Forgive me but I still haven’t figured out what kind of damage these guests have done. What’s the problem? Did they burn something? Because if the problem is only the smell, well you must know that that goes away in a few hours by airing the room or using some essence. Personally I think you could have simply asked the guest for an extra cleaning fee and maybe write an adequate review about the non-compliance with the rules, but without opening a dispute if there is no concrete damage. Much of your problem seems psychological since you’ve been spying on guests all the time. Personally as a guest it would annoy me if the owner spends his time monitoring what I do inside the house after paying. Would you do the same with consumers of a substance 114 times more harmful to health such as alcohol? I don’t think so, so I think yours is an extreme ideological reaction that ended up hurting your business far more than the smell actually hurt your home.
I didn’t get the same impression as you did and would not blame this Host even though you might have handled the situation differently.
The group was partying until 3 am. The Host who lives next door saw smoke coming out from the property.
So far, no ‘spying.’ Then the Host took a cell phone and taped a guest smoking in the driveway. Hence now your spying comment. Now the Host said to the guest that he would relax the ‘no smoking outside’ rule.
So I’m not sure of the purpose of the taping since smoking outside ‘if you must’ was relented to be OK to this Host in this situation. I thought the purpose might be to evidence the 3 am partying but that’s unclear.
I do think it’s ‘aggressive’ in any situation to take out a cell phone and start recording someone. It appears that doing so might/appears to be also be a violation of Airbnb’s rule to disclose all monitoring devices, including the possibility that the Host would use a cell phone to record the guest was not disclosed in the listing.
The Host could have handled things differently. This is a new Host in a challenging situation. But Airbnb’s reaction was harsh and blaming this Host feels very unfair.
Although you believe that smoking in the house causes no real damage, and some others might agree, others feel that smoking in the house is not an ‘ideological’ issue but that smoke clings to upholstery and can be a difficult odor to remove without undergoing the expense of an ozone generator. The Host I am co-Host for is very much against smoking anywhere on the property and specifically states in the listing that the property is for non-smokers, explaining that smoke clings to the upholstery, walls, etc. Some of us have a more finely attuned sense of smell and different senses of what is an offensive smell; we can’t dismiss these people’s views and their rules as Host should be respected.
This Host was offended that the guests smoked inside and outside the house in violation of House Rules. Many of us would also be offended by such a blatant violation. These guests also violated the no partying rule and the rule against excessive noise and likely a quiet time.
This Host had every reason to feel violated. It just turns out that taking out that cell phone and recording the guest appears to be a violation of Airbnb’s rule to disclose monitoring devices. This Host didn’t think of that in the heat of the moment. Nor did most of the very experienced Hosts on this forum think of it in the quiet of their reflections. Let’s not point fingers at this Host. But let’s learn from it.
Hi Glenn, I agree with what you say and it was not my intention to offend the host, but his story is relative, because to get the full picture you should hear both sides. In my opinion, the bulk of the problem depends on the fact that the host lives next door, so he sees and hears everything, maybe he gets too alarmed by things that could be postponed. Was it really a party or was it just people up until 3am? Was there loud music? Were the guests yelling and making such a loud noise that they prevented you from sleeping? I’m glad I don’t live near the house I rent, so I’m not tempted to constantly check what the guests are doing. I only move if the neighbors report problems, but it never happened. It’s always unpleasant when guests don’t respect the rules, but as I’ve already written, before starting a fight, I tend to verify that it’s really worth it and I don’t think this is the case. I don’t even think there is a need for an ozone purifier, because the smell of grass does not attack like that of tobacco, it vanishes completely after a few hours, but as you say, everyone has a different sensitivity, so if you really need to purify with ozone 'ozone, you can send the bill to guests who have violated the rules, but you can only do so if you avoid arguing or complicating the situation. For the rest I continue to think that there is a strong ideological and psychological component: weed = bad people. To stigmatize is totally wrong.
You don’t seem to have really read the OP’s post.
Obviously it wasn’t just “people up til 3am” quietly conversing.
And a host living next door is not a “problem”. Onsite hosts experience far fewer guest issues than off-site hosts.
