I’m raising this topic because I need help with rating the stay. I recently stayed in a very nice room in a beautiful apartment rented out by a superhost. The room was nice and clean, although the rest of the apartment had a substandard cleanliness for my taste. It was nothing horrible, but for example it was obvious that nothing was really refreshed before our stay (the sink, the toilet), the sponge in the kitchen was superold and dirty (that actualy grossed me out the most), the toilet seat “bend” (I don’t know how to call that; where the lid meets the seat) was obviously not cleaned for awhile, dishes were kind of sticky and cabinets did not smell too well etc. Otherwise the place was without cluter and apartment had a spacious and tidy feeling.
Let me clarify first that the host will get an overall 5 because the stay was great and he was extremely helpful and nice. However, I’m not sure how to proceed with the cleanliness grade. As a host, I rent out the whole apartment and it is always superclean, so it would really pain me to give this a 5. Yet I know you guys are always mentioning how one should take into account that the place is “lived in” and there are different standards of cleanliness, so I don’t want to be a douche. That’s why I want to hear your opinions about it. Should I just knock off a star or make some comment in the private feedback? I’m not sure whether these are the things that host already knows but simply expects guests to play by his rules (like the sponge thing).
Also, the guest has a poor description and basically no house rules. We weren’t really affected by it, besides the fact that we weren’t left with any instructions on recycling and the host didn’t respond to my message about it. Should he be dinged for communication for that? I don’t want to be harsh as it was a really nice stay all in all, but it would simply feel unfair to give 5 starts all over the board. In the end the overall grade is the most important one.