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@georgygirlofairbnb I agree with most all of your replies. I found many items on Poppys list subjective. When I travel, I always rent private homes and have been doing this for years. They all have pluses and minuses, I have yet to find one customized to my personal needs. It doesn’t make sense to expect rentals to supply everything on your wish list. My “must haves” always travel with me and I am pleasantly surprised if I find these items have been supplied. In addition, complaining about poor/improperly ordered/toilet shots and dark photos on a listing, why? Just move on to the next listing.
Poppy, I think much of the original backlash was due to your list coming off as self-entitled. You do make some good points, however you included too many non-events. If you go back and look carefully at your word choices, starting with “My hate list”, perhaps you won’t feel so attacked. You are correct when you state the internet can’t deliver intention or tone, however we all can work on cutting down these misunderstandings by rereading before we hit send.
In my opinion, you forgot the most important - blockout curtains.
It never seems to amaze me that hosts think thin, paper, privacy roller blinds or sheer curtains are enough.
Yes, curtains can be expensive, but travellers (especially ones from different time zones) need a decent nights sleep!
Thank you for your comments, my bag would be very heavy carrying around all those households extras for months!
Although I did travel through South America and Central America for 7 months with a plastic strainer in my case as the Airbnbs never had anything to strain rice and pasta with, but it was light. I do end up with lots of weird things in my case but cooking oil I will not carry, so buying a bottle and using half an inch at every place and leaving it behind, then having to buy it again all the time is annoying.
Instant book - I understand this isn’t for everyone but use Airbnb’s safeguards. I have a number of newbie guests every week and I insist on a full frontal pic, ID, their profile filled out and that they give me all guests names and have a dialogue with me before I accept them. I hope that I am setting them up to make the next hosts life easier. I am not a newbie so have many, many 5* reviews as a guest.
But as a guest who is only booking 2 to 3 days in advance having to wait for 12 to 24 hours for a host to get back to me, only to tell me that it is already booked (there are a lot of hosts out there that don’t use the calendar syncing programme), is too long, I need to have my accommodation sorted quicker than that.
The price I paid is a valid point and is always relevant to which country you are travelling in. The accommodation I look for is what the hotel business would classify 3*, clean and functional, none of the things on my list are expensive or luxury extras.
In relation to the list of the complaints about the photos, I meant it to be helpful to hosts from a guest’s point of view, especially when you are on the road and not wanting to spend the whole morning finding a place. A picture speaks a 1000 words - make a good impression!
I understand it would have been better to have called it “My Pet Peeves” and I would be happy to change it to that now if you think it is a good idea?
The list was a personal list I made sitting up in bed one night in an Airbnb that was lacking in many areas. I wrote it after many months on the road to amuse myself and I decided to post it on here, maybe I shouldn’t have.
However even if people felt I came across as self-entitled I don’t believe I deserved the nastiness I received. If you don’t like someone, their attitude or their thoughts, shrug your shoulders and move on, the internet is a big place.
Ha ha and you know why? Because I like to sleep with the curtains open, I like the light to wake me up in the morning and the best way to get over jet lag and time zone problems is to get up at the same time every morning. If you really must sleep during the day because you are that exhausted only ever do 2 hours max and then force yourself to stay awake until at least 9pm. Next morning jet lag and time zone problems have dissapeared!
Yeah, I agree with you on this one. Started off on the wrong foot with your title. I appreciate @cabinhosts moderation of some of the caustic replies, it’s not necessary to suffer personal attacks versus a solid discussion on the merits of your point-of-view. I’ve had my first reactions to a number of things modified by reading this forum and I love the fact we are hearing new voices, too. The beauty is that everyone can take from your “suggestions” and do what fits their listing/style. We are on-site hosts and it works because we get mostly first timers and they have no clue, so your #1 isn’t for us, but that’s cool. But I am going to discuss the “gotta go when I get there” comment as it makes so much sense! They travel hours to get to us so of course, let them in and come back in 10 minutes. Thanks for the tip.
Just a quick word about maps - we have stayed at some great out of the way places that were difficult to find and google maps had no idea, we are often in 3rd world countries.
The clever hosts had made maps, taken photos, put instructions and pointers on the photos, put them on Air’s itinerary and then sent them to us as well. Good hosting!
Then there were others that left us walking the streets forever dragging suitcases up and down steps because the numbers didn’t correspond or the directions weren’t clear. In one capital city we ended up giving up and a kind cafe owner phoned the host for us who came to collect us. If we had have been given better directions this could have been adverted.
