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I rushed home from work to be at my home for 6pm, the time at which the guests said they would be arriving.
At 6pm , I get a message saying it would be more like 8pm.
I believe that it is disrespectful of my time not to have advised me sooner.
I am very flexible with my schedule and almost always arrange to meet and greet guests in person upon arrival, but I sometimes believe that some guests have little or no respect for the fact that you do have a life other than being an Airbnb host.
That is annoying, but telling you prior may have been out of their hands. If they were in an airplane delayed they would have no way of notifying you. At least it’s only 2 hours and by 8pm, could have been an hour later than when they said and not arriving until midnight…
I have absolutely no problems accomodating lguests with late flights, custom lines, etc, but this is a case where they just took more time sightseeing, so yes, they could have sent me a message well before the orginal eta telling me they would be late.
p.s. this forum is great for not only getting info and opinions, but also for a little venting Thanks!
That was totally rude and uncalled for. I message my guests shortly before they are due for an update. Guests are almost always later than they say they will be.
I’m a big fan of self-check-in. My guests are often 2-4 hours late (sometimes without notice) and I’m glad I am not waiting around for them. Sometimes my guests have legitimate travel delays like they got lost or didn’t anticipate traffic in a new city, but other times they stop to sight-see or go not to eat. With self-check-in, at least it is no skin off my back!
Is there any way for them to have self check in? A digital lock? Most of the time you could still be there to check them in but you could let go of the frustration. Also putting it in your rules and communicating with the guest after they book. Actually I think some guests don’t realize that their hosts aren’t just sitting there waiting on them.
I do whole house rentals so I don’t have to meet guests for check-in, but I sure like to. It’s especially important when guests are driving in, as it’s a nightmare to find a spot and no matter how much I emphasize this, guests still expect to park right outside the apartment. So I try very hard to meet my guests, and when possible hold a parking spot for them. 99% of the guests don’t show up on time. Some (not many) actually keep my posted, but most don’t. Parking is a massive priority for them, they ask a million questions about it, but despite this they don’t plan for it in their travels. My husband and I joke all the time that I’m on a stakeout when I am sitting in my car for hours at a time, playing Candy Crush or checking emails, waiting for guests to show up.
Today I had a guest arrive at 6pm after telling me they needed early check in at 3pm and that they were very worried about their car. When they finally showed up 3 hours late I asked them what happened and they looked at me blankly like, what? I said - oh you were very worried about parking and asking for an early check in so I’ve been sitting here since 3pm I wonder what happened to make you late? The reply? Oh, we got a late start.
My husband says to stop trying to help people with parking but really it’s a no-win situation. If I don’t help and they can’t find a place to park (even if I’ve been very clear about the situation), then I’m marked down on Arrival, Overall Experience, Accuracy of Listing and wherever else they can throw down.
The reason I only allow self-check-in only with guests with great feedback is that I really have to trust someone before I give them access to a key to my home without my being there for check-in.
Great feedback is a good indicater of whether someone can be trusted enough for me to give them the code to my lock box.
Sometimes , a guest without prior feedback also gets my lock box code when I can’t greet them, based on the good communication prior to accepting the reservation.
But most people, I would rather greet in person before they get a key.
I have 3 levels of trust :
I don’t trust you and am not accepting your reservation request
I trust you and will gladly accept your reservation
I really trust and will event give you intial access to a key without my even being there
Very good point and I have made a mental note! I too much prefer to meet and greet and can count the instances where I haven’t on one hand.
The only times I don’t is when the guest is arriving at a really crazy hour like 3am. On the plus side though, I live diagonally opposite the rental (separate apartment) and have my beady eye on it at most times!
Dang, you are going above and beyond! I’m sure they’d ding you for the neighborhood having difficult parking if you didn’t wait three hours to hold them a spot. Then again, who brings a car on vacation to NYC and expects to find parking? It is the densest city in the country!
One guy I let checkin an hour early. He begged so much and he arrived at my normal checkin time. Lol
My last guest called me at check in time saying he can’t find my house after several calls and txts I said I would meet him at the church down the end of my road. I couldn’t see him anywhere. He was standing at a church, it was 7 miles away at at a road with the same name. Haha he ended up being 3 hrs late.
So I got these guests last night who stated, right from the start, that they couldn’t make the 10 pm check-in deadline because their bus was due to arrive at the bus station at 9:40. Well the bus station is about 10 miles from my home, and it takes about 40 minutes by train, and walking, to get to my place. So methinks “Well they will probably get here by 10.30 pm, that’s not too bad” and I accept their booking.
This was stupid me not thinking this through. I have a check-in deadline at 10 pm for a reason - I need to get some sleep, so I don’t want to be up all night waiting for guests.
So at around 9:30 pm last night, I get a phone call saying the bus is delayed by more than one hour.
At 11 pm I get another phone call, saying the bus is just about to pull into the station. I don’t like midnight check-ins, did I mention that?
Just before midnight, I get a phone call which is cut off. So I call them back on their mobile (international number, pretty expensive) and after a long time (their English is poor) I find out that they took the wrong train, in the opposite direction and are now about 20 miles away from me. They give the phone to a local (German speaker) so we manage to agree on him leading the way to the correct train, from where they are.
So they finally arrived at 1:10 am. Jolly good.
I wonder at what point did I make a mistake? Perhaps I shouldn’t have accepted their booking in the first place, since their very first message indicated they didn’t really care much about my stated check-in time.
Thanks!