Ok - so just a thought - you might consider electric pipe warmers. It would just suck to “have to be around” in case the water needs to be turned off. Life happens. A backup plan might be prudent.
I’ve never used IB. And in over 3 years of hosting, I can honestly say I’ve never had a bad, clueless guest. Never had to cancel a reservation, have a talk with guests about following house rules or being respectful, never had anyone ask for a refund or leave anything but a 5* review. And almost all have been thorough and prompt in answering messages and communicating their arrival times, etc.
I’ll take quality over quantity any day. But I also didn’t go into this as a big money-making venture- I had a spare room/bathroom and thought I’d give it a go.
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We tried IB for a short time only, and dropped it like a hot potato. It is definitely not for us. When we went back to the old method, we have had wonderful guests who were no trouble at all from the start, as you described. It is also my philosophy that if making money is the only motivation, it gets old quickly. There needs to be joy in it for me, or why bother.
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I followup with a manual question twice. Once at booking and once again before arrival.
Thanks, good ideas. We’re on a farm though, so being around is pretty much a constant anyway 
As someone who is using Airbnb from the guest side, I would say this message could easily be missed. It is a message that shows up on the confirmation page. It is not easily distinguished from the legalese, receipt, and recaps. Once the confirmation page is clicked off from… I think the guest never sees it again.
I’m highly detail oriented and almost made the decision to click off the confirmation page before reading it over. The guest is expecting to just see a recap of price and dates, the receipt, etc. They aren’t expecting to see new info.
It does not show up in the guests’ inboxes.
I don’t think this feature is really very useful for a guest. The way Airbnb utilizes it… I wouldn’t put anything useful in it.
I’d send an actual inbox message to the guests if you have questions.
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