Hi. I have a check in time of 3pm to 10pm showing on my listing. To me this is the window that I prefer check in’s and I asks guests to be more specific when they make the booking.
I have messaged a guest twice to ask of the expected check in today as well as the initial request that they get in my booking message but I have heard nothing back.
I have to do things today and I need to get organised but I don’t know what to do.
Does putting a booking window on your listing signal to guests that you will be at home during those hours and that they don’t need to contact you?
If you hadn’t asked for a more specific time, the guests probably would have assumed they can come whenever they like during those hours. However as you’ve asked twice I think it’s perfectly fair for you to go about your business and if they happen to arrive while you’re out they can wait for you
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If the guest is from out of the country they might not have access to internet or texts. Or maybe they are traveling?
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Maybe you should consider self check-in.
Look at this discussion:
I have started with self check-in last summer. I have constantly added properties since then, and I always use self check-in in all of them.
There are many options: Automatic locks with code, lock boxes, key cafés and many more.
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Have your tried calling or texting the guest as they haven’t responded via Airbnb?
Let us know how it worked out.
I agree with this.
For the future, you could have a note in your House Rules asking them to inform you of arrival times right after booking. Not that it always works, but at least you’ve done your bit.
This is all the more a reason for (the host’s) emphasis on arrival times being communicated at the earliest.
If this works for you, this will help massively. I had the same issues as you describe. Not so much any more.
I know there are a lot of hosts that want to check their guests in and show them around, explain the rules, etc. Assuming most guests are traveling and many time factors are out of their control a good “in-between” solution may be to plan on checking them in but have a self check-in back up plan in place.
In cases like this you could let them know how to let themselves in tell them that you will call around shortly after their arrival. If you have a security camera in place you’ll know when they arrive because you’ll be notified. In fact, if you have a phone in the space you could give them a quick call a couple of minutes later and welcome them, and tell them that you’ll be there in 20 minutes (or whatever).
It’s SO much better than getting ticked off that you don’t know when to expect them and then letting them wait for you outside for 30 minutes until you get there. I can’t imagine going through the hassles of traveling to my destination only to discover I have to wait outside for the host to arrive. Imagine it was a hotel and the front desk clerk didn’t arrive for 30 minutes to open the front door… the hotel would get such terrible reviews.
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But I am not running a hotel. This is not an equivalency. And, I will add that there are many hotels in Europe that only accept guests during a very short number of hours.
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I like to know how I’m going to be “connected” when I go to another country (I’m going through planning this now). We went to Italy a couple of years ago and I had planned out where to get a SIM card as our first stop after arriving.
We had to wait for about 2 hours for it to connect to my phone, got completely lost on the way to Cinque Terre and had no way of contacting our host, who was royally ticked off with us for arriving late - the last thing we needed after being so frazzled was a host who was mad!
(Sorry, Italians, but it’s very hard to interpret your traffic signs.)
We arrived after 10pm. Rather than wait another 20 minutes for our host to arrive (and berate us for being late) it would have been really nice for us to have just gone to our prepaid apartment, enter a code and let ourselves in. Our host came around again the next morning in a much better mood and told us a little more about the area. That awkward situation could have been avoided with a keyed entry and a back-up plan.
In hindsight it’s a benefit to have experienced this from a guest perspective. It makes me a much better host.
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Agreed, we are not hotels, but that has been how people have traveled the world for much longer than Airbnb has been around and what many guests expectations are.
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Since the guests were “on the way”, I would normally have phoned them (you have their phone once the register) unless they were out of country where my phone won’t call them
I and many other hosts cannot provide self check in. My dogs bark at people until we let them know that these people are invited. Also, we get many guests from cultures where the houses are set up so differently from ours that they wouldn’t be able to function and would break things if we weren’t there. We just had to replace our microwave oven. My husband told a guest that she should heat her breakfast muffin for two minutes. She didn’t know how to set it for two minutes. She burned the muffin so much that we couldn’t get the smell out of the microwave. This is just one example of the many, many times we’ve had to explain how use things in our house.
When I had a similar situation, I contacted Airbnb and they contacted guest who then contacted me.
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I tried very much to resist, but I can’t help noticing the irony of an Italian being annoyed that you were late!
(Assuming the host was Italian.)
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Yes this might not work for everyone, but IF someone has the capability it would be a nice option for both parties.
Part of that could be to let them know they may let themselves in but not to use anything until the host arrives (20-30 minutes later?) to give the tour and explain things.
Sorry to hear about your ruined microwave! Must’ve smelled awful.
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I get so many guests from foreign countries that I would be too nervous to make an agreement like that. Our house is on a residential street with only single family dwellings. Our address is above our porch and we have pictures of the exterior of our house in our listing. Still many guests are confused about which house we are. Apparently in other countries it’s legal to park blocking the sidewalk and blocking driveways. If I hadn’t been there to tell guests to move their cars our neighbors would have had them towed. Yesterday I had a guest tell (not ask) us that she wanted to arrive four hours early to drop off her luggage. She also told us that if we weren’t home we were to leave a key for her. We told her that the guest room wouldn’t be ready. When she arrived she was surprised that it wasn’t ready and insisted on seeing it even though the prior night’s guests were still occupying it. The worst hosting experience I’ve had was when a guest arrived very early and hit on the guest who was still here. For this and a million other reasons, I insist on being here when guests arrive. I think that if guests plans are not pretty well set they should book a hotel or an Airbnb with 24 hour self check in for at least the first night.
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Oh my! That is terrible! I wouldn’t offer the “option” to guests who were demanding. They are a special breed, and are those that the ticker is on to when they depart.
Sounds like my option wouldn’t be useful for your situation.
Assuming you told her NOT to arrive early because the room wasn’t ready I’m surprised that she did arrive early enough that the previous occupants were still there. That would be awkward.
Sounds terrible.
How did you handle this? I’d’ve wanted to say this is a breach, the previous guests are still there, I think we should cancel your booking, you arrogant woman!
you mean like flirt??
We told her that it would be okay for her to drop off her luggage, but that her room wouldn’t be ready.
I mean more than flirt. To me flirting is mutual. This guest asked the other guest to go out with him three times. He didn’t accept the first two times she said no.
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