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Hi all. I’m a homeshare/live in host. I’ve been renting two rooms through airbnb for the past 6 years in Ireland. Recently I got a booking enquiry for a one night. The guest said he was very interested in booking the room for the night but only under the condition that he could have some friends over for a few hours in the evening. I found this a bit bizarre. The rooms are there to provide a decent nights sleep & somewhere comfortable to stay while visiting my little city. Maybe I’m being paranoid here, but my automatic thought was ‘why is he looking to book a room specifically to have people over? What would they be up to in my house?’ Perhaps I’m uptight bit no, the idea made me instantly uncomfortable & I declined the booking.
Have any other home share hosts had guests wanting visitors over? I felt he was booking the room for himself & himself alone. I’ve never had other guests ask me could they have company. In my opinion, that’s not what airbnb is about.
I would have asked. Not only the reason but how many guests? Depending on the situation, I might have added extra charges.
My apartments both sleep two people so I’m not the same as an in-home host, but I don’t have a problem with guests having friends over. It happens a lot.
Do you rent the room to couples? If it’s too small for more than two, just let him know so that he understands why you declined him.
I don’t have a home share but right off the bat, I don’t like the tone of “I’ll book on one condition”. It’s your house and you set the terms.
But if that wasn’t the tone and just lost in translation here, I would consider it. In theory, I don’t have a problem with a guest having people over, as long as I’m aware of the circumstance.
Do you have common area where your guests typically hang out? Or will they just be in their room together? That would probably help me decide, more than anything.
I am also a homeshare host and I agree with @heh1975 that I wouldn’t find it bizarre to ask, but whether I declined out of hand would depend on the tone of the request (respectful vs. demanding) and the reason.
And I don’t understand why you would be suspicious and paranoid and wonder why instead of just asking “Why would you want to have friends over? Is there a reason you can’t meet with them somewhere else?”
I can think of several reasons a guest might want to have others over that are not at all nefarious.
That doesn’t mean you have to agree to such a request, I might or might not depending on who they wanted to have over, but I don’t find a guest simply asking to be bizarre or scary.
At least he asked, instead of assuming, which some guests might do.
Not being a homeshare/live in host, take this with a grain of salt.
I, too, would find this request a bit odd - as I, as a host, for a single room in my house/apartment would expect the guests to use the accommodation to have a safe, clean and quiet place to spend the night and not impose on the host’s hospitality to bring their entourage with them.
There are so many variables that make it impossible for me to flat out say yes or no to such a request but based on the phrasing “I consider booking your place but only if I can bring folks over” sounds not very considerate. There may be homeshare/live in hosts who have absolutely no problem having such ‘socially active’ guests in their home as they might also be very social with their guests in the first place and it wouldn’t bother or interfere with their daily routine but for me personally it probably wouldn’t be a good fit.
So much here would depend on the individual host, the house layout, the noise factor and so on.
In the UK when I had a B & B most of my guests were single men. (There was an army training facility plus a police school nearby) So there were times when a bloke would bring a friend back - 99 times out of 100, a girl.
Because they had to pass my sitting room, my kitchen and my bedroom to get to their guest room, I’d invariably be aware of the extra guest. (No, I wouldn’t charge for her).
I would say to the guest that it’s no problem as long as she doesn’t expect breakfast in the morning but to PLEASE be aware that a young boy (my son) was asleep in the room directly below them.
There was never any trouble or noise. But the layout of my house definitely helped me to be aware of extra guests.
I would explain to him that it’s a home share and that visitors are not allowed and your place might not be a good fit for him. If he still wishes to stay then I would recommend a couple of local restaurants or pubs where he can meet up with his friends and have a nice visit.
I’d say 50-60% of my guests have people come over, and only about 10% of those think to tell / ask me, despite this being in the house rules. I’ve decided to be chill about it generally, note that ours is a separate apartment with a large outdoors living space so it’s usually no burden. I’d have a very different view if it was a house-share.
