one of my nurses managed to get this picture of the mastiff yesterday, lol!
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WOW!!! great shot!!!
Only in the sense that she doesnât like to get her fancy feet wet in the rain, so if itâs wet outside the newspapers and potty patch comes out. 
However, sheâs is a trooper on the trail⌠This is us yesterday at Puâuhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park, South Kona. The 1871 trail.
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Ahhhh, Sandy. sooo PRECIOUS!!!
Lol. He looks like heâs takin a selfie 
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I only joined this site today and am hooked reading everyoneâs experiences. I also have a house which is over 100 yrs old and recently had a guest review that âthe house was a bit datedâ. Really!? I try not to let the odd, nit picking remarks get to me, but being human, they do, even if we have 99% good reviews. We actually run a B&B and have been doing it for 14 yrs, airbnb only for this past season, which really boosted our earnings. My husband and I joke (?) that weâre becoming more like Fawlty Towers by the day, I call him Basil and he calls me Dragon Lady.!
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Thatâs hilarious Aliseaside, you stole our joke (my husband is always calling himself Basil Fawlty and OMG, just realized Iâm dragon lady - secretly festering inside, anyway haha - wish I could rant and rave and be bitchy!). I canât wait to hear your stories, especially having been a professional bnb!
Oh yes, it stings those little remarks, but seriously, that remark is hilarious. Some people are such dorks and their opinions are stupid. Iâve started saying on our listing, make sure your love old things as this is not modern and new.
Me too. I want to make sure they know just what they are getting. It ainât fancy!
Most that responded here were those of us that host in our own homes or on the premises. Although a cleaner would help, it cuts down on our earnings significantly because of the size of our home⌠It costs a minimum of $120 to give a brief clean of 2 floors of our home, which is the greater part of one nightâs stays, and most of our stays are only 2 nights. Weirdly, before airbnb we hired a cleaner to come and clean our home at least fortnightly to do $100 worth of cleaning. After airbnb, it seemed so much harder to earn that money that we ended up doing the cleaning ourselves.
Imo - Iâd love to stay at your place! Donât let that guests review get you down. If your listing on airbnb reflects exactly what your home is like then they shouldnât complain!
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100% spot on and very well put. Particularly your point about commercialising yourself by commercialising your home - basically becoming contaminated by becoming a host.
Letting people into your home for them to criticise the thing youâve put so much love and heart ad effort into. And then getting reviewed for the kind of person you are. It really is like selling oneâs soul.
I think renting out a place which isnât your home is a lot easier as you are not so attached, and so criticism isnât that personal. (We do both).
Some people are so demanding. The thing is I stay in 5 star hotels occasionally and I am never, ever anywhere near as demanding as some guests are and Iâm paying several hundred pounds more than they are a night. I wouldnât dream of leaving complaining notes for the cleaner or manager or whomeverâŚ!.
I sometimes wonder if the better value oneâs place is, the more demanding a guest is. They donât seem to appreciate what weâre giving them. Which is often 5 star accommodation (and often very expensive real estate which they couldnât really afford themselves) for a 2 star price. Itâs odd - it really took me by surprise how mean spirited and ungrateful some guests can be. Not that I expect people to be grateful exactly. But as you say, the very fact that they have paid you, means to some people that they âownâ you. When I buy something, however, I always say, âthank you.â
Most people are fine, but some just donât seem happy people. Their expectations are way too high - but why?
