Family reunion, different people staying here

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Hi, everyone. You may have some criticisms of me and that’s fine, but what’s done is done, and I want to prevent this from happening in the future.

A woman made an inquiry asking if two adults and a child could stay here. Normally we don’t have children but we do have an air mattress and I said that if that was OK with the kid, it would be fine. She made the reservation for five days starting this weekend. Then she sent me some confused messages about a big family reunion, and how different people would be staying here different nights. I had her phone number so I called her.

It turns out she is not going stay here, her husband and son will stay here for one night, or maybe two, and then the son may go to sleep somewhere else, then the father will go to sleep somewhere, and then some of her relatives, two adults, will come and stay here, then they may leave, and somebody else might come. What a mess.

I told her I need the names of all of the people and when they are going to be here, and I told her this is not usually how we run our Airbnb. I would say that she was extremely nice on the phone, but may be a little confused and overwhelmed.

I thought we would have one person or couple and child for five days and now I’m going to have a revolving influx of her relatives. I’ll make up the bed but I’m not stripping all those sheets and doing laundry every day. I feel she could’ve been a lot clearer at the very beginning.

In the future, I’m going to be more explicit with people if there’s any doubt whatsoever who is coming. But if you have any other suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

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I wonder how much of this could have been avoided with a confirmation message sent within minutes of the booking like this (of course, this needs to be in the listing’s rules, too; edit as appropriate):

o Home is suitable for non-smokers (no smoking inside or outside),
o Unless otherwise agreed only for children age 12 and over,
o No animals.
o Occupancy, whether overnight or not, inside or outside, is limited to registered guests (six maximum),
o Kindly, no shoes to be worn inside the house.
o The person making the reservation must be 25 or over, and must be staying throughout the reservation: no third party bookings.
o No parties/gatherings/events,
o Outside quiet time is 8 pm - 8 am (noise ordinance); inside 10 pm - 8 am,
o Full list of rules in the listing.

Our rules state that if rules limiting access to the property to registered guests, maximum occupancy, no smoking or children under 12 not permitted are violated, that the reservation may be cancelled without refund, that the guests may be ejected and agree to leave the property.

Airbnb has cancelled a reservation with these rules and video evidence of the violation (in my case it was easy to see that there was a child under 12 and that the maximum occupancy had been violated).

I would have kept the messages on the platform as evidence of the communication. If I were to call the guest, I would follow that up with a summary of the discussion, on the platform.

You don’t need to re-make the beds. For me as Host the problem with different people coming and going is that no one is likely to be familiar with the rules of the House, or feel ‘attached’ to it – there’s likely to be more wear and tear IMHO, maybe damage, especially if there are children. I would not have accepted such an arrangement, especially as the booking guest will not be there and the people staying there will not receive messages that you send on the platform.

I don’t know all the ramifications of a third-party booking – which is what you have – whether it would be covered by AirCover.

If you can cancel this reservation without penalty to you, I would do so. I will be interested in what others have to say.

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Great feedback. I think your idea about putting a statement regarding registered guests only is perfect.

I don’t think I’m going to cancel because we are on site, this is a shared Airbnb in our home so I can keep an eye on things. But I do realize I made a couple mistakes and I don’t plan to make them again.

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I think your only problem is that as a 3rd party booking you will not be covered by AIRBNB for any damage that the 3rd party booking guests cause.

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Since none of your 3rd party guests have seen or agreed to your house rules, and since none of these guests have any ‘skin in the game’ (they paid no money so they are not concerned about consequences), the lesson for you to learn is that this is a terrible idea to agree to.

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I would have said sorry, nope nope nope! You are setting yourself up for disaster agreeing to this. Hope this works out for you. Yes, lesson learned! You sound soft and don’t want to say no to people but they will take advantage of you. Like I said I hope all works out ok.

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This is a third-party booking and against Airbnb’s rule. Many hosts accept them but I do not. If something were to happen to you property, Airbnb would not cover the damage. Also, the messages are going to the person who booked and not the people staying.

Personally, I would have airbnb cancel the reservation since they are breaking the their rules. If you decide to go this route, make sure that the Customer Service rep does not penalize you for the cancellation since it’s Airbnb rules and you just discovered the problem.

When my guests book, I ask specific questions about the guests, names, ages, address and ask for photos. The profile picture must be of the person first checking in.

It’s when these questions get answered it is often obvious that this is a third-party booking. I then encourage the guests to have them make their own account and I’ll walk them through how through how to cancel and rebook. In your case, it would be too confusing and I would just cancel the booking.

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After mulling over your advice, friends, I changed my mind about how to handle the situation. I sent the following message to her this morning.

Important: Margaret, it has been pointed out to me that Airbnb forbids third-party bookings. This means that each person who is staying here needs to be the one who makes the reservation. In terms of your reservation, what we need to do is for you to cancel your reservation and for each person who wants to stay here to make their own reservation. They should do it pretty quickly after you cancel, however, because those dates will be open for other people to book.

