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I doubt you send messages at what is 2am in the host’s time zone, though.
Those are the only guest messages I don’t respond to within a short period of time. As JJD points out, not everyone is okay with having their sleep interrupted- in my case, I will not be able to get back to sleep, and if I don’t get enough sleep, I’m not just tired, I can barely function. (I have a friend who used to work the crisis line, had it set up so she got the calls forwarded to her home phone, could spend an hour talking to someone who called at 3am, was in the midst of committing suicide, but didn’t want help, just someone to talk to, and then turn over and go right back to sleep when the call was over.)
Or if I’m driving, in the dentist’s chair or deep in the middle of something I can’t just drop, the guest will get a response within an hour or a few. There have also been a couple times where my internet went out, so couldn’t reply immediately.
Well, sending a request, inquiry or message at what is sleep hours for a host is one thing, expecting a speedy reply is another. Personally I’ve never had a guest withdraw a request because I didn’t respond immediately.
And because I homeshare, there isn’t the possibility of a guest in residence messaging in the middle of the night with some emergency- all they would have to do is knock on my bedroom door.
Huh? What do you mean not location specific? My guests don’t stay out late at night- if they had an emergency situation in the middle of the night, as I said, all they’d have to do is knock on my bedroom door, which is 5 steps from theirs, or yell for help.
Right but we’re talking about messages from the app, not emergencies. I wouldn’t use the app for emergencies anyway. I tell my guests to call me if there’s an emergency. Most hosts I’ve stayed with do that. I don’t use the double-ring thing that a lot of hosts use but I don’t get other calls in the middle of the night anyway.
I’ve done so much auditing on my home to eliminate issues, that this might happen once a year or so. And when it does, it’s always serious enough to not ignore.
I once was woken in the middle of the night by a loud crash from the guest room. I jumped out of bed and tapped on her door, which opens onto the same balcony my bedroom does, asking if she was alright. No answer. So I slightly parted the curtains of the little window next to the door, picturing her unconscious on the floor trumping any privacy issues, to see her sound asleep in bed. It was a mystery until the next day when she told me she woke in the morning to find the wind had blown over a vase on the table during the night, the broken pieces all over the floor.
That totally makes sense. I’m sorry, I thought you meant you were initiating messages at 2am.
I had a poor experience recently. My husband and I rented a large home on a vineyard with a heated pool for 10 days. I had only two goals: to swim and to sleep. But our host was traveling internationally during our stay and kept messaging me in the middle of the night. It was pretty much daily, which would be somewhat annoying even at a normal hour, lol.
…but your anecdotal experience does not mean that everyone else has the same guest experience. Emergencies happen on the street, in another town, etc, and guests who need to communicate with you as host are not always there next to your bedroom.
What does a non-resident guest’s emergency in the middle of the night in another town have to do with me, that I would need to respond to between midnight and 8am? I’m not their mommy.
I guess I wondering that too, particularly the “on the street” bit.
Where are you coming from on this? Emergencies do happen everywhere but I can’t understand what that has to do with being a host.
When I mentioned emergencies I meant, for instance, stuff that happens in the listing that a host can assist with like if the heat stops working, the toilet backs up or even if the guest is too drunk to operate the keypad. But if stuff happens on the street or in another town it would be odd to contact your host about it. I mean, I’m always keen to hear a funny story, lol, but there’s no reason to contact me in the middle of the night.
Well, as you know, I am a homeshare host, so there is no key hand-off that a guest would need to contact me about (and why any guest, even in an entire place, would need to contact a host about that in the middle of the night eludes me- I think you’re fishing pretty deep here), and I can’t imagine any guest would ever need to inform me in the middle of the night that they will be arriving late. If they hadn’t shown up by midnight when I go to bed, nor contacted me earlier to tell me of a delay, which would be a very unusual circumstance, in that case I would leave my phone by the bed and answer it if they were trying to reach me.
That doesn’t mean there is any reason for me to keep my phone ringer on during nightime sleeping hours on a regular basis.
I see that for you specifically this is not something that is important to you.
But there are many different ways to host and many different situations for guests and hosts. Remember that correlation is not causation, and your way of hosting does not preclude other ways.
I don’t need to remind everyone that this forum has members with many many different approaches and ways of operation, and that we all come here to support the exchange of information. There are many ways to… skin a cat…
Well of course I realize that, and if I were a host of a unit I didn’t live in, I would have to be available 24/7 for possible emergencies like the toilet overflowing, a fire, etc. But you specifically answered my post saying there would be no need for a resident guest to contact me in the middle of the night, by pointing out that there could be some emergency situation for which they couldn’t just knock on my door, which isn’t the case. I never suggested that all hosts should be unreachable in the middle of the night, just that there’s no need for me to be.
The guest bathroom is right next to my bedroom. I’d hear them. And most people aren’t in the habit of taking their phone into the bathroom with them anyway, as far as I’m aware.
My guests don’t go out for walks after midnight. And if they did and got lost, what, I’m supposed to get in the car and drive around randomly looking for them?
I have my phone on do not disturb from 10 pm to 8 am. My “exceptions list” has 5 people who can “punch through” plus my Google voice number attached to our listing, which, if I’m getting a call or text on, is an actual guest or Airbnb themselves. The app can wait. If I’m awake though, I’ll reply pretty much immediately.