If you can answer this I will send you jellybeans. Seriously. I wish I could understand what my guests thing most of the time - when I travel I use Air (cheap!!) and I just have zero expectations each time. Thus I donât get disappointed 
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Hi Flaxhigh. I wrote the Diary. I am more burned now than I was then, and absolutely agree with you about the better value that guests are offered, the more they seem to think they really are in a hotel and are given license to act like prats. Staying in our home is close to a five star experience, similar to a boutique bnb. In fact I stayed in a celebrated boutique bnb in Maine recently at a $500+ a night room, and was shocked to find our standards were in fact much higher for comfort - better beds, linens, towels, pillows, duvets, everything including the spacious rooms that many hotels call âsuitesâ because there is room for settees. What gets me the most is that guests get an amazing opportunity to stay in a home like this (something many of them would never be able to afford) yet instead of showing any appreciation to the owners/hosts, they treat them like the staff. It is absolutely beyond me. I have no idea what happens except that they have built up their luxurious getaway in their minds and they are totally focused on lapping it up to the point that they are unable to see beyond themselves to show basic manners. We always get glowing reviews and high stars, but we feel the guests have treated us like staff in our own home and been inconsiderate and unable to even express any appreciation, so focused on themselves they are. Of course itâs not all guests, but it happens a lot.
I totally agree that guests donât always seem to appreciate what they have received especially for the amount they paid. When a guest finds a reason to complain, such as one of ours recently that was given an absolutely luxurious stay in a huge âsuiteâ with walk in closet, ensuite bathroom, bed made up in antique Italian linen with the finest hand you could imagine hand embroidered cherubs and firgural work down a two foot turn down, Irish linen pillowcases, just pure luxury such as you would never getâŚanywhere, and he said âI thought value was a little high for the area, had booked a hotel around the same price, but canceledâ. The only âhotelsâ are on the mall strip with Mac Donaldâs, target and Best Buy car parks for views, and about as generic and ugly as you can imagine (and more expensive too!). That he didnât recognize the opportunity to stay in an important historic home (we just had a book published about our street and our home is a feature) with beauty everywhere you turn, and compared it in value to motel 6âs and value inns, was such an insult, and really not a great shock given his behavior and treatment of us. Some guests have no idea what luxury is because theyâve never had it. They would never pay enough to understand what it means, so when they experience it they didnât know what it was.
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Wow, beam me there immediately please!
Well, Sandy, you expressed yourself very well and got to the nub of the airbnb experience. Itâs not just airbnb, to be fair. We also advertise with Ownerâs Direct and they have recently set themselves up as a competitor and are also proving irritating. They used not to allow guest reviews (which was fabulous) because we were paying around ÂŁ249 to advertise with them (thatâs the starting rate). But now one still has to pay the subscription whilst the guest is being given more power via their reviews.
I think this is the issue with airbnb. I do love its ease of use - compared to Ownerâs Direct, itâs a doddle. However, I loathe (frankly it creeps me out) its Host propoganda. Itâs just PR/marketing spiel. Okay, some people love to host - good for them. But many, many people like myself, do it because for whatever reason (mine is similar to yours Sandy, Iâm a writer with health issues) it is one of the few ways to earn money accessible to them.
Ebay went the same way. They started off as a great way to earn a bit of money, then changed things and gave the buyer too much power and the seller no recourse to deal with unfair complaints. The result: more buyers misbehaved.
Airbnb do likewise by allowing the guest to leave reviews that cannot be contested or altered. We can leave a response, but thatâs not good enough, imo.
This issue is important because I donât think people in general are all bad - far from it . But unfortunately, guests are given license to misbehave (in their knowledge that they can hold you ransom with their review). The decent ones donât use this license. But many others do. Airbnb are responsible for this behaviour. They prattle on about the wonders of hosting and how amazing we are as hosts, but if they cared about their hosts they would even the playing field. This is not their business model, however.
Sandy, I am absolutely sure that the more sophisticated and luxurious the place you offer is, the more problems one has with people.
We rent out a very simple cottage in the Scottish HIghlands. A housekeeper looks after it, and it is not, to be frank, kept super clean because sheâs not that great at cleaning - though is a friendly, reliable person for us. Very rarely do people do anything but rave about the place.
Our city place, our home, however, is different. Thank goodness, we donât have guests in the main part of our house but only the basement (used when not renting as a playroom/socialising space - though kitted out as a self-contained apartment.)
