your stars are lower on was the value! It totally proves my point that airbnb is really for the people that think they can get something for nothing, but still want everything. The cheap ‘me’ generation. Rant over.

By the way with all the promotion going on around here, he’s a much better place I joined yesterday to talk about real concerns without all the nonstop airbnb employees feeding articles about how we should be Stepford airbnbs and constant spin off business promo threads masked as ‘free’ help: http://bedmaybebreakfast.com

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Wow Sandy! So nice to meet you! It sounds like your place is much cooler and much more high quality and vintage than mine, which is basically a basement apartment on the lower level of my house! Where are you located?

Thanks for the compliments! Yes, I’m marked down on value, location and cleanliness. (Ouch) I spend sooo many hours getting it clean… Even doing the fan tops and slider tracks… Like an escrow clean!!! I will never be a super host because some idiots mark me down for things that are clearly explained in my listing, had they read it, and most don’t or skim!!! Arghhhh.

Yes and yes, some guests demand the world out of us like this is the Four Seasons when mine is more like the One Seasons (haha). This is the going rate I am afraid, for what I have. I’m out in the rural countryside of south Kona so quite a distance from things. I also have to compete with a zillion vacation condos, some of which have way more amenities than I do and are closer to town beaches which is a plus for some people. In the summertime the weather is crappy and starting about right now, rentals just DIE. My low season rate is $79 and really only in July. At that rate I still sometimes go all summer without a booking, which is why I had to also list on flipkey and Wimdu.

The plus here is that most of the time, my guests are out sightseeing all day and I don’t have to pay any attention to them. The apartment has its own staircase so they can come and go in privacy. If they need me I’m right here. Most truly are nice and courteous. The Jennifer Heckman party however was such a nightmare that it made me distrust guests for a while, and raise my deposit price as well as require a profile and positive review.

My place really could be branded as budget accommodations right by the beach. If they don’t like it, then go to the Mauna Lani or the Sheraton, which charges $30 resort fee per day just to use the internet and park!

Nothing in the studio is as valuable as what you describe, and I am not sure I could stomach those A**hats mistreating your antiques and smearing make up on the whites (I have black and red sheets for that reason) I buy my bedding at Kmart and my pillows at Target. Much else has come from leftover things I didn’t need up here or from garage sales. I did mourn my new table that Jennifer Heckman from Portland. Oregon broke-- as it is not easy or cheap to get furniture here in Kona. You can’t just run down to the neighborhood IKEA. There is none, we are on an island in the middle of the Pacific.

Personally I’ve never used Air as a guest and probably won’t. I sometimes like the ease, security and value of a hotel when traveling myself. Just stayed in a cute coop residence hotel while visiting my son in Seoul. And it was only $35 US per night!!!

I do see a lot of commercial postings on this page. Air also has its own host forum but I bet dollars to donuts you are not allowed to grouse on it.

nice meeting you! :slight_smile: Aloha!!!

P.S. Did I mention to never ever rent to someone named Jennifer Heckman and her trashy friend Tammy, so called “quiet professionals looking for some sun” from Portland, Oregon? :slight_smile:

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I’m in NYS and attract weekenders from NY. I understand the location part of the price, but honestly your place looks lovely to me. I can’t understand the cleanliness thing. I swear you are right that people just didn’t care to read closely about location or something else so felt slightly disappointed that it wasn’t the four seasons, and had to take it out somewhere - even though it’s their own fault. They want it cheap, but heaven for bid should the price be along the lines of what you are receiving. Can I just say how much I understand that you wish there was a better way to make money right now rather than slaving over ingrates? My husband and I often say it’s a fools game! We can’t imagine people truly finding this as enjoyable as some claim. Maybe for the first few months, when they are working so hard for those first few positive reviews, and so thrilled for the scraps thrown their way. Eventually the resentment settles in as you realize more and more are trying to take advantage of this and that, people try to bargain you over your hard work and home, and people do things that respectful people wouldn’t do.

Personally I am not interested in staying in airbnbs either, did it once. It was not my cup of tea. I left a good review as I could see how hard she’d tried, and we were trying to make the best of it. We love the anonymity of hotels, and knowing what to expect. These days you can get great reviews at hotels you like. And you could long before airbnb took off.

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I just made some edits to my previous post!

They don’t read at all so I make a point to show them in person (very nicely) the things I really don’t want them to do. Out of all the guests I’ve had, I have had two nightmares and quite a few nitpickers. One lady from Canada missed her flight during the huge Ironman event here and lost her rental car. I went out of my way to secure a car for her through a friend, during an impossible sold out time in Kona. Her other choices were to get a cab, ride the public bus or rent a flatbed truck, so I saved their trip. what did I get in return? A crappy review. One that basically said, “thanks to Kristina’s connections we got a car… Which was a good thing because it made up for the crappy apartment!”

