We live in Lancaster, a small town with a large, highly ranked University. A lot of our guests have a connection to the Uni - typically Mums and Dads dropping kids off at the start of term or collecting them at the end of term. Last night’s guest was collecting her brother, and she’d chosen our house because she thought her brother lived in our part of town. It turned out that he lived next door to us, in the other half of our semi-detached house! If we now get dinged for location, I’m personally going to drive down to London and firebomb her house!
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Wow. That’s wonderful. I hope as Airbnb matures we continue to get more guests who use the map and a little research to choose a location that suits them. It’s been a long time since I got a 4 for location.
Coincidentally my current guest messaged me that my location was perfect for her. Talking later it turns out one of the aunts she is here to visit lives on my street.
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What a brilliant coincidence!
I once had a great one - it was a young couple who were coming for a wedding.
On their second day, there was an outdoor party going on in the building next to ours - quite noisy. My other half knows how fussy I am about our guest’s peace and quiet and he couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting agitated about the noisy party.
As you’ve probably guessed, the wedding that the guests were in town for was the party next door.
It’s a while ago so I can’t remember exactly but I hope that was a five star rating for location!
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I had a guest last summer that was going to a family reunion and it was around the corner from my house. What was so cool was that the person had been adopted and never knew his birth family and only found out when he did a DNA test. . His birth mother decided to get together the whole family for a reunion to meet him. Later that week a friend I paint with was telling me this really cool story about her friend gave up a infant found them and she had a family reunion for. Small world.
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So my location-story guest booked here because she spent part of her childhood in the local village. She told me over breakfast that it was fun walking the streets and remembering her home, the library, old Mrs. Smith, etc.
She gave me 4 stars or maybe it was 3 - I have truly forgotten, not 5 anyway - on location with the explanation that it was a long drive [approx 2 hours] from the city where she lives now.
I want you to get 5, @southendbootboy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t.
“It was too close to my brother’s place.”
Please do update.
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I had a booking in May for guests attending a high-school graduation where the graduate and her parents lived in the house next-door to my listing. I’ve had 3 other guest groups visiting family in the immediate neighborhood.
LOL, the most common question guests ask in an inquiry is how far is it to the airport (which is in my listing information) or how far it is to some location in a nearby suburb that they could estimate very accurately just by looking at the map. I always give them the info they ask for and politely tell them where they can find more info on the location in my listing.
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Yes. It’s so much easier to just ask than do the research on your own. But if a guest zooms in the map they can practically identify the street a host is on if they know much about the neighborhood at all.
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If it’s before they book I think some folks aren’t sure how accurate the Airbnb map is. If it’s after booking, those folks drive me nuts!! They have the exact address, yet will message me with a laundry list of destinations wanting to know how far from the unit to each one, which method is best (car, Uber/Lyft, walking, public transport), etc. I should just send them a link to Google maps.
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I love this story! I recently had a group in the city for a family event, and they let us know that their ancestors had lived and worked in this neighborhood when they immigrated, so finding our spot felt like fate. I made sure to leave some history info and recommendations for them.
I often have people coming to our spot to visit family or friends who live just blocks away, which feels nice as a host and a neighbor.
Regarding guests who can’t seem to work Google maps prior to their visit, I try to spot them (“what trains are closest to your home? about how far to [random major tourist spot]?”) and softly direct them to the part of the listing that includes the map, and they can click the drop-down tab to see more information about transit options and our area.
I often throw out a transit recommendation without prompting, but I do wish guests could do a little more research themselves before an inquiry - it just makes me worried they’ll be high maintenance or otherwise unhappy.
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Me too. But there are so many others too. The beach, the nearest supermarket, the restaurants, the conference centre, the theatres, the cruise port, etc. etc. etc.
The good thing is that once you’ve been hosting for a while, you know them all and can write them in your sleep. 
A tip though is to have a saved message with all the frequently asked for info. ‘nearest boat hire’, ‘nearest convenience store’, ‘best local museum’ etc. details. Then when the guest asks how far it is to the airport get your saved message and write at the top you can write ‘Hi Guest, the airport is just over seven miles away. Here are some other local places that I’m sure will interest you…’
Of course, I use IB so guests have already booked at this stage so I don’t mind the couple of minutes it takes to do this.
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excellent idea! - we’ll copy that if you don’t mind!
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Hi Folks,
I suggest no one in the forum uses language that implies a threat, especially to future guests. Most of us have a great sense of humor and it seems funny, but posting it online can bring unintended consequences. There are lots of stories online regarding this.
Oh dear. Perhaps I’d best go back and delete the post I made some time ago about taking badly-behaved guests round the back of the house and shooting them…
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We recently had a pair of guests who sent several messages beforehand asking about distances to various locations. When they arrived, it turned out that they didn’t have internet at home, and the husband (who was home all day alone while the wife was at a conference) also didn’t have a smart phone. Or a car. As a pair, I was surprised at just how helpless they were - he called me three times one morning, culminating in a request for a taxi company recommendation (thank goodness for Google). But they were very sweet and left the apartment in good shape, so all was forgiven.
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I’m 71 and I remember what life was like before the internet, smart phones, &c. It was actually quite difficult to get hold of information in those days, unless you lived near a large Public Library. Perhaps some people these days should try it themselves.
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You won’t believe the location issues we have. We are on a state line, and while the tribe is developing our 911 database, and rolling out all this tax software. Ours is on AZ, but airbnb places our caret inaccurately as UT, and erroneously remits our taxes as UT. But we are Monument Valley AZ, and Airbnb refuses to correct this. We probably have contacted them a million times.
So then we see that airbnb new tax policy states that if we don’t agree to their remittance of our taxes to the wrong state, we suddenly “waive” our rights.
Airbnb doesn’t allow a caret to be placed 5 miles outside of the zip code. So our zip code city is 25 miles away, but we are on the AZ border, so its possible and its for real. But our caret cannot be placed in Monument Valley AZ. So as a consequence, everyone and their service dog dings us for location, except its airbnb and not us, with this policy. Its very hurtful actually because we were the first airbnb in our area, and further, because its so easily resolvable, as a software issue, we are just being ignored, and we are a Tribe, so other countries have special agreements. But we can’t seem to get airbnb to assign a specialist, who could easily review the documentation and resolve.
And the maps that people use or GPS to get here are by rental companies in Flagstaff who do not have updated maps, and they lead people off course by GPS. And if they go by airbnb location link or by their vehicle, they blame us for those errors as hosts. Every single day. Imagine that for your reviews and you can’t even solve the problem.
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No, please don’t. (Delete I mean, the taking them round the back and shooting them is fine. Sigh, joke).
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