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10

If any of the rules suggested here (by me or @Lynick4442 ) appeals to you now is the time to add them to your listing as they will apply to new bookings made after the changes to your listing.

You might want each person who enters your property (or stays overnight) to be a registered guest whose name you have, but that’s not necessary to prevent a third party booking. To avoid a third party booking you just need the booking guest to stay throughout the reservation.

This confused me a bit, as typically there would be ONE reservation and then registered guests under that reservation. It is possible, depending on your setup, for each person to make a reservation but I think that’s pretty complicated.

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Hopefully, she’ll cancel and all the others won’t book. Honestly sounds like a potential nightmare to me and something I would never do.

Couple years ago I had someone book that lived a few blocks away. Upon further inspection, she was booking for some relatives, wanted to bring an air mattress for a child. I
was set up for 2 people, not three and got her to cancel.

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If I understood correctly, the guest list was going to be a “revolving door”. No one person would be there for the entire time. At a minimum, it’s a crisis waiting to happen with the keys unless the property has a keyless lock. At the worst, there will be far more than the stated number of guests every night.

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This is going to be a nightmare. Will you give them early check-in or late check-out? Will you clean between bookings? If you don’t clean and they book a single night, will they make a complaint to AirBnB that it was not clean and get their money back?

I think you just need to tell them you are not interested in this complicated of a situation. Run, Forrest. Run!

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14

I’m definitely changing this in my listing and practices. Today I informed her by message that she needs to cancel and have each party do their own booking. I also called Airbnb to clue them in. No answer from the woman (who booked). I really don’t want to call her. By the way, I said to Airbnb that if I have to cancel her (rather than have her cancel) I hope it won’t affect my super host standing and they said “We’ll try to not have that happen.”

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In your shoes I would have (and have done in the past when I’ve had 3rd party requests) requested she cancel the 3rd party booking as it’s against the ABB TOS and could get you booted from the platform. I wouldn’t go through the revolving door of people opening accounts for 1 night each or 2 nights. That’s a nightmare for them and you.

Instead, ask her to cancel as your listing/home is not a fit for her needs for 3rd party bookings. Unless she and her family are willing to commit to 2-3 guests who are going to stay there the entire time, you’re uncomfortable with this reservation.

Then call and message ABB CS again and state that you need the reservation canceled by them as it violates their TOS. And you will not incur a penalty. Because “We’ll try to not have that happen,” isn’t the correct answer by their own service contract.

Good luck.

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never ‘call’ a guest. Always MESSAGE them thru the app.

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17

As I stated in my original post, this would not have been practical for your booking. I personally would not accept the booking.

For example, someone shows up the third day and causes major damage to your property, I know that Airbnb would not cover it because you broke their rules, and for me, my insurance would also not cover it. It’s never worth it to me to have a third-party booking.

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To be clear, I was suggesting ONE reservation where the booking guest would be there for the entire stay. If there is no one guest that will be there for the entire stay then even the new reservation would be a third party booking, which is against the terms of service of Airbnb.

I just re-read the OP and it looks like there is no one person who will always be there. If that’s correct then under no circumstances should they book.

If there is at least ONE person who would be there for the entire stay then that person CAN book (completing accurately the number of adult guests, children 12+, children under 12 and infants) and the others would be registered guests.

There are three ways to do this.

  1. The booking guest simply specifies the number of people in the proper categories who would access the property. This is typical.

  2. The booking guest adds the names of the guests who would access the property. These people would not need to have an Airbnb account if the Host’s rules don’t require that.

  3. The booking guest asks each adult guest to be registered to open an Airbnb account (free), verify their identity with Airbnb, create their profile and then the booking guest adds them to the reservation as in #2 above. This procedure gives the Host the most protection but some guests will feel it’s a hassle and it might deter bookings.

ALL: Correct or edit as appropriate as I’ve never done #2 or #3.

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Yeah - that’s not quite it @Rachael52. The critical part is the person making the reservation needs to be staying - according to others here - to ensure you have Aircover protection. Then she must list ALL guests staying. I don’t blame you for not feeling too worried since you’re on the premises and personally I would probably want to accommodate them myself. I’ve had a few situations where folks are booking for family coming for a wedding - that sort of thing. But the safest thing to do is to let them know the person staying should do the booking. I’ve never had a revolving door scenario like you’ve described. But you could say, if there is ONE person who will be there for the duration, they’re the one who should do the booking.

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I would write up your phone conversation on the Airbnb platform…and then ask Air for advice. It violates their rules so they’ll probably cancel it for you.

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it doesn’t matter what you do, these type of people will keep doing this.
i had this similar situation, only for 2 nights, but somehow 5 people one night, and then the granny is swapping out for someone else on the second night. Is this ok?
me: ok that’s fine

oh wait, now granny will maybe stay the second night, hope this is ok?

!!! so while it’s not extra beds (cos someone is sharing a bed with granny in my 3 bedroom cottage) they’ve avoided the extra guest fee. All I can do is hit them in the review with a 4*, which won’t actually hurt them.

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