Yeah… Getting jaded by guests!!!

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Oh yes. The ubiquitous airbnb host ‘forum’ thing. All there was in my area was a couple of newbie questions, and endless self promotion - look at my place here etc. lol about Tammy. Did I mention the couple who tried to blackmail us for their money back with a bad review (and then airbnb wouldn’t let us review them saying it want fair if the blackmailer couldn’t do it either?! So they are still out there)? I’ve forgotten they guys name right now. But the woman was Luba Lyubov Pevnitskaia. Oh. I’m shivering at the memory.

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Holy crap that Just awful. I recently had this woman that claimed to be an older lady from England who was a first time traveler alone, and chose our place because she loved my taste and ‘wanted the company rather than staying in hotels’. She chose my cheapest room, for one person bookings only. I thought to be ultra nice, I would upgrade her to our best room, three times the price.

Wow. What a mistake. On her arrival, I showed her to our nicest room, enormous master bedroom, full ensuite rather than shared, and she muttered something like ‘Oh I just chose the other one because I liked the antique screen in there’, as if she was disappointed by the tremendous and obviously luxurious by comparison upgrade. Yeah right. Next, despite showing her where the tea things were in the dining area, I offered to make her a pot and let her into the kitchen to chat while I did so (the kitchen is a private area). I saw her looking around in a sort of turned up nose way - our kitchen is completely original 1920’s including amazing gas stove, and huge porcelain washing sink and even the cabinets. Our butchers pantry next to it is a big room from its build in the 1890’s. Most women of her age wouldn’t see the charm, yearning only for granite countertops and would have turned the two large rooms into an enormous 'chef’s kitchen.

But I pressed on. I showed her my treasured simplex copper whistling kettle from England, a Christmas gift from my husband, mentioning it was English. Her remarks. ‘Oh, no one uses those’, as if chiding me for not having a clue about English people. In fact they are very popular the world over with people that like finely designed things that work beautifully for years. Moving on from there, although feeling no charm at all anymore, I sat with her with the pot of tea as I knew she was apparently yearning for company. It was here that she mentioned to me that she was just stopping here for three days before she 'treated herself with a proper bnb with Full English Breakfasts! Before returning home. Oh. So I had just given my finest room to a woman who was just cheaping out in our beautiful home for a few days, because she read on the internet that there was something better somewhere else if she paid four times the price. Then she proceeded to tell me that she didn’t intend to see our beautiful town, and was racing over the next day to the town that had the bnb she was hoping for this life changing experience in (popular with middle class women of a certain age to shop for essential oils and fake flowers). Both my husband and I mentioned our town had many beautiful places worth seeing, and as she didn’t have a car and would be there soon anyway, she might want to see our town first. No, she wasn’t interested, as apparently the other town was so much better that $30-40 taxi rides either way, that might have gone towards the room I gave her despite the time she would be spending there would be spent in short order. But it didn’t end there. She wanted to leave her bags with us on the last day as she finally realized what a beautiful town ours was, and she decided to explore. Instead of being done with her, she came back at 4pm, and sat on the porch for an hour or more, and I felt that she wanted me to go and converse with her. Except her snide and snooty remarks and attitude and ruined it for me within the first half hour. I left her to it and pretended not to be home, asking her to take the keys and leave them when she left.

The worst thing? I had guests within an hour of giving her the room who were very well reviewed and actually did seem decent (and best of all were willing to pay) wanting to book. I was so angry with myself, trapped into the delicate older woman traveling alone thing. She was a cruel thing, and you know what, loved her stay here.

She just messaged me, close to the time of the review process being up and claimed she is having trouble posting it. I swear I just don’t know how to review this person. All it really was wa unpleasantness and a lack of being grateful. Every morning instead of doing what most do when seeing my husband topping up the coffee which is say what a wonderful sleep they had in our room and beds, would have a complaint such as ‘oh, it was raining last night!’, or ‘those trains are noisy’ (trains from miles away whose toots you can only hear if the wind blows in the right direction and your windows are open). Might just be the English thing, but nonetheless, it was not enjoyable considering what I had done to accommodate. I had other paying guests in rooms that cost twice as much, who I would love to have upgraded instead, including a honeymooning couple.

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Oh my!!! Your story is soooo typical of what we encounter as hosts… Just ungrateful, unappreciative and looking for god knows what in our places that they were expecting to find and didn’t. I’ve had English guests and have found them to be usually without fail, unerringly charming and totally well mannered, so I’m wondering if this lady was just a more unusual case. I used to think Canadians were great until I got two giant whiners in a row, one who left a laundry list of what he found wrong even though he had my lowest rate and was here only three days. That kind of guest is trouble. The one with a million questions and who needs his hand held.

