“Adding fluoride to water”, perhaps?
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You have a good point, I have not seen it from that point of view. Well we have new ordinance and extreme restrictions already in place. Will see how many will remain being a host for the future.
It’s iodine that’s added to salt, not fluoride. Before iodine was added to salt, many people were suffering from iodine deficiency. There are vitamins added to cereal, but not fluoride.
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Sorry to have to contradict you … but fluoride added to salt in Europe is a thing.
@Eberhard_Blocher can confirm it’s especially popular in Germany.
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To be fair, some of us knew about it…
http://airhostsforum.com/t/possible-new-airbnb-host-program-for-top-hosts/13540
I’m not a fan of single use toiletries, they’re so wasteful. I provide premium bath products in large containers with hand pumps, and guests love it. I buy them at HomeSense (Canadian equivalent of TJ Maxx/Marshall’s) for $16 CAD for 1 litre of shampoo and $8-10 for 1 litre of body wash. The toiletries at hotels (even high end ones) are usually poor quality and the containers are invariably too small.
I’ll let you all know if I hear from Airbnb 
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Well, yes, I can confirm this. However, it is not compulsory to buy it 
so the salt I buy has added iodine, but not added fluoride.
One thing that still is fairly common in Germany, though, is bottled water sold in glass bottles. I have been providing a bottle of water for guests on arrival, for some time now, and they absolutely love it. Because it is so common, it is not a premium product. A bottle of water is around € 0.30 at my local store, and that’s a bottle than will be refilled a few hundred times, too, so I don’t see much environmental damage being done, either.
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Yes when I was in Berlin I got caught out first time I bought salt. I had to go back the next day and buy the normal stuff!
You have a bottle scheme in Germany though where you get a little money back when you return the bottle. We don’t have this in the UK and well… not everyone recycles.
Hmmm bottled German weiß beer. So good and so cheap!
I completely agree with you. I’ve been doing airbnb for about 4 years now and have been a super host most of the time. I have enjoyed most of the people that I’ve had here but the culture of airbnb is clearly changing and they do seem to be abandoning their original “mission” and consequently also abandoning the hosts who made them successful. Another example of this is the way they now only show the listings of hosts who have accepted the “instant booking” feature. If you’re not on that, they only show your listing to those guests who are looking to book well ahead of time.
I’m hoping that new competitors to airbnb come up that do still stress the idea of creating meaningful exchanges and experiences between people!
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This is crazy…these things are NOT my idea of a ‘sharing economy’. Yes, I do have 6 or so sets of single use toiletries that my sister stole from a hotel where many family members were staying for a funeral. But the cost and environmental impact of those types of products would just go totally against the type of Airbnb experience I offer.
As @CatskillsGrrl mentioned, shared home situations such as mine which is really just an upgraded hostel really can’t compare to a ‘hotel experience’. So I agree, this is mostly based towards luxury rentals.
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And can the hosts put little signs on the water bottles that there is a $4 charge if you open them? Just like some upscale hotels I’ve stayed in?
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Try $9 for a bottle at an upscale place I was at recently. And the room was not my version of clean, filthy windows and a shower that sprayed water on the ceiling!
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I don’t know if you can read the whole article unless you are a subscriber but it’s along the same lines.
It makes sense why Airbnb is going after the wealthy and business traveler, that is where they believe the doe is. With the restrictions that some cities are putting on hosting, like in my city where they will permit 32 contracts per year, it only makes sense to butter up with luxury home owners who are charging $$$$ per night. However that may eventually backfire with a new recession and one will come if we like it or not, and those high end guest, and I am not referring to the super rich will be the first to hide their wallets.
I guess it will all depend in where your place is, if the lower priced host will be able to survive, I know i wont. Wish all the best to all host.
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We were going crazy providing bottled water. Constantly buying more at the store and even though they’re cheap, it was a pain in the butt to lug them up three flights of stairs every few days. And lugging them back down afterwards in garbage bags was equally as painful. We were filling up so many garbage bags with these things that it really did start to bother me how wasteful the whole thing was.
After looking for another solution, we finally bought some glass water bottles and an Aquasana water filter. We now fill the reusable glass bottles and provide them to guests. It’s absolutely no hassle for us at all. And the cost per bottle now is about as close to zero as you can get. And no more lugging up and down and no more waste!
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That’s a great idea. I hope that Airbnb will let hosts be in their new program if they do as you are doing.
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Yeah, I’d love to be in that program. But I don’t think our location would make it possible. We’re just across the river from Manhattan and I have a feeling it’s only going to be for hosts in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
By the way, those water bottles are here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015RBIWO2
And they look awesome in the guestrooms! They look way better than plastic bottles.
I fill a gallon glass jug and a three gallon mini sparkeltts for guests. We’re on rain catchme t here so the tap water is not drinkable. I have more if they run out, I tell them the water from the tap is not treated as is rainwater and they can’t drink it.
I used to buy the self serve size bottles for guests but like you the hassle was getting ridiculous, not to mention the waste, even though I recycle.
We have a water softener on our system, so the water in the house isn’t drinkable except in the kitchen. We still don’t like that water so much, so we use reusable gallon jugs that we refill at our food co-op. Even so, as a nice touch copied from some hotels, we provide each guest with a personal sized (yes, plastic, even though we’re not crazy about that fact) water bottle. It’s in the room along with chocolate mints for each guest. But that’s a one-time deal. After that, they can refill their bottle or a glass from the kitchen from the jugs.
We use the water cooler concept. We supply bottled water in the five-gallon jugs in the water cooler that offices have. Yes, it uses electricity to keep the water cool, but there’s no landfill waste (St Lucia does not have recycling yet 
) We’re on rainwater catchment, too, and offer a whole-house rental.
I’m hoping I may get invited - we have a 4000-square foot home in a prime location, and frankly offer a lot more than a hotel (except on-site restaurants/bars, although we do have a wonderful lady that will cook for our guests and makes great rum punch!)
Our problem is exactly the same as the article mentions - we don’t get a lot of AirBnB business because of our price. We compete with the higher-end hotels in the region.