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I’m at a loss here, and feel that things are starting to go downhill without guests.
Nobody seems to read the rules, subtly break things that we cannot figure out, and just overall treat the home like it’s a hotel and not someone’s personal property. We’ve had some great guests, but it seems that things are starting to turn and I’m about to snap.
How do people treat a nice home like garbage and not have the guests that come with them try to treat it with respect?
Does nobody read the rules… ever? Oh, only registered guests, let’s bring whatever people over.
Oh, quiet hours, we are going to knock you on the review b/c you have neighbors that complained about us after quiet hours and we could clearly be heard down the street around a fire pit.
Dinged on a review bc you didn’t understand that adding 4 guests to a reservation after 3 change requests results in some confusion on your first time with AirBnB… lovely.
Anyone that does this, wow, I hope you are having insanely better guests that I’m starting to string in. I’m at a loss as to what to do… the money is great, but good lord the test on our sanity is getting there. I only wish I was fearless in enforcement and cared little about reviews or their experience if it at all impeded our rules.
Is everyone else doing OK out there? Are the Superhosts with 50 5-stars just not caring? Is it not possible when you have an entire home available? We recently built our home and are now starting to 2nd guess having the additional property as a rental.
I’m sorry you’ve been having bad guests. We’ve had some bad ones recently too. Maybe you could take a break from hosting for a while if it’s reallt getting to you that much?
Is it possible to put security cameras in the common area and outside to catch people bringing extra people in and breaking things? And have you been charging people for breaking things?
We are booked solid until October, then Nov and the Christmas. I’m pushing for October break, though we just looked back and found we hadn’t had a free weekend until February. Great problem to have, I know, and it’s difficult to voice this as I don’t want to seem ungrateful… but I wow, I’m not feeling very good about this.
We installed a ring cam on the door entry and the back patio. I tell my wife to stop checking so much because it is starting to cause me anxiety. We usually can tell if there are extra people bc we drive by the home on our way to town… or our neighbors tell us.
I feel I need to send out follow up message to all our future reservations and tell them that we are zero tolerance on rule breaking (kindly, of course). Curious if anyone out here is an insane enforcer with perfect or near perfect reviews.
A lot of posters here say not to fear bad reviews when you are enforcing your rules. Maybe decreasing the size of groups in the future would help too? I feel like groups of 8 or more are the most likely to try to have parties. Sending messages to future reservations telling them that extra people are not allowed and you will be checking via security camera footage isn’t a bad idea. If they bring extra people anyway, call Airbnb and send them proof from the camera and kick them out for breaking the rules. And charge people for anything they break. We had some people get food all over the place in one of our rooms and they tried to get out of paying for it at first but we won. Chin up, I’m sure you guys are great hosts despite the crappy guests you’ve had.
A common thread of hosts with big problems seems to be those who have large capacity listings and who do not actually live in their listings. This, for some reasons, tends to draw the worst kinds of hosts.
We moved down from 12 to 10… and changed additional guest fees from $10 to $25/night in hopes to really cut down on the groups. Almost thinking 8 is the winning number.
Even possibly jumping the required number of nights from 2 to 3. We’ve already added a day after the stay so we aren’t burning ourselves out cleaning the place and then greeting the new guests as a sweaty mess.
It’s hard, we love taking care of people and seeing them happy, but hate feeling like the home is being treated like garbage and we are being taken advantage of. Gotta be a business, but dang, if it isn’t hard to try and keep the reviews intact when you know people are being pants-on-head.
When you allow a large group of people into a home they are going to think there are no rules and they can do anything they want. Especially if the host isn’t there to lay down the law and let them know what isn’t acceptable behavior.
Ya, when mom and dad are away… the kids will play. The ‘we’re watching you at the entrances… and our neighbors are watching you’ may be a good tactic. haha
Wow! And we thought burnt chopsticks and food on the wall/carpet was bad. I hope you took a picture of that and charged them whatever it cost to repair that. And 1 star review too so hopefully no other host is subjected to that kind of idiocy.
We have a three-bedroom 4000 square foot home in the Caribbean. Although we have four queen beds, I limit the maximum occupancy to 6 people - 2 per bedroom. My house rules state a $200 per night fee for any guests over the number they’ve paid for prior to arrival, and that we will deny lodging to anyone over our maximum of six. And they may NOT have anyone else over without written permission from us.
I believe two other things help keep our guests honest - we charge $400-$1200 per night depending on the season and the number of people; and we have staff there to greet them and check on them daily - just like a hotel. Oh - and our minimum stay is four or more nights, unless we have a “hole” between guests.
Despite all that, I did get a phone call a week ago with someone asking what the rate would be for 16 (sixteen) people! Said they’d sleep four to a bedroom (even though we have only three bedrooms) and bring their own air mattresses. Hell no was my response!
Someone shows up with 8, they get dinged an additional $400… is that how I read it? And I imagine that is for those that sneak them in and avoid getting blocked?
We currently have it where the guest forfeits their security deposit upon violation of house rules, which states no guests outside of the registered total.
And we just made the exec decision… 3 nights minimum during the spring/summer season.
We also had a guest want 14, and that turned out to be bad news. We even had another host on AirBnB try to book and then add 4 guests over our maximum occupancy. facepalm.gif.
We greet the guests when they arrive, and shortly after, though generally don’t check on them in person after the initial meeting. Heck, we can see the front of the home from our home with the bend in terrain.
Thank you so much for all of this, it is making us start to think of all the angles.
We list on both major sites and in talking with AirBnB they have stated that if we have the statement in house rules that they forfeit with extra guests, they will honor it. Am I crazy for expecting that will be the case? EDIT: I’m actually thinking of cutting the other completely out and only going AirBnB, though it sounds as though the benefits and downfalls are with both.
If they pay for four, and show up with six, they pay $400 per night for the extra two. Since our extra-person rate is between $25 and $50 per night if they pay up before they show up, they have a BIG incentive to be honest. If they pay for six and show up with eight, two people are denied lodging.
So far, we haven’t had to try and force someone to pay or someone to leave. I’ve got my fingers crossed that this will keep future guests honest, too.
The key is to state the consequences of violating the rule. The problem with forfeiting the security deposit is that some states won’t allow you to do that, and, even worse, AirBnB does not actually charge them a security deposit. With our rule of $200 per night per person, I can send a payment request through AirBnB resolution center and them kick them out if they do not pay. That gives me a lot more leverage than forfeiting a non-existent security deposit.
What exactly are the biggest problems you are facing. I think you just need to be more cognizant that there will be issues. Stuff breaks, some guests are more high maintenance, yeah a few extra guests may be around. I feel like in airbnb you need to pick your battles or you will go crazy. Not everything that a guest does wrong is that big of a deal, react and get in front of big stuff, everything else is just noise.
