Guest behavior situation

We had recent guests behave less-than-ideally. I’m wondering how you guys would handle the situation.

Four 20-something Australian women booked our place in Brooklyn for two weeks. The primary guest initial note to me mentioned the following:

Blockquote We’re respectful, non-smoking and tidy individuals who love the look of your place! We’d love to be able to stay here, and definitely won’t be having any parties.

Wonderful! Two things occurred that concern me.

  1. They checked out on Monday. Yesterday when taking out their trash I noticed several empty beer bottles with cigarette butts. We explicitly mention in our house rules it’s a non-smoking apartment.

  2. Late last week, two of the girls checked out and one guy stayed in the apartment. Normally I would be fine with this if someone had asked me. But at no point was this mentioned.

How would you all handle this? I’m fairly miffed but no damage was done to the apartment and I doubt I’ll ever see these people again.

Do you have it in your house rules that only those who have booked and paid can stay at your property?

How do you know two girls checked out and a guy stayed there?

Maybe they smoked outside and then emptied the ashtrays in the rubbish (unless your place smelled of smoke).

If you can clarify happy to offer some advice.

We are relatively new to Airbnb, and have already seen some of this kind of thing. I feel that the discomfort has to do with not knowing what is going on in your property, rather than any actual damage. We feel more at ease when people are forthcoming, communicative, and honest. Having said that, you have to decide whether you are uncomfortable with the fact that something other than what you were okay with, potentially, took place, or if there is a different issue.

In our case we had a group come to attend an event in our area. They booked the house for 8 people. My neighbours complained of a steady stream of cars and people around the clock for two days. When they left, just one of the beds had been used. In addition, there was so much trash that it was hard to imagine. The house was left filthy.

We ended up in an argument with those people who felt that they did nothing wrong, and that none of the visitors stayed overnight, and therefore there should not be any issue. The interesting thing here is that the guest was also an Airbnb host. Go figure.

I ended up tightening up our rules a little.

Good luck!

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Does your apartment have outside areas that you allow smoking? I would mention the smoking violation if you think it is very likely they smoked inside. I would not want to host a guest that violated the smoking rules of another host.

We don’t. We explicitly ask guests to not smoke in the house or the front patio area and to walk to the street corner to smoke.

One thing I have recently started doing is to ask people soon after a booking or booking inquiry if they are okay with our house rules. That way they are encouraged to read the rules. It is quite likely that people don’t read the rules or anything else, just look at the $, location and photos, the stars/reviews, and book. After asking people if they are okay with the rules, they have tended to be much better at following them.

Perhaps I have been lucky, but I don’t think so. The question “Are you okay with the House Rules, or do you have questions I can answer?” sometimes provokes conversation that is very helpful. For instance, a new Airbnb user asked to book my place for a few days, and in response to the rules question, volunteered that they owned a condo they rent out, and hate when guests do not follow rules…it completely changed my comfort level with the new user!