Guest leaving early due to ghostly visitation?

Oh goody, another unfamiliar-to-guests device they can assume is some kind of surveillance device and get hosts’ listings suspended over. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Just kidding, sort of. It’s a good idea.

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It’s just a matter of time til we read about an Airbnb alien abduction. “Beware! Don’t book here! This unique listing not only looks like a UFO, it is one. I was experimented on by aliens during the night and they totally messed the place up and broke things, which the host, who I’m sure is one of them, or at least under their control, blamed me for. I’ve reported this listing, but it’s still up!!!”

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No ghosts, but we have had one guest say she sensed a “malevolent spirit” one time. Found it amusing as we typically get the exact opposite response from our guests. We haven’t had the complaint sense then so we are assuming they brought it with them and it left when they did!

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You kidding me? If you had a real ghost people will flock to your house. You’ll have so much business!

I have a 100 years old Victorian and there are always creaks and steps and doors opening, but mostly from my cats. I had guests - especially from the south - who hated my house and gave me poor reviews. If this lady was young and on her first assignment, she might have been scared.

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Yes, that’s a huge difference. I only rent on Airbnb in between nurses. I do like the fact that my vacancy rate is almost non existent. I do talk to these people to get a sense of what they are like. I prefer that to having to wash bed sheets and scrub on daily basis. They have a solid job and they can pay, they’ve been background checked by their employer. Brilliant!

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I’m curious, do they pay at the same rate as your Airbnb guests?

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Ive listed on the ABB platform (And others)11 years.
2 properties at the beach in San Diego.
I see a few things you want to stay away from.
1st, I would counsel you into not taking a knife to a gunfight.
Meaning, never contact the guest after they check in, you are opening yourself up for anything they want to throw at you that’s the taking the knife to a gunfight.
You’re opening yourself up to any negative thoughts or disappointments that they may have, let them contact you.
2nd - Never go to the property after they tell you they’re unhappy, either have them message you inthe abb app what their grievance is, OR, do what the large mgmt companies do, send them a document yiu created that is titlrd whatever…I call it “Guest complaint\Damage report”, and it has specific qiestions you dictate, and they must sign it and submit it to yiu.
And for the love of all things holy…NEVER go there and NEVER think about sprinkling sage or any odor agent… OMG is still in my mind thinki g you dod that. LOL.
Airbnb sets owners up to lose by allowing teavelers to cancel and get full refund for,
1- “I dont feel safe” because whatever.
2- the infamous “We see mold” on whatever.

No phone contact, never go to the property. Always ele tronic communications, and have them fill out a greivance\Damage form.
Airbnb is the worst platform and has the worst travelers on the planet…
Go VRBO and be happy.!

You say that as if it’s some indisputable fact. Maybe your experience, not mine. Never had a bad guest, in fact 90% have been really wonderful. Never had a scammer, liar or refund seeker.
Not at all fond of Airbnb as a company or their brain-dead CS, but it has brought me great guests.

You may have been hosting for 11 years, but your advice diatribe is pretty strange. So if there is a legitimate issue the host needs to deal with, like the hot water heater goes out, never contact them, never go to the property to check out why it isn’t working? Send them a form? How bizarre. Doesn’t sound like hospitality to me, especially portraying dealing with guests as a gunfight.

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I disagree. Quite the opposite I post a question to guests several hours after they check in, saying:

Just checking in with you.
If you have any questions at all, please ask.
Things like:
– Have you found everything you need?
– Is everything as you expected?
Please don’t hesitate to reach out.


I believe this note is somewhat a ‘cover your ass’ note in case they make a complaint later but primarily it’s a note asking for what it asks, so that we can address any issues upfront, at the start of their stay, and to encourage them to ask questions or raise issues that we can resolve immediately.

I’m skeptical of guidance that includes absolutes like ‘never’ or ‘always.’ I agree with you that you want complaints and communications documented on the platform. You rightly raise the concern that a Host visit could make a guest feel uncomfortable. But there could be circumstances (e.g., a party) where a Host visit is warranted.

If a Host gives a form to a guest saying that they ‘must sign it’ I feel that is needlessly confrontational. A guest hasn’t agreed to sign anything (unless such is a condition of the stay disclosed in your House Rules). Nor do I think it adds anything beyond an unsigned statement on the platform.

The Host for which I am co-Host prefers VRBO to Airbnb partly because she says the guests are better behaved on VRBO. But we have have had excellent guests on both platforms. We’ve had maybe two experiences with Airbnb guests that were problematic but I believe we could have avoided/mitigated those situations with better communications on our part. We continue to grow as Hosts/co-Hosts.

I’m sorry that you’ve not had great experiences on Airbnb, but I think many Hosts here have done and are doing well with the quality of guests from Airbnb. More data points for you and readers to consider.

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Other than advice to get complaints in writing, this is pretty terrible advice.