The main problem here is that this was a new, inexperienced host who didn’t know how to deal with these disrespectful guests and should have kicked them out after the first night instead of letting them stay for a week when they obviously had no intention of respecting the house rules.
And the newbie host likely had little idea how to vet prospective guests or this group would not have been accepted in the first place, and perhaps did not make it clear in his listing info that he lives right next door to the rental, which is a great tool for warding off partiers and those with nefarious intent.
I’ve read everything, but as I already wrote this is his version. On the other hand a large group of people on holiday certainly can make noise, I’m not so sure if the weed hadn’t been involved in this story the reaction would have been the same. It may be that living next door has advantages, but I, who do not live next door, have never had reports from neighbors about annoying guests, although I have had groups of young people several times, it could also be due to the fact that my neighbors they are young and therefore perhaps not too alarmed when they hear of peers cheerful after hours. It’s all relative. My intervention only serves to show a different perspective on how the story could have been handled. Then everyone decides for himself, some throw you out immediately, others ask you for damages later. The host already had evidence of smoking in the house for the messages, there was no need to violate privacy by sneaking a video.
A lot of lawyer’ types here are discussing legalisms - what is ‘legal’ and what is a ‘violation of privacy’. I don’t think there are any credentialed lawyers in this discussion, so I am taking all the legalisms at their face value. I too am able to google the law.
That said, I feel so bad for the new host. Blaming the victim for not understanding their rights and what they are entitled to do in their own home, or more importantly what they did in a situation where they were dealing with guests flaunting the rules and using their bullying tactics to harm the host is sad.
That said, then my opinion is that walking onto your driveway with you cam phone in record is not ‘sneaking’. Since the guest was informed that the host was recording them, it is not ‘sneaking’. And despite the logic being proposed that there is a relativity of ‘how much the rule is being broken’ based on the thoughts of some hosts that are ok with house rules being broken because they are not good house rules, sorry everyone, if the house rule is no smoking (like it is in mine) then having a guest break that rule is simply a bad guest and, based on airbnb’s policies, that guest could be cancelled.
“The rules do not apply to us” is not a valid argument for a guest, much the same as “We do not have that rule at our airbnb, so it is a bad rule for you to have in your airbnb” is not an argument that has any validity. And telling a host to ‘chill’ when rules are broken is possibly a way to make confrontation less confrontational (!), but the fact remains that the host has to deal with a bad guest.
Yes, it should have been stopped the first infraction (or discussed with the guest) but no victim blaming please.
Thanks for that. Yes, I agree that there are two sides to every story. But it seems to me that these guests were making noise. In Worcester MA the noise ordinance specifies a quiet time starting at 9 pm, and the noise cannot be either ‘plainly audible’ (you don’t have to be able to make out the words but hear the sounds) 25 feet or more away, or be more than 10dbA more than the ambient noise at the property line.
I got a free app [NIOSH SLM] so I’m going to be testing to get a sense of what the difference in sound is. I’ve read that it’s perceived as twice as loud as the ambient sound. I just did a quick test inside where I laughed aloud and the sound went from 28 dB(a) to 48 dB(a). So that’s a 20dB(a) jump but from a few feet away.
Sound really carries and it’s easy to disturb others even inadvertently.
I don’t think it’s fair to our neighbors for them to be our monitoring device. People often don’t want to complain. By the time they complain it might be really bad and have been so for awhile. So that wouldn’t be an approach I’m comfortable with. I want zero hassle/inconvenience for my neighbors.
Our neighbors are middle aged to seniors to 80+, so that sounds different than your neighbors with different sensitivities.
I agree with you. I didn’t get any sense from this OP that there was any such bias. the fact that they smoked anything inside or outside, when both appear to be against house rules, is/would be a problem for me.
Plus their partying till 3 am feels like an ‘in your face/I don’t care’ approach. Unless the OP is a nut I don’t think he would message them at 3 am if the noise was not noticeable. I don’t think there’s anything I could hear from these guests that would persuade me that they were not way out of line in both the smoking inside and outside, and their making noise till 3 am.
That is not acceptable outside after the quiet time has been established. It’s likely against the law and inconsiderate to at least our neighbors.
I think it’s worth your asking your neighbors some time if they’ve been inconvenienced and volunteering that if they ever are disturbed that they should not hesitate at all to reach out to let you know.
