Happened again-Airbnb listed house in Calgary got trashed. Check at CBC website.
Here is the link to the article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/airbnb-nightmare-renters-leave-calgary-home-trashed-1.3053555.
I wonder if the guests had reviews before the hosts accepted? This is always definitely a scary possibility when you host on Airbnb or any other site. All I can say is be careful before you accept guests and make sure they’ve had positive reviews in the past!
Horrific!!! Not always possible to check reviews and some people are new. Now if they have a blank profile I do ask a few more questions especially if someone appears young. In one case I increased their deposit. I have had guests cause damage in excess of their deposit, but nothing like this!! The host guarantee picked it right up.
I don’t want to turn down too many with no reviews as 99% of the time they were great guests.
Reading this story, I am convinced that this Host was a new host with no experience whatsoever. Airbnb has a steep learning curve and if you let any Guest inside your home without asking some basic questions, it can lead to booking some bad Guests. I know this because I’ve hosted more then 2000 Guests. And when I first started on Airbnb, I was a bit naive and I was saying yes to everyone. And this approach lead to booking a “bad Guest” that made $4000 of damages to my home. But I’ve learned tons from this experience and such incident has never happened since then. If you make sure to ask many questions before booking a Guest and if you follow your intuition based on the answer they give you, such incident will most probably never happen to you. And if it did happen, you would be covered by the $1,000,000 Airbnb Host Guarantee (Airbnb did pay for my $4000 of damages and I’m sure they will pay for this Calgary Host’s damage). I’m an actor/filmmaker and my Airbnb journey brought me to create an online course called AirbnbSecrets to help people avoid such situation. In the course, I teach everything you need to know to run a successful Airbnb business and maximise your Airbnb revenue from Day 1 (while avoiding bad Guests). I give 3 free classes on my website. Check it out at www.airbnbsecrets.com 
Recently, I had a guest who presented themselves as a couple traveling to my city for a conference. I got a call from concerned neighbors that there were around 8 people staying in the apartment, with a large party being held. I contacted the guest, thanking them for their visit and asking “what time should I stop by on your departure day to check the condition of the apartment? I want to make sure that you get your full deposit back.” The message worked well with the guests leaving the place spotless.
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Cyn and airbnb secrets, this is typical airbnb party line, to throw the blame for disasters that guests often create in hosts homes back onto the hosts. My skin crawls when I see this kind of victim shaming.
As all hosts know who have done this for some time, even reviewed guests can behave terribly, and who exactly is going to take on the massive influx of all these new guests for the first time? Oh, but when it turns out bad airbnb won’t support the host, this is what you’ll hear. Victim shaming. The facts are this. There’s no possible way for me to confirm who exactly is trying to book my room until after its booked. At that stage, if I am feeling really uncomfortable I can try searching for them on the web. But if I cancel then, I get penalized if I find something I don’t like. Nobody has the time to do web searches on guests anyway, so we rely on these shaky reviews. Someone might have one, where they traveled with a boyfriend, but this time it’s with some girlfriends. It’s a very different scenario. Will it turn out very differently?
Or if we bite the bullet to take on a new member, after all, most of us have at lest fifty percent if not more enquiries from new members. We do due diligence with questions, but as I have learned, people will simply tell you anything they think you want to hear to get the room. Yep, you heard me. Time and again, I get the exact same kind of message ‘we are a couple of young working professionals up for a quiet weekend. We are respectful and clean’. The truth? They came up to experience a bar trendy with Brooklynites, and get drunk every night. They don’t communicate, and they don’t bother to take care of property. And the same goes for reviewed guests. They might be fine in a cheap Formica and tile floor apartment with nothing there to break or be careful with, but they might not be such a welcome guest in a historic home with lots of antique furniture. You’d be damn right things get broken and go missing, just because there was nothing worth stealing or to break in the last place, doesn’t mean they were ‘great’ guests I’ve realized. It just means that many places and expectations are different.
I always do my best to filter out who I believe will be the bad guests, and I assure you I am no fool. Nonetheless, I have had so many disappointing experiences I could write a book by now. Dont you dare go victim blaming because of your undeclared interests with airbnb, or with selling some service to help people run their airbnb’s - oh yeah, because with your help people are suddenly going to change.
Ugh. Icky.
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Cyn and airbnb secrets, this is typical airbnb party line, to throw the blame for disasters that guests often create in hosts homes back onto the hosts. My skin crawls when I see this kind of victim shaming.
