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Yeah. I don’t enjoy it in the least, but some guests are just downright awful. It’s not difficult to use basic manners and recognize that your host is more than just a servant to you.
Interestingly I met up with a good friend of mine who owns the busiest Airbnb in our area (they use IB). I couldn’t believe the change in her. She is a well renowned artist, and I heard the treatment she has been receiving from guests is the same as we receive. Guests don’t recognize us as human beings that are successful artists in our own rights that use Airbnb to level out our income streams, but purely as hotel staff to wait on them. I felt very sorry to see the change in my friend, especially as I know she has been struggling with depression also since starting. Being one of the most wonderful, talented and kind people I know, it made me sad. She told me some of her stories of guests and they were all the kinds of experiences we have had too. They also own a large multi-room Airbnb home - a church actually, and again it seems that many guests treat them more like staff than hosts. I wonder if having more than a room or two makes guests think they are in a hotel? Either way, it is hard to remain happy when guests show no interest in who’s home they are being welcomed into, and treat the people who have worked hard to create the beautiful environment they are enjoying in a way I would never treat wait staff. It’s a shame.
I had not used Airbnb before (my London property is offered on another well-known site) and the family that just left today our newly-furnished apartment (1) broke the coffee table by putting excessively-heavy baggage on it: I told them we would not hold them responsible and I am paying to fix it; and (2) walked off with one of the 2 IKEA terry cloth bath towels we provide. Of course they would deny it, and the robe costs £25 or so compared to the £720 rent so I am inclined to do nothing about seeking compensation. But neither do I want to leave good feedback; and for fear of libel suit (this being England where even the truth can be libellous) I won’t leave bad feedback either. And since we ourselves have no feedback yet, I have to hope our guests will say something nice. (They are French, I speak French, there was no misunderstanding; just misappropriation.) Such is the risk and the anguish of being an Airbnb landlord rather than (as we do for our other properties) renting by the year or through an agency).
I am often faced with a dilemma for guests like the ones I have been having these days. One overstayed past check out by more than an hour. Another left a big black stain on my carpets. Today I discovered a blood stained hand towel but the same guest left us a bottle of wine. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it since it was just a hand towel but it was still pretty gross.
My cleaner said the robe was nowhere to be found. But an owner/host with more experience than I told me to write a very polite SMS asking if the tenant knew where the robe was (besides the one he left hanging on the bathroom hook). He replied that to keep it from being soiled by his children he’d put it in a storage cabinet. One that is never used. This is why these forums are so important.
Chelsea, this is a very very bad guest. I would not have been so understanding. I ink you’d be protected from libel on an Air review situation. You should consider leaving a truthful review about this guest at the last minute on the last day before midnight in the guest time zone.
Snowflake, this is unacceptable. Are you sure your rules about check out are crystal clear? Lingering past check out is a bad thing for a guest to do and should be reported in the review. As should the bloody towel. Wine or no wine.
I got the advice from someone more experienced than I, and have not yet been able to check as we have another tenant. I did send the SMS and got a reply quickly. I will ask the new tenants to check tomorrow, but I do believe the former tenant. As for the cleaner, this was an unusual case (for us) of a tenant leaving at 11:00 and another tenant arriving at 2:30 (with the understanding they could leave their luggage but the linen was still being laundered).
The rental property is a 1-bedroom apartment (sleeps 4, including a sofa bed in the living room) that we used to rent by the year but chose to rent short-term, giving us the option to sell. Perhaps it’s a matter of the season but we haven’t had as good a rental response as we expected, despite a competitive price and good location.
As it happens, Ikea has a sale on the robes for members of its loyalty card scheme, £19.50. Maybe I should buy some extras…
Wow, I would cut back on doing the guests favors such as that late check out and early check in… they will take advantage and not reciprocate with a good review for you! It adds stress to your day and why should it?
As for the robes, 20 pounds is a lot of money. Scheme or not! Are the totally necessary for privacy? If not I would cut them out! One extra thing means more extras to handle and more things to fuss and worry about. Even if you are not concerned about the cost, dealing with extra things takes time. And time is money.
Look at your bottom line and see if these extras make sense and give benefit (better reviews). If not, eliminate!
Looks like sound advice; we don’t yet have any reviews so we are trying to go the extra mile (or kilometre).
We have a 3-br apartment in Montreux we let out, but the letting is handled by an on-site agency and they provide robes so we thought it a good idea for London – we’re in a high-rent district. Of course the Swiss agency has a commercial laundry of the sort that do hotels’ washing so what do they care. We have to schlep the London linen to our place (around the corner, so no big deal) because the rental flat has only a washer/dryer which would take forever.
Short-term rentals are a lot of work, maybe not worth the (relatively small, unless you are fully booked) extra compared to long-term rentals here. And then we have the lunatics in Whitehall and in the local government who complain that short-term lets (and, for that matter, “cold beds” – i.e. apartments owned by Russian and Chinese investors) remove property from the market and keep “real people” (read: voters) from living locally.
