We are new at Airbnb hosting although have done high end STR ‘s for over 20 years . When we recently opened our newly remodeled stand alone house to guests, I decided to try a different approach to guest rules and instructions. Besides years of STR rental experience, we have also been guests at dozens of Airbnb rentals and have found various instruction and rules lists left for us. They ranged from simple requests like stripping the beds to incredibly detailed instructions with long lists of “do this and don’t do that “. As guests, we always left places as we found them. We decided to forgo the “to do” lists and simply asked guests to NOT strip beds and to leave towels in bathrooms. We didn’t say a word about dishes, the trash, cleaning counters, etc, etc. The results have been surprising. We’ve now had about 30 nights of rentals so far with stays ranging from 2 nights to 10. Guests have consistently cleaned up after themselves and left the place very acceptable. Their degree of cleaning varied but overall, they have behaved themselves nicely. We are in the upper range of costs per night so I’m not sure this approach would work for everyone. Our initial sampling is admittedly small but I will continue to update our progress with this approach. So far we have received all 5 star ratings.
Not surprising to me.
Our house “rules” are pretty minimal, mainly because I hate staying somewhere that has pages of “do’s” and “do not’s”. The only reference to cleaning as such, is that we ask guests to empty their kitchen bin every couple of days, during the summers here (40c +) they can get a bit smelly if left.
The vast majority of guests leave our apartments pretty much as they found them, and often we’ll see evidence that they’ve given the place a quick clean before checking out.
Recently, the standard of how the apartments have been left has been extremely high, which seems to be at odds with what many other hosts have been saying about guests over this past few months. Even though the beds are all going to be stripped, quite a few times we’ve went in and the beds are all made up, sometimes even neater than they were in the first place!
JF
We’ve had quite a few posts over the years debating the pros and cons of long lists of rules. The places I’ve stayed generally don’t have a lot of rules and as a guest I prefer not to stay at that kind of place if I can avoid it.
My own Airbnb is just a simple, small ensuite room so rules lists generally don’t apply. Guests will sometimes message me to ask what the check out requirements are, I suppose because they’ve been conditioned by other hosts to expect it. I just say, “none aside from having a safe trip.”
I have minimal rules and no check-out instructions; if asked, I tell people to leave laundry/trash/etc. to me. I have had one or two people out of 100 leave the apartment slightly messy, but in general they leave it as they found it. It may help that I don’t have a full kitchen, so messy cooking isn’t really an option.
Like KKC, I don’t have any rules or check-out lists for my private room listing.
I’m not sure what you mean by this, but if you mean that people who pay more leave things cleaner, that’s not my experience at all. My listing is geared towards budget travelers, and 95% of them leave their bedroom and bathroom clean and tidy and always clean up after themselves in the shared kitchen. I’ve only had one guest since I started hosting 4 years ago who left a big mess.
That has been my experience, the people who have paid the least have left more of a mess and my first 4* review came from a discounted stay. Live and learn, I never discount now.
My neighbor next door to my cabins charges far less and from what I observe over the fence they are louder, arrive early and leave late and seem to have larger groups. Now I am guessing that is partly due to how the place is managed, you cannot take advantage without permission.
RR
I have only two rules on the Airbnb listing. They are no smoking, which I think is fairly unnecessary these days and no parties - also probably unnecessary as both apartments are way too small for partying.
I have no checkout instructions at all. I don’t care where people leave the towels as I’ll have to pick them up and launder them wherever they are. I don’t want guests to strip the bed as it makes it more difficult to see any marks that need stain-removal treatment. I don’t care if they don’t take out the rubbish - our recycling here is pretty complex so I prefer to do it myself. And more, and more and more…
I don’t stay anywhere with rules either. I’m a reasonably intelligent, adult person and not a kid who needs to be told how to behave.
We didn’t initially have any check-out instructions but so many guests messaged and asked about them. I didn’t want the best guests having to search out instructions as it seemed they wanted some so just added for good measure. I added a “Check-Out” section to the House Manual (not rules) but it is really low-key. I ask them not to strip the bed and to just leave towels hanging (this is good so they don’t sour). Previously people really want to pile into the shower, I guess in an effort to do “something”. They also liked to strip the bed, presumably for the same reason, but it makes it more difficult to find spots and stains. So, ultimately, our check-out instructions actually relieved our guests of duties that they believed they needed to perform (but didn’t). And still made our “duties” easier.
We recently added that we “would appreciate if you took out the trash, if you have time, but not to worry if you forget” and describe where the outside bins are. We added it because we are doing at least a full day, if not two, between guests and it can get a bit smelly with trash sitting in there. We’ve had full compliance so I think that it was really about telling guests where the bins are. In the past, guests would message after leaving to apologize for the trash because they didn’t find the bins, so maybe I should have added it sooner, but I always felt like I didn’t want the trash bins to be the last impression of the stay.
What I’ve experienced, both with and without check-out instructions, is that some people will tidy up and consider how they are leaving the place and some just won’t and I don’t think that check-out instructions have any effect on the messy ones. The kinds of mess that bother me are purely inconsiderate in any home (enormous spill splashed on 4 walls and puddled on the floor left to dry, 17 empty bottles and 4 bags of trash behind the couch, 1/2 a plate of curry on the bedside table with the other half on the bedding, a bunch of glitter balloons bouncing around dropping glitter, copious amounts of bulldog snot on every surface) and I am confident that check-out instructions and/or rules would make no difference at all in these situations.
In my 8 years of hosting I have found that people don’t read much so I leave a lot of information but don’t expect it read often. We have only had rare minor issues. I do have a large print bold card on each door that a person would leave through reminding them to leave keys, turn off the heat or AC and check for power cords (many are left).