As all hosts know who have done this for some time, even reviewed guests can behave terribly, and who exactly is going to take on the massive influx of all these new guests for the first time? Oh, but when it turns out bad airbnb won’t support the host, this is what you’ll hear. Victim shaming. The facts are this. There’s no possible way for me to confirm who exactly is trying to book my room until after its booked. At that stage, if I am feeling really uncomfortable I can try searching for them on the web. But if I cancel then, I get penalized if I find something I don’t like. Nobody has the time to do web searches on guests anyway, so we rely on these shaky reviews. Someone might have one, where they traveled with a boyfriend, but this time it’s with some girlfriends. It’s a very different scenario. Will it turn out very differently?
Or if we bite the bullet to take on a new member, after all, most of us have at lest fifty percent if not more enquiries from new members. We do due diligence with questions, but as I have learned, people will simply tell you anything they think you want to hear to get the room. Yep, you heard me. Time and again, I get the exact same kind of message ‘we are a couple of young working professionals up for a quiet weekend. We are respectful and clean’. The truth? They came up to experience a bar trendy with Brooklynites, and get drunk every night. They don’t communicate, and they don’t bother to take care of property. And the same goes for reviewed guests. They might be fine in a cheap Formica and tile floor apartment with nothing there to break or be careful with, but they might not be such a welcome guest in a historic home with lots of antique furniture. You’d be damn right things get broken and go missing, just because there was nothing worth stealing or to break in the last place, doesn’t mean they were ‘great’ guests I’ve realized. It just means that many places and expectations are different.
I always do my best to filter out who I believe will be the bad guests, and I assure you I am no fool. Nonetheless, I have had so many disappointing experiences I could write a book by now. Victim blaming because of your undeclared interests with airbnb, or selling some service to help people run their airbnb’s - oh yeah, because with your help people are suddenly going to change? Lol.
Ugh. Icky.
I simply can’t say how appalled I am that you are saying these kinds of things. Firstly, airbnb gives off the idea that it is such a safe system, and even in that very article says these things rarely happen, yet they refuse to give out statistics on how many claims they have had to reimburse hosts for. Secondly, claiming that it is always the hosts fault when someone dupes them into accepting them is without conscience. All it does is make people that are already suffering feel worse, because now you are saying it is their fault their trust was abused. The sharing industry is based on trust. It works on the whole idea that people will care enough about the review system that they won’t do this kind of thing. Does it work? Well, read the stories.
To declare that only accepting reviewed guests (nice if you can!) is an option for everyone is ridiculous too. Sometimes people have to give new guests a chance if they want any bookings at all at certain times. We are relying that airbnb does diligence with background checks etc. Of course we enter into a dialog. Will we pick up from those guests that are likely to do these things always that something isn’t right via a gut feeling? Once again, until the person is right there in front of you and the gut feeling can finally have something to base itself off, it’s highly unlikely. We are relying on what the guest chooses to tell us. And that would be in these cases whatever they thought we wanted to hear. Often by the time we are here and we get the ‘oh, it seems a little off feeling’, they have pushed into the room and closed the door.
People, don’t trust those that are trying to sell you things. They’re not going to give it to you straight. I have lots of experience also, and I am extremely intuitive (if I say so myself lol), yet terrible things hAve happened and continue to happen to me,despite my experience. These people are trying to make the world of hosting into something it is not. I can assure you if you continue, you will have your own disasters as well, whether you take mr secrets paid courses or not. Unfortunately there are good people and bad people out there. We’re not hotels, and we don’t get to hold people’s credit cards, so in fact are kind of powerless to a good degree, unless uncle airbnb says they’ll pay for something - but not your art, antiques or other nice things that got damaged by a vile guest. Sure you can have a deposit, but a you’ll see, it will only cover so much. All the best to those trying to make things work.
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After doing this for many years, I have come to the conclusion that you cannot really trust anyone booking your place. Even totally terrible guests can have an excellent review. My guest from hell for instance, had one glowing review. After my fiasco with her I contacted that host and she said she barely remembered her and was just giving a rote review. You cannot trust the previous reviews or the guests themselves. Until they are actually gone and all checked out will you know the REAL guest.
Agree some of the links posted here are pure spam, meant to scout out sales and they are very annoying.
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I don’t know how anyone gets any money out of Airbnb at all for damages. I just had a minor incident and discovered that if you can’t get the guest to admit to Airbnb that they did it - that you’re not gonna see a dime!
Well, if the guest denies it, then Air will look at all the facts and make a determination. In the case of my table they ruled in my favor. I had already been on the phone with them all weekend due to an unruly guest. So when she checked out and and I saw the table was broken I made a claim,she denied it and they ruled in my favor and reimbursed the damages. Perhaps opening a claim when I first had trouble with her bolstered my claim that the guest was no acting responsibly and probably did indeed damage my table.
I’m sorry your microwave got damaged.