My check-in time ends at 9 pm. I have had several guests inform me late on the day of their check-in that their plane lands at 9:30 pm, for example, which means that they won’t get to my house until 11 pm. They force to stay awake two hours longer than I would like. They know about this when they make their reservation, but they didn’t care. I have had enough. So I got a request today for my room, and I responded with this message: "Are you aware that the check in time is 9 pm.? Will you be able to get here by the check in time? Please confirm. " And what do you know? It turns out his plane was arriving at 9:30 pm. I told this guest this was not acceptable to me. In summary, AirBnB hosts, protect yourself as best you can. The customers pretty much ignore all the rules of your house in your description, and you need to go over them one by one before accepting.
Yes we’ve also been doing this. We also make sure we point out that kitchen and laundry use is not available. Another recent thing we’ve started adding is ‘as you are aware this space is within our home and so not suitable for those who plan to be up late’. Basically our first message sets out really clearly all the non-negotiable rules, the things we just will not deal with. It doesn’t always work. I’m sure it does put some people off booking but to be honest, I don’t care. I value my time, sleep and sanity much more than having to deal with guests who think the whole world revolves around them!
Lol. Sounds like my listing. Nevertheless today, after numerous messages explaining no kitchen access my guest went out, bought cheese and wants to keep in the fridge.
They also said: goodnight Zandra! At 8.15 pm. Good luck with that… I’ll be making noise until 10 pm ^ _ ^
How rude, what is with people… seriously. I’d smack any guest in a review who was that blatantly disrespectful.
It’s gotten better since I added this paragraph to my 1st message in response to their booking:
“Just to confirm: your booking is for 2 adults from xxx to xxxx. Check-in time is from 3:00 pm - 10:00 pm. Once you arrive, I will need to meet you at the garden gate – your private entrance – so I can give you the keys and a quick walk-through of your cottage. Let’s plan to keep in touch the day of your arrival, okay? I want to make sure your check-in is as carefree as possible.”
If I don’t get a response, in a day or two I send a follow-up. The guests who booked their flight to arrive at 11:30, thad a flight delay and arrived at 2:30 a.m. were the last straw.
I now try to get a commitment from people at time of booking that they are making plans to arrive in the arrival window.
Hi Annsavannah, do you send them this message after you have accepted their booking? My method would be to get their commitment to the check-in time before you accept their booking. For some reason, people can justify in their minds that if their plane arrives after check-in time, then this means the check-in time doesn’t apply to them. Question is, if you have made the check-in time clear to a customer, and they still arrive late, then what do you do? I think we need to communicate with the guests, before we accept a booking, that if they arrive late then they need to get a hotel room. How else can you get this into their heads?
I have IB on so have to rely on my listing, still get the arriving at the airport, 2 hours from me at 11pm and then we need to get a hire car etc. No I do not have a night desk.
That is my post-booking message. I get some IB guests, so don’t interact pre-booking with those, obviously. In my listing intro it says, “Thank you in advance for reading the entire listing, including house rules,” not that people read…but the house rules do spell out arrival requirements, right up top. If they are new Airbnb users, I have an additional paragraph reminding them to read the entire listing. We’ll see what happens. I did get one guest who had not noticed the check-in info and cancelled his reservation when I said my check-in time was firm. He planned to arrive at 3:00 in the morning. It’s just not worth it for me to lose sleep, not to mention having people unfamiliar with the set up crossing the courtyard in the wee hours of the morning.