Can’t agree with you on this one @Chris
Airbnb says hosts must provide toilet paper, soap, linens/sheets, and at least one towel and pillow per booked guest.
Local customs are irrelevant it is a minimum standard Airbnb expects hosts to live up to.
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I am.not sure what you mean. Did you expect your host to do everyday cleaning and do laundry for you? Or change sheets everyday? I stayed in many many Airbnbs and for a week and more stays. If it’s a separate unit I never had a host clean for me or change my sheets. That’s the difference between Airbnb and hotels. Ussualy at Airbnb cleaning is not offered unless you want to pay for it separately. As far as detergent goes I always leave for guests one container but I don’t replenish it further into their stay.
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Just of the phone with Airbnb. They said all hosts must provide sheets, towels, toliet paper, soap and shower gel as a basic requirement.
They have said we can buy new sheets etc, so we can have a change while the others are getting cleaned. They will reimburse us.
Host will be talked to by Airbnb after the review period.
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I have a listing that you have to bring your own bedding and towels, over the last few weeks its had a warning to add essential amenities.
Yesterday the warning disappeared and under progress it says the listing meets requirements.
I can only conclude we don’t have to provide bedding etc.
Nope, not anymore. That didn’t last long.
I also thought they had made it a requirement as well but it looks like they removed it again. No doubt very quietly so most of us would continue to do so. It’s hard to believe there was so much pushback on this that they removed it. They must have gotten a ton of customer service calls on it and decided it wasn’t worth the effort to try to enforce. So it goes back to guests having to look for a listing that provides it.
Thanks @KKC
I really can’t keep up. Bloody annoying, I wish they would just decide what they want and stick to it. This is in a big part why guests become unhappy and hosts confused.
It was only a couple of months ago that it was mandatory 
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When I answered earlier in the thread I thought it was a newly added requirement for everyone. @Chris says they removed it as a requirement a year ago! And what tipped me off was @Kingi posting Brian’s answer about it in the latest host Q and A. I don’t want to listen to that BS to find out what the policies are.
Thankfully many forum members do keep up and share information here.
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Agreed. Thank you for everyone’s input. Much appreciated
they have authorized you to purchase sheets?
in my opinion, ABB has overstepped their authority. Shame.
Why would you need brand new sheets while another set is being cleaned?
I like clean sheets weekly, but I would not be in a spiral if I had to sleep on one set for 2 weeks. No big deal.
Is there a store nearby where you can purchase a few items that she failed to provide?
At first I was seeing it all from your point of view…now I am not so sure you are understanding what you signed up for.
Be aware that you are not going to get a good review either…it sounds as though your host is not pleased with you, and the friction is going both ways.
Have a nice holiday. Dont sweat the small stuff.
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Yes they are.
What if one person wanted to sleep while the only bedding was washing and drying? Bare in mind we had to add our own washing line.
We never expected a service as stated above. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have sheets washed every three / four days. It’s a sunny country afterall. We all sweat more. What would it have been for her to provide washing powder?
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We had a whole thread devoted to detergents and laundry. Many people don’t provide it. In most Airnbs I stayed all we got is soap and often not even that. But I never stayed in high end properties so comparing to hotels I paid the very less and didn’t mind few items I had to buy myself
There are one or two people here who see me as a bit of a clean freak because of some of my comments regarding duvet covers etc. 
But truly, I’d sleep in the same sheets for two weeks. I don’t expect my guests to so I offer to change the sheets midway during their stay but only a few take me up on it so there are plenty of other people who aren’t squeamish about using the same sheets for 14 nights.
I know that some people like to use abundant towels but I don’t. I tend to drip dry anyway (sorry if that’s TMI) and a towel is only used for wiping clean water from a clean body. I fully expect a self-catering apartment or house to supply at least one loo roll but I also expect to have to go and shop too. I don’t particularly always want to use the cheapest brands that many hosts supply anyway.
I often find that guests haven’t used the toiletries I supply. And because they’re flying home, they often leave good quality shampoo, conditioner, soap etc. when they go home. (A nice bonus for me).
