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Guests who have entitlement demands are heinous. But of course their booking preferences have nothing to do with their entitled behavior. Usually for our airbnb, those who IB are the ones with great ratings, the ones who do reservation requests are those that seem to either be clueless or have ‘issues’ with earlier stays.
Plus, you can of course cancel IBs 3x in 12 months without penalties or questions asked; not possible with a rando who makes a reservation request.
Have you tried lately? My understanding is that Airbnb eliminated the “not comfortable with this reservation” option and have started rejecting many hosts’ penalty-free IB cancellations.
As far as having to cancel a Request booking from some rando, I have always used Request, no IB. Almost all my guests have had long standing accounts with 5* reviews and send a nice, informative message with their request.
If they don’t, or are newbies, I would never accept the request without dialoguing enough with them first to make sure they will be a good fit and there aren’t any red flags. So there really isn’t any reason to need to cancel an accepted request booking.
I have never even had to decline a Request, let alone cancel a confirmed one, because if it is somehow inappropriate, my communication with them leads them to withdraw the request.
I think that IB hosts have a very different experience with Requests than non-IB hosts, because your guests who send Requests don’t qualify for IB, so may be red flags.
Hi Rolf - we tried IB just long enough…and found that we received too many entitled guests and rule breakers. None at all once we turned back off. Every situation is unique!
Lots of great advice here. What a great group this is!!
This would be an instant cancel for me, I would not even reply to her ridiculous entitled demands.
F*^% the penalties, but such a guest causes more stress than it’s worth.
I am celiac and I would NEVER ask any of this as a host. I always travel with my own pan, cutting board, and clean sponge so that I don’t have to worry about this. I re-wash dishes and such before using them. It is not a host’s responsibility to cater to my disease, it is my responsibility to make sure I get my dietary needs safely met.
The guest is not being reasonable.
Uh no. These are not reasonable requests. My son has Celiac Disease and is VERY sensitive. He/we would never ask for all these items. Generally pots can be cleaned sufficiently but a cutting board might not be so travel with your own. Our son travels with his own food so rarely needs anything else, but he also knows what is gluten free and what is not. I agree what @banana stated. Celiacs can travel and do so with reasonable caution but your guest sounds like a potential problem. Take care!
My friend who has celiac disease used to have to always take food with her when she went out, but now, at least in well-populated areas and cities, there are usually gluten free options, which didn’t exist when she was first diagnosed.
She told me that actual celiacs think that the gluten-free craze is pretty funny, as there is no legitimate reason why most people can’t eat gluten- it isn’t a poison and only a small percentage of people are celiacs or have any real intolerance to gluten.
But she said that it certainly makes it easier for those with celiac disease that so many people now want gluten-free products and restaurant options, because they are no longer that hard to find and people no longer think she’s crazy when she says “I went to the music festival this weekend, there were 25 food booths and nothing I could eat.”
That was me. They booked two bedrooms then asked how many bedrooms were in the house. I told her there was a third but it was my room. She said they would like to book all three and could I arrange that so they could have the whole home. No, no you cannot. That’s not an option.
Well, that makes at least two homeshare hosts that has happened to, because the one I was remembering I read on the Airbnb CC years ago. And that host’s guests didn’t even ask when they were booking- they booked, arrived, obviously didn’t read the listing to understand the host lived in the house too, and then asked if she could go stay elsewhere and give them the whole place. 
It’s astounding that people actually have the gall to even think of asking a host to move out of their own house, let alone actually give voice to that idea.
Going back to the original post, can I ask why someone with celiac disease would request non-porous cookware?
Isn’t all cookware non-porous by definition?
Sorry if I’m being stupid. 
If you read that link I posted to a celiac website, it says that it’s a myth that celiacs need special cookware, even if some are laboring under the false notion that they do.
And I also can’t think of any cookware that is porous.
There are so many products these days that say “Gluten free!” that make no sense at all. Like shampoo. Gluten isn’t going to absorb into anyone’s head from washing their hair, and even if it did, gluten has to enter one’s alimentary tract to be dangerous to someone who is gluten intolerant. It isn’t something that enters your body through your bloodstream.
I 
agree! Unfortunately, many people throughout the US are still ignorant on the toxicity of fragrances, etc. Educate…educate…educate! 
Actually, there is a form of gluten intolerance that affects the skin: Dermatitis herpetiformis. It’s is an itchy, blistering, burning skin rash that likely indicates gluten intolerance, along with other symptoms. It typically occurs on the elbows, knees, scalp, back, and buttocks. Those afflicted with it have to watch the ingredients in shampoos, lotions, etc. Thankfully my son doesn’t react to topical products, just what he puts into his mouth. But I agree that there are too many items that never had gluten but are advertised as gluten free. Eggs? Milk? Raw steak? Give me a break.
According to my research, dermatitis herpetiformis, while a symptom of gluten intolerance, is not caused by using products on your skin which may contain gluten. The person has to ingest the gluten in order to have a skin reaction.
If you can post a link which confirms that it can be caused topically, I would appreciate it.
There’s a guy who sells his homemade yoghurt at a local farmer’s market. He yells out to people as they pass his booth, “It’s gluten free!”
When he did that to me, I just looked at him and said “Of course it is, it’s yoghurt”.
Well, I stand corrected. Twenty-five years ago when our son was diagnosed with Celiac, it was commonly understood that topical products were an issue for those with DH. Since our son doesn’t have DH, I haven’t kept up with the current data on causes. So this is good to know. On the other hand, plain yogurt is GF, but often additions can be problematic. Of course, I doubt anyone at a farmer’s market would be adding granola or other toppings that would make it off limits for Celiacs.
Well, I wasn’t saying that for sure topical products that have gluten aren’t a problem, just that from what I had read, it has to be ingested. I am open to correction if that might not be true.
Yes, definitely additions to products that are gluten free could contain gluten. My friend who is a celiac told me that in lists of ingredients on foods, that they contain wheat or other gluten products may not even be mentioned, because there is such a minute amount. For instance, she said that anything that lists “spices” is off-limits for her, because a small amount of wheat is usually mixed in to powdered spices to make them distribute more evenly in the product.
It must have been a lot of extra work for you to feed your celiac son 25 years ago, when gluten-free alternatives were not easy to come up with.