I have already answered this, I didn’t say perishable milk. Small, inexpensive tetra packs of long life milk, they get you through so you can have a cuppa or two.
Hmm, didn’t know about that–will have to look for it.
We do provide the MiniMoos-real Half and Half in individual containers that don’t need refrigeration. they don’t get used much because I think most guests make a stop at the grocery store before arriving.
$60-$70/nt for an entire place??!!
In dry Colorado we rarely have mosquitoes. Or flies. Some burn citronella candles outdoors and we do have a fly swatter, but I never use insect repellant.
I think what you call half and half is what we call long life.
We had the most beautiful one bedroom apartment in the middle of Budapest for $70 a night, it was stunning and bigger than my house, fantastically appointed, everything thought of, a divine stay in every way.
You have to be careful with citronella too, my daughter ended up with a serious asthma attack from an allergy and was hospitalised.
Do you find that most hosts do not make use of (or are not aware of) the self check-in guide, or were these meet & greets? We used to meet every guest, and a light bulb came on (duh) when one poor guy excused himself to use the bathroom. In my defense, his wife was super chatty and very interested in getting recommendations. It was about that time that I decided to offer the choice of self check-in or a meet & greet.
I would say 95% of our guests choose self check-in (which is what we prefer when we stay in Airbnbs), and this has become (ALMOST) foolproof since the introduction of the self check-in guide. I send the link to every guest, and I have pictures and arrows for everything. Ha! I utilize messenger and email to build rapport before their stay, leave a note and a treat for their arrival, and we try to bump into them once during their stay if it is a multi-day stay. We live on-site, and share a garage and outdoor space, so this is easy for us to do.
I am glad to learn you have had so many positive experiences as a guest, and I’m glad you shared your “naughty” list with us. It may have come off a bit ornery, but I think it is a good exercise to peruse the list and say, “Yep, I do that, heck no, I’m never doing that, and hmmm…do I need to consider that???”
We say in our house manual that we offer everything we would want to (reasonably) have if we were traveling. For us, that has made hosting very satisfying. For others, that would be over the top. That’s the beauty of hosting and guesting–there are so many interesting ways to arrive at your destination.
Thank you for your wonderful post. As you have said there are so many ways hosts can give the information guests need to enjoy their stay. I am constantly updating my documents and info.
For example here when we have an apartment the address is written with the apartment number first and then the street number, unit 2/100 …, lot’s of countries do it the other way around. I have had 3 guests in the last couple of weeks query the address so I have now changed my instructions to unit 2 at 100 … Anyway I can make it easier for guests to understand and not send me queries I will do. I love finding better ways of doing things and some of the best wordings I have I have copied from this forum.
I don’t think lock boxes, coded doors etc are all that common in Eastern Europe and as they are mainly large apartment blocks and they are older buildings hosts still do the old fashioned meet and greet.
There were many times when we were stranded with our car and no parking on a busy road waiting half an hour for the host to turn up even though we arrived at the agreed time and constantly updated them while we were on the way, once the police got involved. So we started making self check in a priority where we could, there were places that did have lock boxes and codes.
The majority told us to leave the keys on the letter box or on the table when we left and this was great. The ones that wanted to meet us at check out were most annoying as we would generally have walked into town for breakfast and having to be back at a specific time or worse then stand there and wait for the host to arrive for 20 minutes was a pain.
I absolutely love that hosts are now understanding that the first things guests want to do is use the bathroom! The “I’ll be back in 10 minutes when you have had time to settle in” is great.
Oh, goodness. I’m sorry to hear your shared home stays were such a problem, and I hate that many of my cohosts our there contribute to shared home listings getting an apparently well deserved bad rap!
We rent out two separate ensuite rooms in our home. I’m lucky, in that my house is only 12 years old, so we’ve go really modern plumbing and no buckets under the sinks. We’ve got a no smoking of anything policy and don’t smoke anything ourselves. I’m not opposed to marijuana, but I don’t partake myself. I’ve tried it in the past, and rather than making me mellow, it freaked me out.
Anyway, I digress. Our guest rooms are far enough apart that people can indulge themselves without disturbing other guests. I wouldn’t host if I couldn’t offer guests a comfortable and fairly private experience.
That’s terrible that hosts have not turned up on time for check in!
It’s not so hectic where I am in my city and if you were early you could easily go to the pub/cafe etc to address a call of nature/wait. I must say after I have been waiting for a guest to arrive the last thing I want to do is to wait for them again in the house! I just want to show them the important stuff then let them get on with it.