I would be cautious, especially since indoor cameras are banned through the Airbnb platform. I am also a live in host and I have a 2 guest max. I would decline.
As a former homeshare host (I now have LTR tenants), that would have set off bells for me. Just the tone. However, I would have asked what he meant and if he’s local.
It’s your home and if he’s planning to stay there and host a poker party with the boyos, nope. But I would have asked before declining.
Several guests have asked to have other people over and as long as it wasn’t a big pool party, I was OK with it. But not a fan of “let’s use the pool, kitchen, and all the common areas for a gathering.”
And when guests ask these things, they never consider that the people they are asking to have over are going to be using the bathroom (soap, toilet paper, dirtying towels), probably creating more garbage, that some private septic systems may not be able to handle more than the stated number of guests, and that if one of their invitees accidentally damages something, they are going to be held responsible.
Nor that the host has no idea who these people are, they don’t have ID registered with Airbnb, they could be thieves, for all the host knows.
I once had a guest who came home very upset one day. She had come to see her son and grandkids who live in my town, but the kids lived most of the time with the mom, who her son was no longer with. She had gone to visit the kids that day at the mom’s house, where she found they were living in squalor- not because the mom was poor, but because she lived like a pig. There was old food crusted on the dining table, garbage and mess everywhere, and the kids constantly had snot running down their faces.
I told her if she wanted to have the kids over one day, that was fine with me- I have a nice yard and she could spend time with them outside of that bad scene. She never took me up on it, but I don’t mind offering something like that once in awhile to a nice, trustworthy guest.
It also seems more reasonable somehow if a guest has booked for 4-8 people and asks if they can have a couple of day visitors, than someone booking a homeshare for one person, and then asking to have several people over.
If the number of visitors exceeds the number of guests booked for, that seems a pretty entitled attitude.
We don’t allow guests for a number of reasons which are important to us.
We have 2 studios on-site where we live. Same as with the smoking, we don’t allow any guests as once the other (apartment’s) guests see that they can have people over we’re quickly in a small party situation. This even happened by just offering our guests to sit on our terrace in the garden. One day the chemistry between the guests of the two accommodations was good, they just decided to use our place as a 24 hour hang-out and sit on the terrace non-stop drinking and smoking. We thought that our guests would basically just enjoy their breakfast or a glass of wine on our terrace which is obviously the only one we have and that we also would like to use on nice evenings but that mindfulness is too much to ask for.
Additional dirt, dishes, toiletries etc. as @muddy mentioned.
We’re living on a property with a single family home as are our neighbors. If we’re fully booked, that makes 8 people on our property. We don’t want to p*ss off our neighbors by having a constant stream of folks (besides the actual guests) walking in and out of our property.
As an on-site host with a small child I only want to have people on my property who I know. Anybody else is considered unauthorised and not welcome. Communication is key - if the guests let us know that their grandparents or grandkids will swing by to pick them up, that’s perfectly fine but not as a hang-out scenario.
Tranquility. We’re located in a quiet area in our city, yet close to the city center. Guests book our place to have that extra peace and quiet while staying close to the attractions. We don’t need guests thinking this is their opportunity raise the roof whilst other guests (next door so to speak) expect a quiet atmosphere. Since we also live here it is much appreciated if guests are considerate enough to adhere to these rules.
There are plenty of cafés, parks and bars in walking distance where they can meet and spend time together.
This is why I love hosting solo travelers, as I exclusively do. Most of my guests are so quiet and unobtrusive that I often don’t know whether they are even home or not, as they have a private outside entrance to their room and bathroom, even though it’s part of my house. Sometimes I can hear them talking on the phone, or their toilet flushing, but that’s about it. Even when they use the shared kitchen, I’m sometimes sitting in the living room, right next to it, working on my laptop, and don’t even realize right away that they are there.
And because almost all my guests fly and bus to this area, they don’t even have a car here. My neighbors know I host (and some of them do, too), but only because I’ve told them. Otherwise they wouldn’t know or even notice my solo guests walking quietly down the road.
