Evicting a guest

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Can’t believe I had to manually evict a guest last week. She had claimed she was staying for 2 nights with her boyfriend.

In a very short time we had numerous complaints from neighbours about very loud music. The guest in fact had 5 guys there with her. When my neighbour approached their side of the fence and asked for the music to be turned down (whilst recording the convo) it got very nasty very quickly with guest&guys saying they had come up from London for a party then threatening the neighbours! Guests then began urinating found the garden and I could see on the external cameras them going into the house smoking.
Neither parties or smoking in the house is permitted.
Later, the guests climbed naked & semi naked onto the roof of the extension and began intimidating the neighbours.
All this time I was trying my best to get help from Air who promised me a response.
Partying/music continued until around 3am.
Obviously the guest didnt answer my calls or messages.
I made 8 calls to Air from 11pm-1pm the following day, pleading with them for help with what to do - I told them I wanted to cancel the booking and remove the guests. They literally kept passing the book.
I’m the end we made our own decision to remove them from the property. We had the police on standby and went in through the wide open patio doors around 1.30pm.
Thank goodness we did. The guests had covered all smoke alarms with socks and there were drugs of all kinds around the house, which was almost impossible to get into for the haze of smoke.
It wasn’t a pleasant exchange for them to vacate but eventually they did.
We immediately called Air to explain what we had been forced to do. Their response? They suspended me!!! Yes, me!!! You couldn’t make this sh*t up!
Eventually when they had seen all pictures/evidence they did reinstate me but I demanded an explanation from them - why oh why didn’t they help me? They simply said I should have messaged the guest and asked if it was ok to go to the property and wait for her to ok it! Wait, what? Yeah good one Air, obviously she would have been over the moon for my visit to evict her :roll_eyes:. I put it to Air that based on her covering up the smoke alarms alone, would they have helped if the house had burned down and perhaps taken the neighbours homes with it too? Answer: I would have to ask another ambassador but I doubt it :roll_eyes::woman_facepalming:t3:
Anyway I thought I would share this tale with you all because honestly, sometimes an experience with Air is better than a tv series…
They could only have been less helpful if they had refunded her, which I half expected and haven’t yet ruled out :woman_facepalming:t3:

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They are a booking platform, nothing more.
You run your business.
My message would have been……. Neighbourhood is complaining, guest not responding to calls and messages, police on standby.
You have done everything to protect your home.

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As @Debthecat the cat says, they are a booking platform - what sort of ‘help’ did you expect from them? It was obviously unrealistic.

I’m not sure why this wasn’t you or your co-host?

It seems to me, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that you weren’t paying attention and expecting your advertising platform to run your business for you.

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Ugh, how awful. Tweet and Facebook:

“Airbnb suspended me when I broke up a party! Loud, smoking, urinating & nude in public, threatening neighbors. No response from guest, no help from Airbnb, had to call police. Then beg to be reinstated. Request compensation for $xxx in lost revenue while suspended. @Airnbnhelp”

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@dpfromva - that is great advice. Contacting Airbnb on public platforms is an excellent idea and known to be effective.

However, I would always encourage hosts to be proactive and not to depend on Airbnb.

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Jacquo, I believe you are an excellent host and have experienced very few problems. 99% due to your approach in meeting guests and your assertiveness and skill, but perhaps, just maybe,1% due to good luck in not winning the horrible guest lottery.

We’ve had 2 hosts recently report that they had to confront an unruly group of partiers who were likely inebriated and/or high and possibly dangerous.

No, Airbnb can’t provide local “backup,” and every host should have a Plan B, as not all hosts can be next door to their properties to take quick action and nip bad behavior in the bud. Their business model may involve a remote, larger capacity property, and they need to prepare accordingly for a worst case situation.

However, Airbnb is being disingenuous by stating on its site:

“We’ve taken extensive measures to help keep you, your home, and your guests safe.”

“Our global team is standing by 24/7 to support you and your guests by phone, email, and live chat,” with listed services including “mediation”

“If a guest breaks one of these rules once they’ve booked, you can cancel the reservation,” which Airbnb did not allow OP to do despite repeated communications over an extended time period.

Most people are decent. We all take risks being hosts. I would not want to confront a drunk, abusive guest by myself, especially with the prevalence of people possessing guns in this country. I would call the police.

I would probably have good outcome, but then again I’m a white, female native English speaking homeowner in an affluent area.

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I would message tenant and airbnb, but move quickly to bringing in the police. The advisability of doing this, of course, depends on where you are and the local police force. My biggest worry would be the neighbors pushing for you to stop your business. Now that you are reinstated, you should concentrate on keeping that neighbor convinced that this won’t happen again.

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Good point, maybe take the neighbor some goodies and thank them profusely for alerting you, repeat that they can contact you immediately with any concerns, and offer some free nights for their visiting family.

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Yes you’re absolutely right and what I was trying to point out was that clearly I need to manage my expectations, as we all do, when we select ‘help’ from Air and actually exoect help.

