Oh nooo! That would cinch it for me.
I would agree that you’ve had enough experiences with certain types of guests to cement in and enforce whatever criteria you so choose.
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@cooperjto I have read through your responses - all thoughtful and precise - and I get it. There can be profound cultural differences between different groups of people and those differences do sometimes manifest themselves in how they conduct themselves as guests in our homes.
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Thank you! I am not sure what to do about it though… thanks to Instant Book I don’t get to pick and choose my guests. And some groups of young people (asian or not) are very responsible. Should I have a more in depth conversation and just cancel those I’m not comfortable with? It seems like that’s excessively judgmental.
Also I did make $600 off this group, so as long as they didn’t destroy the place I guess it’s worth it since the place might have sat empty otherwise. I’m looking forward to high season so I don’t have to deal with these hopeless people.
@cooperjto Short of making sweeping judgements about potentially millions of people based on their ethnic background you could try harder to set the expectations of what they are obligated to do as guests. Like you said, there is no malice, just a different set of expectations. You can say you are uncomfortable with a guest, but that’s a slippery slope.
My other advice is this - and it might sound kooky - but hear me out. I have a developing theory about the growing number of whole apartment rentals dedicated to only STR. I think they see a higher incidence of bad guests and bad behavior. I feel guests assume, “Hey, no one really lives here and if you can afford an apartment in [Insert city name here] then you don’t need me to do the dishes.” I think one way of subtlety setting expectations is to give guests the impression that this is your HOME, not an investment property. There are various ways I think this can be achieved, but I won’t bore you with it if you don’t agree.
I totally agree with you, and in fact we do actually use this place ourselves… it looks like a family vacation property, because it is! We even leave up the baby gates on the stairs! Most people are very conscientious, but some people are just totally clueless. Probably because they’ve never had to be responsible for anything in their life!
I have had many guests who don’t know that you can’t use hand soap or dish soap that isn’t formulated for dishwashers in dishwashers. I’ve also had many guests who don’t know that you must use much less soap in a front loading washing machine than you do in a top loader. These guests span many age groups and ethnicities.
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Right, said the person who just put a whole container of soap in the front loader! After cleaning out the pond scum in the gasket, ewwww.
This is why I use detergent pods and clearly spell it out in the check out instructions! Can’t force people to read them though…
I recently had two Chinese groups stay and they hand washed dishes and put them away sodden in the cupboards. I got them all out and took photos showing a spoonful of water in each bowl and soy sauce on cutlery and then I stacked it all in the dishwasher and photographed the full dishwasher and washed everything in the dishwasher. Then I raised a request for $40 with Air### and they extracted it from the guests. I also left public feedback on the guests alerting future hosts to this behaviour. I had it happen a few years ago too and on that occasion it was a Korean group and I fined them too. I don’t care where they come from but anyone who does that gets fined and bad feedback.
This is extraordinary. The guests must have accepted the charge because if they dispute it I think the host usually loses.