But still, the area we live in is âposhâ. Perhaps people feel a little intimidated when they arrive and to manage their social discomfort, they feel they need to overact any niggles? Itâs interesting, isnât it?
I love the sound of your place Sandy - just my kind of place and we very much want to go over to New York one dayâŚ
Thanks so much for the kind words Flax. Your home and cottage sounds wonderful to me. I love visiting London. I couldnât agree more about your ideas on why peopleâs manners leave something to be desired when visiting our homes. My husband and I have often discussed the thought that people often seem to feel a bit intimidated on arriving. Unfortunately with some people instead of being able to enjoy it they canât help trying to enter into playing a game of oneupmanship, and making themselves feel better by trying to knock us down a peg. It is so disappointing to find you have invited these kinds of people into your home. Here they are hoping your home will be beautiful so they can enjoy their getaway only to arrive and find that they feel competitive with the host! I truly find this is definitely a big problem, especially for myself because I look a lot younger than I am for some reason (my mum did too). I have guests making rude and intrusive remarks as if trying find out if I inherited the home as a trust fund kid! One of my recent guests kept prying to try to find out if the home was âin the familyâ, all within 2 minutes of walking through the front door (way past check in time).
Sandy, that is so amusing because I completely get what youâre saying about people just absolutely having to know how one got such a nice home.
I laughed out loud because (though I say it myself - probably the result actually, not just of good genes but also that Iâve spent a lot of my life indoors due to bad health) look very young for my age, so like you, find that people can get quite challenging about my living in a premier spot.
Arenât people funny?
And for goodness sake, donât throw in the mix that youâre a writer or artist: the same urgent questions come out: are you successful, who publishes youâŚalmost: how much do you earn? Youâve got to laughâŚ
I have devised all sorts of retorts to divert such questioning. Usually, if people ask - and they really canât help themselves, I just say Iâm a mum. Much easier.
But really, what is wrong with people?!
I have to say, I deal with all the guests online but chicken out while showing them around. I get my very amiable husband to do the check-in and somehow he doesnât seem to attract the cheeky attitude. Maybe women are targeted more? Do you get women or men asking the questions?
Interestingly enough, we stayed in a quite characterful and very lovely bed and breakfast this summer down in Yorkshire (weâre actually in Edinburgh) run by 2 gay men. They advertise through Alistair Sawdays (a route we might explore in our search for the ârightâ guests who get what we offer) plus tripadvisor. Theyâve received a lot of good press. But what is noticeable is that they have almost 100% fantastic reviews.
Now, their place is very nice, and stuffed full of antiques with a lovely garden and aspect and has an elegant charm, but itâs not absolutely incredible (though very charming indeed). It got me wondering how they received such gushing reviews.
I suspect itâs because they perform a kind of double act - kind of good cop, bad cop or nice/nasty (well, not exactly nasty, but quite abrupt and strict) and this keeps people from daring to say anything suspect.
Our problem might be that people feel a bit intimidated when they arrive, but weâre too friendly and accommodating opening ourselves to intrusive and inappropriate questions/behaviour.
Itâs just a theoryâŚwho knows?
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Interesting. My husband although kind and welcoming comes across as the kind of guy you wouldnât want to annoy, He quickly cuts things off when he has lost interest or is getting aggravated, and people seem to get the picture that he is not to be trifled with. Still, our reviews are glowing - often mentioning both of us. I am sometimes so surprised when we get these glowing reviews, given that the guests hardly expressed any appreciation while here. But then the reviews always talk about us as if we were great hotel staff âwelcoming and kind, gave great suggestions for things to doâ so I guess it all makes sense really.
The B&B you stayed in sounds EXACTLY like the one we stayed in down in Bournemouth; run by two gay guys with fab reviews on TripAdvisor (they didnât advertise there place on TripAdvisor). It was a great place but it wasnât exactly 5 stars. I gave them 4 stars on TripAdvisor and I received an actual upset/angry email from them. I thought TripAdvisor was anonymous! I deleted my review after that.