Having never been in this situation before I genuinely didn’t know what to do. Air do claim to be there for you, but they literally ran a mile from my pleas for help. I didn’t know how to deal with it at all.

But as you also state, very fortunately these type of guests only represent a very small percentage of guests so on the whole I’ve been very lucky.

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Yes that’s what we did! Gave them the gifts I was originally reserving for Air’s help! :sweat_smile:

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Yes that’s true. And there’s been 100% more help on here than I got from Air :blush:

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@JoHannan I’m so sorry you had this experience but apart from cancelling the booking I’m confused about what you were waiting for Airbnb to do exactly?

As hosts we should never be in a position where we rely on neighbours to flag bad guest behaviour.

It appears from your post that you knew from your neighbours soon after check in that the guest bought more people than had booked and were behaving badly - yet the guests were allowed to go onto have a full scale party that wasn’t broken up to the early hours of the morning.

Yes absolutely Airbnb should have had your back and cancelled the booking immediately and not suspended you… But equally as the host - part of your job if you host remotely is to have systems in place to monitor your property to your ensure guest behaviour isn’t negatively impacting on your neighbours and your property . And to tackle things promptly .

I think from the post @dpfromva this is a UK host and we don’t have a prevalence of guns in this country.

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Yes I was waiting for Air to tell me how to deal with it. I’ve never had a guest/situation like this and I didn’t want to be doing the wrong thing for anyone concerned. The irony was that in the absence of their help we made the decision to evict but then as I say I was suspended. It’s like Air let it just go on and on despite my 8 calls to them then as soon as I made a decision they penalised me for it.

For me, Air promote their help as 24/7, but in reality that’s not the case at all. It was a simple request to them…how do I immediately cancel this booking and remove the people without some kind of penalty. In the end I had to make a decision what was best for everyone as we saw fit.

We don’t live near the property, as is the case for many hosts. The co-host is really only the cleaner. I don’t expect her to take on the responsibility of these issues but as she lives nearby so went to check on the situation. The guest did at one point promise to keep the noise down but then simply continued. All this time I was desperately asking Air what to do. I realise now I would have got far more help from this site so I’m glad it’s available to us all.

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I expected the help that Air promote as being 24/7!

I do not live anywhere near the property and the co-host is only the cleaner; I don’t expect her to shoulder this responsibility. She does live locally however and went to check the noise levels for me. The neighbours are the only ones who can alert me if there’s a noise problem, which is what they did.

This was a situation I had never encountered. What I sought from Air was for them to assist me as they promise to do. Whilst they claim you can cancel a reservation if rules are breached, that’s not the case at all and I was not able to do so which is why the 8 calls were made to them. It seems to me a simple question…how could I cancel the booking and remove the guest! I didn’t know what action to take.

This forum however has provided a lot of help and support so I hope people can see the experience I had and be better equipped if they come across this type of guest in future.

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That’s exactly what I had hoped for when I asked you what help you expected. We often have new members here who have just started hosting and for them, knowing what you expected would have helped them with their own expectations.

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Seriously - first thing you will need to do moving forward is note that the airbnb help center has answers to most questions, right in airbnb’s info:

And I have heard that the airbnb S.W.A.T. team, with its immediate response of 30+ men with truncheons, military-style tanks and trucks, and the cars full of lawyers and insurance folks no longer serves your area. You will need to take charge of protecting your property next time.

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Thanks for the ‘help’ but as I’ve said Air wouldn’t allow me to cancel it hence the phone calls.

There’s no need for sarcasm at all it’s very ugly

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You are correct you cannot expect your cleaner to deal with this sort of situation.

As you can’t easily get to your listing this situation has taught you, you have a gap in your business approach and need an experienced co-host who can manage issues with guests on the ground.

Airbnb is just a listing company currently with poor customer service .

As the business owner you don’t wait for them to take action. You tell them the guests have broken your house rules, are partying and you/your co-hosts are route to evict the guests before they do further damage.

Insist they cancel the booking - don’t wait for them to do so.

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The guests broke your house rules and violated Air’s TOS of “No Parties,” which they’re busy advertising all over the place as “Air doesn’t tolerate parties and will evict guests.”

Shame them on social media. Hard.

FWIW I would have contact air via messenger chat to say I’m evicting guests for breaking house rules of extra guests and parties, no smoking, no drugs and for public urination.

I would have messaged the guest (doesn’t matter if they ignore it, you did your job to CYA) that I’m canceling due to their breaking the house rules.

Then called the police to be there at once and evicted in the middle of the night.

Not sure what the guns comments are about, I would never bring a weapon to evict the guests. That’s what the police are for.

This. Again. And as hosts we need to keep reading the Help sections and TOS.

Basically Air is a marketing and payment platform and has crap Customer Service.

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A very sad relationship with airbnb and its hosts when something so obviously wrong is happening at your property and your decisions have to be filtered by “what will airbnb do to me if I do this?”

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