As if those voters could afford to rent anyway. The only long-term renters we have had in the past were company-sponsored. (And under new laws, the Government wants landlords to check the passports of renters to see if they are illegal or not. As if landlords could be experts in the passports and ID cards of all 28 EU Member States, plus the EEA (Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein), plus Switzerland; and all the various visa stamps and stickers. And the fines for a mistake are draconian.
But, hey, the USA thinks expatriates and migrants can be a profit centre too: heard of FATCA and PFIC?
I’m with chicagohost - If it’s not something really bad, I just write “guest stayed in X apartment for 5 days” then if it’s a great guest experience, I specify why it was good “great communication, respectful of my place and my rules, left apartment in excellent condition”, etc.
I totally get why we should write more explicit reviews, I just think that for me, I don’t feel good about being super picky about something like dirty dishes in the sink. I’d rather tell the guest in private comments “hey, you left dirty dishes in the sink and used your shoes inside, both of which are no-no’s. I thought I’d tell you privately rather then include this in the public review”. I always look at guest reviews and sometimes I think the host can go a bit overboard when maybe the issue was lack of house rules, bad communication of expectations, etc. I dunno…this is always a tough one.
Everyone I’ve rented to has had either glowing reviews or no reviews at all, which is completely at odds with what some of them are like as guests. It’s really disheartening to rent to someone who treats my home like a motel and me like motel staff, and I know from reading this forum and airbnbhell that I’m not the only host who experiences guests like this. The only way we’ll know in advance is if we leave honest reviews–my most recent guest-from-hell had 7 glowing reviews that focused entirely on the fact that he left the house clean, leaving out his entitlement and carelessness–as if they were looking only for the good points and leaving out the bad or mentioning the bad only to him in private comments.
If a host leaves a private comment for the guest, the guest may or may not change that behavior depending on their personality, and future hosts won’t know what they’re getting themselves into. Entitled guests are also more likely to leave bad reviews, something which may be a problem for new hosts without many reviews.
My new review policy is to describe my experience hosting them in detail and let other hosts make up their own minds with the information provided. The reviews are not just for the guest’s sake, they’re to let other hosts know what it’s like to rent to them. With guest-from-hell above, I really don’t care that he was clean as I can clean the house myself. I care much more that he expected me to run to the store for him like his personal assistant, didn’t offer to pay for the things he wanted me to fetch for him and then gave me a negative review–I wasn’t “very accommodating” because, while I did agree to go to the store for him, I asked him to pay for the things he wanted (bar soap because he didn’t like my body wash, and flavored coffee creamer because he didn’t like the half & half I’d provided).
I also agree with a comment above that airbnb should offer a 5-star system for guests as well, so I’ve simply started using my own in my reviews. This is the system I use:
Overall experience
Cleanliness
Communication
Respect for owner
Respect for home/house rules
I’m done erring on the side of being polite and reserved in my reviews, because they sure as hell don’t offer me the same courtesy.
Such perfect language for a situation I find myself in right now. I was thinking about how I’d suggest that my guest in question “would be happier in an first class hotel like environment with 24/7 support staff”
Absolutely leave a review, if you don’t want to bitch you leave the bare facts about how long they stayed. It’s more about what you don’t say. And then learn, if you can, from that type of person/booking. My experience has been mostly that when I think someone isn’t going to be so great, they really are.
I do something similar… if they were really bad i will leave a honest review. if they were just medicore, not great, maybe did small irritating things, being late or inconsiderate or complaining, i dont leave them a review. i have over 200 great ones myself so trying to get more reviews isnt too key at this point.
When i leave a review for someone i liked, I will always add that i recommend this guest… to me its a clear signal to any other host( and myself in the future if they book again) that this is a desirable guest.
I also do note when people say they have traveled on airbnb and have no reviews…I ometimes dont agree to host them.
Im not suggesting others follow my method and I fully understand a lot of people think you should leave a review no matter what but I am just responding to the original poster as to my personal choice in this matter.
Sharp point. I often wonder if Airbnb uses guest rating to match guests and hosts in order to provide the more optimal experience possible -which doesn’t mean the best possible experience. For example, Airbnb could be matching not-recommended guest with hosts that seem more generous (or less demanding) in their review in order to improve hosting experience, or in the other side, matching picky guests with super host in order to improve guest experience.
A rather belated question, but how does a future host of X contact you directly? Airbnb makes host to host contacting very difficult; practically impossible, really. I once tried to contact a host by using the inquiry form to ask a perfectly innocent question. She accused me of committing fraud. Another time I contacted someone the same way, and that person completely misunderstood my message. I’m still not sure what he thought I was asking.
If there is any good way for an Airbnb host to contact another Airbnb host, I’d be very interested to hear about it.
