Children do wet the bed. I wouldn’t consider this intentional. Should have waterproof mattress pads on all beds.
But as a parent, you would know if your child was prone to doing this and take precautions when staying in someone else’s home. And the OP said that multiple beds were peed in. One accident? Maybe. (Although as a parent, I would be apologizing profusely to the host if that happened!) But multiple beds? That sounds like straight up negligence to me, and I would probably be filing another resolution request for the additional cleaning charges.
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If you inform AirBnB of the misconduct in your rental, they will prevent bad reviews from the guest.
Nope, they won’t.
2020
1 Like
Just to finish off the story, here is my proposed review …
XXXX and her group booked our retreat for 4 nights. Our retreat has beds to accommodate 16 guests, but we often allow a small number of additional guests on the retreat (e.g. in tents) for those who book the cabins.
When booking for 16, XXXX indicated they may have one additional family, who would "pitch a small tent". The group arrived at various times (including some who arrived 3 hours earlier than our check-in time) and did not all introduce themselves, so we did not at first realize the group was much larger than expected.
In the end, the group turned out to be 25 people - 9 more than the original booking. We would not have accepted a booking for a group this large had we known in advance, because we do not have sufficient facilities for so many people. None of the additional guests pitched tents - some slept on the floors and in the hallways of the cabins, and others must have slept 2 or 3 to a single bed.
The group broke several of our most critical "house rules", as well as damaging some of our equipment during their stay. They also left the main cabin in an appalling state. To the extent that we were unable to complete the cleaning of the cabin before the next scheduled guests arrived. This has never happened to us before, and it was quite embarrassing. Fortunately, the incoming guests were understanding of our plight. However, we cannot recommend XXXX and her group as guests to other hosts.
Comments welcome
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I know there are people here who will say it’s way too long, but I think it’s great. I enjoy reading that much detail when I’m reading guest reviews.
The only thing I might do is move the last paragraph to be the first for those people that have a short attention span. That way, you get the most important rule violations in there first.
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Good comment. Thanks.
I’m one of the “too long” people. I’m trying to fill in some blanks, so forgive me if I guessed wrong.
“XXXX booked our cabins for 16 people, and communicated they might have another family of a couple of people that would camp out in their own tent on the property. The first group arrived 3 hours earlier than our check-in time. A total of 25 people eventually arrived, but XXXX attempted to conceal that the total was this great. All 25 of them stayed in our cabins, severely overtaxing the facilities. The group damaged some of our equipment (what equipment?) and left a huge mess (food? trash? feces? what kind of mess?), including five (how many?) beds that had been wet by their children. XXXX did pay for the excess people after being caught. However, we cannot recommend XXXX and her group as guests to other hosts.”
Thanks. I will consider shortening it along the lines you propose. But you have highlighted one of my difficulties - I may believe they intended to deceive, but I have no actual evidence that they would not eventually have paid the extra costs voluntarily - they may just have waited till the last day because they were not sure themselves how long the extra guests would be staying. So I don’t think that’s a valid criticism (especially as they did - eventually - pay up).
I have tried to keep my criticism to the fact that they clearly knew they were bringing more people than we would reasonably have expected from the original booking. And the mess, of course - the worst of which was food on the benchtops which was allowed to go off and had maggots all through it, dog poo tracked throughout the cabin, plus 2 beds wet, etc etc.
omg, yuck. Those are details I would want to see in the review.
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@rossh - An honest guest would have told you up front “We have more people, but we’re not sure how many. How shall we work this out with you?”
If the only issue had been the uncertainty of the number of people, then I’d agree with you to give them the benefit of the doubt. I would not lose sleep over the phrase “after being caught”, since you repeatedly tried to reach her to get this resolved and she only responded to you after you opened the case.
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Yes. Interestingly, we now have staying a group who originally booked for 20 people. After booking they said they had friends who were interested in joining in and asked us if they could instead bring 27 people. We said “no”, and explained that we knew we could not possibly accommodate that many. They accepted this and brought only the original 20. Result: everyone is happy!
Moral: We will now insist upfront on a maximum occupancy level - with no exceptions! AirBnB does not help because they do not allow you to place an exact limit once you get above 16 - the maximum occupancy they allow is “16+”, which could mean anything 
1 Like
My husband and I just watched the Wicker Man (annual Xmas movie - don’t ask), it is just so brilliant but I can’t imagine what kind of guests you have come across to even hint at this kind of retribution??
Interesting you should say this:
The problem with resolution requests is that they are hard to find/see. They aren’t in the message thread and they aren’t attached to the reservation. They are partioned off so I also include “you can find the request by checking your email, Airbnb will send a link.
As I have had 3 sets of guests say recently that they couldn’t find where to pay so I figured it mustn’t be clear and was going to ask where is it found to help them. What do you mean by
partitioned off
I will also now start prompting the guest to check their email for it as this is the way I collect the pet fee.
It means that there is no way to get to the resolution center from your account or from the reservation page. It’s a completely different link that you either have to know (because you’ve used it before - https://www.airbnb.com/resolutions), or you have to get there from the link in your email from AirBnB.
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I thought this might interest/amuse some people. Three months after the original booking, one of the guests from this horrendous group has just reviewed us on Google.
Here is their review …
Overpriced for the offering. Accept that it’s off grid & remote. Some of the basics are overdue for repair - such as the fridges. The houses are not designed to be without air-con & are super hot in summer. Owner is nice but reluctant to listen to constructive feedback. I thought that the premium charged on top of the Xmas holidays premium was excessive … particularly when people were sleeping on the floor. The options for large groups in the area are limited, however.
Here is my reply …
Hello XXXXX. I presume you were part of the very large group we hosted over Christmas? If so, then I must point out that if you bring 25 people to a retreat when you knew the capacity of the retreat was 16, you are going to find some limitations. When your group booked, you booked for 16 but indicated that there may be ONE additional family who would sleep in a tent, and we agreed to that. Instead, your group brought NINE additional people and tried to sleep them on the floors and in the hallways without telling us. We had to find this out for ourselves after we realized there were many more guests on the retreat than we had anticipated. We do not charge a Christmas “premium”. Perhaps you are referring to the amount we insisted you pay for these nine extra guests? Our rates and charges - including the extra guest fee - were clearly stated when you booked. As for ignoring criticism - we do not. We have replaced the fridge you had problems with, but the reality is that the old fridge was working but was never designed to be overloaded to quite the extent your group did. We are sorry that you didn’t appreciate the limitations of being “off grid”, even though we do detail them in advance (e.g. no air conditioning) and we would suggest that in future you may find accommodation in town more suitable to your needs.
Too much? 
5 Likes
No, it’s perfect. 