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Thanks for your input TRLJ, it’s always interesting to see how everyone runs their business!
This guest was different than the usual AirBnB guest. She’s a first-time travelling nurse I rented to through Furnished Finder. So there was a lease in place, background check, income verification & walkthrough documents like you’d normally see for a LTR.

In the end I refunded her money minus the non-refundable deposit and nights she’d stayed, and I’m happy with my decision. The entire building has been smudged multiple times, aired out, and ready for the next guests. It’s gone back to its’ overall feeling of being a warm, cozy and welcoming space, so it probably was something she brought in. I’ll know to charge for an extra guest next time thanks to everyone here!

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I find it a bit simpler to just not let my guests come across any guns. Or any mold. :wink:

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When I started reading this post I was sure that it was tongue-in-cheek. Truly.

As someone who has been in the hospitality business for much longer than 11 years, I’d like to put forward another option. (New hosts or lurkers reading this topic may be interested).

Unless they are arriving at a crazy hour, I always meet and greet my guests, show them where to park, then show them around the rental.

If I deem it necessary, or if the guests request it, I am always happy to go to the property (unless at crazy hours of course) to see to any issues they might have or to prevent any undesirable behaviour on their part.

If the guests prefer to contact you by phone, then do so. I like to contact the guests in the way that is comfortable for them - text, what’s app, in person, Airbnb messaging, whatever. So non-electronic communication is fine.

This is called ‘hospitality’.

If you are a new host, or thinking about becoming one and wondering whose advice to take here, just let me say that I have been in this business for much longer than eleven years, and have only once had troublesome guests that I had to throw out and other than that never had a guest or situation that couldn’t be fixed amicably. No forms required.

That’s in many, many years.

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TRJL sounds like they view guests as enemies.

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I get the feeling that there are quite a few hosts like that. They see the whole thing as an us-or-them situation.

Hosts who feel that way must be quite unhappy and stressed.

Shame really. There’s enough unpleasantness in the world without adding to it.

I do find the whole guest-sees-ghosts thing interesting. In the days before Airbnb I took a booking through craigslist of someone who actually had a blog about their ghost and spirit sensitivities. My cottage had a suicide on the property about 70 years ago, so I was intrigued. I didn’t tell the guest, mind you, but I kept checking her blogs for months to see if she wrote about the cottage. (She didn’t.)

By the way, I also think @TRLJ advice was awful. The market, type of rental and price point can greatly determine the types of guests you get, but no one ever wants to admit that it is the host that sets the tone and expectations. A few bad apples? Sure. All of them? You’re doing something wrong.

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Yes, I’ve read posts from hosts wringing their hands because they keep attracting partiers, but when you read their listing write-up, it sounds like a perfect party house and they don’t even realize it. Reads like an impersonal real-estate ad, talks about how it’s the perfect place for entertaining family and friends, that they’ll have total privacy, etc.

One host was upset because her guests in her little attached studio kept asking to borrow her kitchen gear, saying she didn’t have enough left in her own kitchen to prepare her own meals. But in the very first part of her listing description she said “If you need to borrow anything, just ask”. Her guests were doing exactly what she had invited them to do.

Sometimes it takes an objective eye to point out what was staring you in the face the whole time.

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No, they pay a monthly price that is on par with the LTR leases in my area. I like that though because my occupancy rate is not that great otherwise. With Airbnb, I’m busy in the summer but for the rest of the year I only have weekends and a lot of vacancies mid week.

It might not be anyone’s cup of tea, but it works for me, I’m making as much money as with Airbnb and way less work - don’t have to clean their room and wash the bed sheets. Mostly all the nurses bring their own bed sheets, are quiet or work night shifts and sleep during the day and if they live in driving distance they tend to go home every weekend.

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Are you not providing sheets for them or do you have an extra charge for them? I’ve been renting to nurses for a few years and I’ve always provided full sets of linens. It seems they expect it. And most leave everything totally fine anyway but some of them…we just had to throw away $600 worth of linen after this last piggie. I guess I could say I’m not providing them but the mattress covers and mattress pads which were totally trashed too are the only things that protected the mattresses so I’m not going to not provide those.

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YES!!! this has happened to us. we’ve got ghosts as well as fairies, and if they don’t like guests, they do all sorts of things to get rid of them. the worst was with a couple working on a movie (atl is the hollywood of the east). they had beings sit on their bed and talk to them at night. the wife got locked into the bathroom (i removed the lock after they left). they had a bad accident coming home after work one night. we’ve had guests run away after telling us they were creeped out. we’ve known we had ghosts in the house for many years, after some psychics came thru and pinpointed them. we don’t have trouble with them ourselves, but they do move around at night, and there are things you can see out of the side of your eyes. we were thinking of making it a feature of our listing, but decided it would scare off more than it would attract (some people love the thought). glad to hear i’m not the only one with housemembers who don’t like some guests.

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