I think you should leave an honest review of how you found her to be. If you are worried about getting a smackdown in return, you can always try my trick of waiting until 11:59 PST on the last day of the review period so they cannot have a chance to write anything bad. Because chances are, with a sour personality, it would be bad. This is an example of someone who won’t be happy anywhere and no matter what will find something wrong.

I have come to believe that as hosts we are in the customer service business, and as we all know you will always have unhappy people.

I must add, you have to deal with way more than me because you have these people inside your private home. my guests have a private suite which is good that we all have our privacy and bad that they can sometimes go unsupervised.

That said, I have made some really nice friends through renting who have begged me to come and stay with them (rent free of course, now that we are friends") and even some return guests too. This has kept me out of foreclosure and on average has kept the mortgage paid every month… better than long term renting,

Certainly are some downsides though!

Are you in upstate NY?

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I’ll take a crack at starting the review!

“Having Ms. Persnickety in our home almost felt like a visit from my own mother. She was tidy, fastidious and eager to seek out company and conversation, whether about the inconvenience of rain or the faint sound of a train horn miles away. I sincerely hope she was pleased with the complimentary upgrade to our finest room and that her lack of acknowledgment didn’t indicate the absence of warmth or appreciation.”

This might be insulting to your actual mother, though. : )

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Lol, already I am feeling better, just having an honest chat without all the host blaming. Seriously, what do you think about the constant party line, that if you get a bad one, it’s your fault for taking an u reviewed guest, or not doing due diligence with comms? Victim blaming at its finest, and the heart of airbnb rhetoric, and taken up with eagerness by anyone trying to cash in with a side biz trying to help airbnb hosts run their already low on the profit end businesses, and excited newbies who don’t want to believe that people are going to be the way they will prove to be.

We’ve made some nice friends too in the beginning. Many have invited us to their places and truly meant it. We’ve been out to dinner with other couples. But not so much anymore. Now it’s all about leaving people to it, and we do.

It sounds worse than it would be if we were right in the house, but we do live on a separate floor in with our private stairwell to the kitchen, so interaction is unnecessary. But you do hear them if getting rowdy, or if they are thumpers or slammers.

It’s true, we make enough money just over the weekends to pay our monthly bills, even if we don’t do it every weekend. So why am I so unhappy? Those weekends are stressful enough and intrusive enough on our peace that living with less money and getting it together another way often seems like a way better idea. And I’m sure soon enough we’ll make it happen. We don’t do this all the time. I’d be mental by now.

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Guest Etiquette Issue: CHECK-IN Time. Watch out for this weird trick: I just had a guest book for May 23. One night. They then asked for a 3 a.m. Check-In Time and I (rightfully) assumed he meant of the night of his booking. He actually meant 3 a.m. of the morning of the 23rd which was not available to him but he never made this clear and I accepted the weird arrival time wishing to accommodate. When a guest books a night, he is only purchasing Noon to Noon of that night. He never had access to 3 a.m. of the 23rd since that is part of the 22nd booking (that guest had already purchased her full night’s sleep). As a host, it is my responsibility to make sure the communication is clear and I failed to anticipate his meaning. So, when I had to decline his booking due to having another guest sleeping the night through of the 22/23… he then asked for help since they had to get a hotel. – They did arrive the night of the 23 (their original booking, nothing about that had changed since I always expected them that night). They enjoyed a good nights sleep and left early next morning. Ultimately they went to the resolution center to ask for a full refund, citing that I had declined them at the last minute due to Non-Availability. Rather than argue and hash all this out, I simply offered them a Half-Price Refund. But I was steaming mad at how obtuse they were in assuming that 3 a.m. was theirs to use! In the Lodging Industry there is only one 3 a.m. available to a booking, and it is the 3 a.m. of the FOLLOWING day, not of the PREVIOUS DAY.

I would have liked this to go to AirBnB arbitration to see what they would rule about this. But my guests accepted my half-price refund and all is well. So, HOSTS, be warned… when a guest asks for an unusual check in OR check out Time, make sure it is within the booking they purchased and not intruding into another guests time slot.

And the reason I accepted two night’s back-to-back bookings from two different guests, is because I thought his 3 a.m. request gave me the extra time to Turn the Room, clean, etc. So, never make any assumptions.

Another thing I’ll just mention, is I don’t think they are poor, they were on their way to a Balloon Ride early in the morning, and I know those are not cheap! So, watch out for the zealous traveler who wishes to see what they can get for free. Having said that, I must add that in every other booking I have met the most wonderful and ethical people who are fine human beings. Be wise, be safe, and be always ready to give the benefit of the doubt to your traveling guest.

Thanks,
Susan

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If you checked into a hotel at 3:oo am you would still have to check out at 11:00am, too bad so sad that you missed hours of your hotel time. You did not have to give that doofus half of anything!!!