Is anyone hosting just for fun?

Good for them if they can. I travel internationally too, but I tend to book hotels or Airbnbs. For me hosting IS NOT fun and I can’t imagine it could be for somebody else. And honestly I’m mildly annoyed if the hosts are overly friendly, like inviting us for a glass of something and a chat.

You can’t imagine anything beyond your own experience?
Inviting guests for a glass of something and a chat is not what I would call “overly friendly”. I would consider it hospitable.
It really sounds like you should stick to hotels if a friendly hospitable invitation that you have the option to decline annoys you. Chats over drinks between hosts and guests are something that makes Airbnb more attractive than hotels for many guests and hosts and is exactly the sort of thing that makes hosting fun for a lot of us.

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I see the pattern here.

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My first hosting experience was fun because I met every single person, gave the tour of the rental, had dinner, drinks and hikes with some. I was doing it for the money, but all aligned to be a positive experience.

This one is different because of covid and making it a contactless entry, no tours. I’ve had a few guests that I sit on the porch and have coffee/wine with but not that many, I do miss that.

For a lot of travelers, it’s the people they meet and connect with along the way that is a big part of their travel experience. They are much more likely to retain great memories of a bottle of wine and good conversation shared than whether you provided high end shampoo. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

For me, it gives the perk to the work involved in hosting, connecting with people from all over, many of whom are just lovely, and often have had really interesting lives.
Sorry you don’t get to enjoy that anymore. My kitchen has so many windows and a big bifold doorway to the terrace, where the dining table is, that it’s really like an open air kitchen, so after 2 years of being closed for Covid, I feel okay about having guests again who share my kitchen.

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Well, good for you folks. When I go someplace, I most likely have an agenda about what I want to do and I might be tired and just not in the mood for hanging out with the host.

If they offer breakfast - like it happened one time - it’s ok; they offered for the entire group of guests, not just us.

I don’t mind a few minutes polite conversation, but an entire hour in the host’s bar with exchanged life stories, no. My partner enjoyed it. I didn’t. The host worked with the homeland security. He quickly inquired about our visa status or whether we were us citizens. This was immediately after Trump refused entrance to a bunch of people who had legal status and legal visas. I felt violated. I was not there to be questioned about my legal status and citizenship. I avoided politics like the plague. You never know which side they are leaning.

I have a couple of people I stayed at and we became friends but we had much more in common from the very beginning, just by reading the description. Similarly for me as a host, I interacted and hung out with a few fellow software developers and a couple of older people for whom I went an extra mile like giving rides but that’s about it.

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Well that flipped quickly. You went from saying “hosting isn’t fun for me/I can’t imagine it being fun for anyone/I’m annoyed by overly friendly hosts” to “I was improperly questioned about my immigration status.” Those aren’t the same at all.

In the case of the government host using Airbnb to improperly question guests under the guise of being friendly, I would have reported him to Airbnb.

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Understandable, but all you have to do is politely decline, I don’t quite get why a hospitable invitation is a cause for annoyance. We get invited to all sorts of things in life we may have no interest in and decline to attend.

Sure, some hosts might be unaware of what is appropriate to discuss with guests and it does sound weird for that host to ask you about your visa status. But one host’s behavior is not indicative of what one might encounter if invited for a coffee or glass of wine with a host.

Lucky you! Sounds like you are on a tropical island. Im in a city. People dont come here for fun. They come to visit relatives at holidays, for weddings/graduations/funerals/birthdays and other family functions, job interviews etc. Oh I never had a good experience with people coming for job interviews. They are too nervous, don’t sleep well, don’t respond to my questions or comments, leave very early in the morning and then leave me a bad review. One guy left at 3 am saying he couldn’t sleep. Another said the instructions were not clear.