I’m again sorry for what happened to this OP, from the guests and then from Airbnb. We can each decide for ourselves how we might have handled this tough situation – and should – but these guests acted disrespectfully and Airbnb’s actions were harsh in my opinion.
I am giving a call-out to @Annet3176 because she coaches new Hosts; this story is instructive even for experienced Hosts/co-Hosts such as ourselves.
I also feel really bad for the OP. It was a really unfortunate set of circumstances for a new host to get such a disrespectful group right off the bat, and he was also likely under the false impression that Airbnb will be supportive and helpful to a host who is in a bad situation, which is the Airbnb rhetoric that Airbnb employs to lure in new, unsuspecting hosts.
I certainly wasn’t victim blaming when pointing out that one of the problems was that this was a new, inexperienced host who likely would have handled the situation differently had they had more bookings under their belt or thought to post here for advice after the first night of these disrespectful guests. We all start out as newbie hosts at some point and it’s a big learning curve. And we seldom learn everything about hosting and how to deal with rule breakers just from our own experience- most of us here have learned much from our fellow hosts on forums like this, which, while we may never run into those problems, at least gives us some ideas and tools and confidence for how to deal if we do ever face similar situations.
I remember the first time I had an “issue” with a guest (my second ever guest). I clearly remember standing there thinking, “Oh, s**t, how am I supposed to deal with this?”, and I wasn’t even aware of hosting forums at that point, so just had to handle it as came naturally to me. It wasn’t anywhere near as nasty a situation as the OP’s and I worked it out amiably with the guest, but it easily could have gone otherwise had my intuition on the best way to approach it been different, or if the guest had had a combative, disrespectful attitude.
I think you are being quite disrespectful to the OP’s experience by dismissing him saying his guests were partying until 3am by suggesting that this was simply guests being “cheerful after hours”. Being cheerful does not entail being noisy and disrespectful of the house rules.
Okay, you’re right, I overdid the exposure, I don’t want to blame the victim, just “wake them up”. Your speech is perfectly logical, if the guests have signed a contract and subscribed to the rules, they must respect them. I assure you that I am not intransigent, for this purpose I took out a good insurance policy, because as we know Airbnb does not protect us. The point is to understand how each situation can be best managed. Unfortunately, when acting on impulse, one tends to be guided by one’s beliefs/ideas as well, in this specific case it seems to me that the stigma for weed is an irrational basis. For those who wish, the “no smoking” rule could be highlighted in the listing, clearly specifying “No420Friendly”.
I think you will find that weed is not ‘stigmatized’ here.
You are still assuming the host is some moral majority type who thinks marijuana is the devil’s weed. He clearly had a no smoking rule, which means smoking anything, which the guests ignored. That and the partying was the issue.
I’m not assuming it, I’m sure because of what she said: “I’m done with Airbnb because it allows drugs in my home” she didn’t say: "I’m done with Airbnb because it doesn’t enforce the smoking ban in my house,” the difference is clear, so the issue here seems to be what this person deems DRUGS.
This is your interpretation, not what I said. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, just to share my experience. I said it never happened to me, maybe I was lucky or maybe it depends on the fact that my neighbors are young and therefore they pay less attention to these things, I don’t know, but these are the facts, you put malice in speech, not me.
Sounds like guests made a safety complaint and they suspended your account. Common practice with Airbnb I’m afraid.
Appalling behaviour. @Dscubasteve00
I agree that its a good thing that you no longer want to use Airbnb because judging only by your posts here, you are probably not yet experienced enough to be successful in the hospitality business.
Do note though that Airbnb did not allow drug use in your home. You did. Enforcing a host’s rules and establishing clear good behaviour is up to the host or co-host.
Airbnb is merely the advertising platform that introduces the host to the guest. As you are next door, it is entirely up to you to regulate your business and run it satisfactorily.
You said yourself that you didn’t know what to do and messaged them hours after they had started smoking and making a noise. You need to act promptly when any sort of undesirable behaviour begins,
If you are interested in continuing in the hospitality business, and there are many platforms you can use, one great way of learning is to read as much as you can here. And remember, we’re always happy to help if there’s anything you don’t understand or need help with.