Quite often they have bought additional loo paper, paper towel etc. when they’ve been grocery shopping. I leave ‘starter’ products but expects guests to buy anything they need over and above that. And they gladly do.
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I doubt it’s a settled issue. Airbnb wants to raise standards and grow the market so they have to figure out the best way (meaning for them least costly) to do that. The least expensive way is to not require something but lead the guest to expect it. So expect it will go like this: Guests (like the OP) expect certain amenities, guest doesn’t get it, guest gives a poor review, host’s star average goes down, host get’s warned. Host either steps up their game or out of the game.
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[quote=“K9KarmaCasa, post:27, topic:23809, full:true”] @Chris says they removed it as a requirement a year ago!
[/quote]
I meant they removed the shampoo from the basic amenities.
I know this because we kept the basic amenities (as they were called before) unchecked, because we did not provide shampoo. Some day when creating a new listing I noticed shampoo had been removed, so I checked the box for all my listings.
Somewhere I had a host as guest making a remark about the missing shampoo. He was convinced it should be there because it belonged to the basics, but he was surprised to find that shampoo was taken out and listed separately.
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There are certain items that I would always supply whether or not they were required by Airbnb. Although our rentals are separate entire places my goal is for guests to arrive at check in time and not have to worry about getting supplies or going to buy groceries etc. until at the earliest lunchtime the next day.
This is one of the reasons I supply arrival snacks, starter coffee, tea, sugar, plus breakfast goods for one day. They don’t have to bother about soap, loo paper and so on because it’s supplied but if they want to get their own brand later, they can.
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I am really wondering where AirBnB wants to go.
They were homesharing, they gained a huge market as cheap alternative to hotels.
But now they reached the flat spot in their business life cycle, for a “innovating” company they have a very conservative and obvious way to try and extend their business life. A lot of businesses in hospitality move in the same direction: raise standards, ad luxury, add extra’s, and increase prices.
The problem, is that they are moving away from the cheap alternative for hotel concept. Many of my guests book trough AirBnB because of that. Because the regular OTA’s only had the expensive places. But now AirBnB’s is getting more demanding towards their hosts, trying to create some kind of elite rental OTA, forcing hosts to increase prices.
So people will start loosing interest in AirBnB and will look for alternatives. You already see people start using platforms like expedia and even google to find the cheap places.
It is just waiting for AirBnB to come up with another ridiculous demand, alienating themselfs further from their users.
I expect AirBnB to be another Yahoo. In 10 years they will be only a small player on the market, wondering where it went wrong.
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I don’t recall. They weren’t very explict about announcing it was a requirement or announcing it wasn’t. Typical.
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I think they want to be the Amazon of travel. Start with a small niche market (books) and don’t worry about profits just keep expanding. They want to sell you the budget item for cheap or also the luxury item. In 10 years will they be Amazon or as you say, Yahoo? Who knows.
Since they aren’t a public company we don’t know that much about where they are in their business cycle. I’m still getting lots of new guests who have just joined Airbnb so I don’t know if they have really flattened or not. I also know people on this forum have been predicting “the beginning of the end” of Airbnb for 3 years now. People come on, announce they are fed up and leaving and expect Airbnb to collapse any minute. So I’m not going to make any predictions.
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We are also. Last guest was a first time user and tomorrow’s guest as well. Both are well traveled but new to Airbnb.
Same thing was predicted about eBay as well but so far Amazon Airbnb and eBay are still the big fish in their ponds
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But that is the problem, they are not.
They are not selling both, they are adding luxury (AirBnBplus), and at the same time slowly removing the budget item by raising the bar for hosts (demotivating superhosts, pushing acceptance rate etc etc).
And yes, there are still new guests coming to AirBnB. But what about the early adopters? Are they still there?
I notice a change in AirBnB guests since I started. I used to have a lot more interesting guests trough AirBnB: backpackers, hitchhikers, europe trip kind of guests. These guests seem to have disappeared, nowadays I get more of the “normal” guests.
(I do miss those 60yo Aussi hippies smoking pot on the balcony 
)
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