A neighbor who has a large house that she rents out on Airbnb for five times the rate that I charge for my studio bungalow has just booked my bungalow for a night. I imagine she’s checking out the competition, but I don’t know for sure yet. Any thoughts? Should I bluntly ask her what she’s up to? If she is indeed checking out the competition, are there any issues of which I should be aware?
she probably overbooked and gave all the rooms away.
Why not ask? - and if she is “checking out the competition” that is a reason to say the
guest makes you uncomfortable.
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Thanks for your response. I sent her a welcoming note that included this question: “What brings you to my place exactly?” Let’s see how she responds.
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This happened to us in California. A neighbor with a whole house listing wanted to make a regular deal to stay in our guest room when they rented their home for 5-6 times our nightly rate so they could be profitable. We politely refused. Why list your home if you have nowhere to go? It’s up to you but we just didn’t have a good feeling about it.
On the bright side, in using her hosting account she shows a lot of transparency. My guess is that she overbooked or something. If she wanted to check out the competition, she could easily have made a second account to travel.
I do understand you being a bit nervous about it. Give us an update once you get her answer.
I don’t understand why you didn’t ask her straight away. Most of us ask local people their reason for staying even if they’re not hosts. There could be many legitimate reasons and because your two rentals are so dissimilar, if she’s checking out the competition she’s not being very sensible about it. If she was she’d be checking out a place comparable to her own.
And the whole concept of checking out the competition is weird to me - why would anyone spend time and money doing that?
We’ve stayed in local Airbnbs when we’ve had maintenance done on our property that has been noisy or smelly or whatever. We’ve also stayed in a local Airbnb when there was a mandatory evacuation due to the threatened hurricane (that never arrived).
We’ve had local people stay here when their own homes have been tented for termites. I’ve just had a guest who was a single bloke who lived on a small boat but wanted to stay somewhere more civilised when his girlfriend was in town. And so on…
I’ve also hosted hosts several times and every time, they’ve been lovely.
I think there is nothing wrong here either and having other area hosts being a friend is great. You can help each other out on bookings and such. Curt
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In response to my question of her, "“What brings you to my place exactly?” she cancelled her reservation. Hm!
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I seriously doubt that, you don’t sound like competition from your description. More likely she is doing what many hosts do, renting out their expensive listing and renting a much cheaper option for themselves or staying with a partner or friend for the night.
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I have had that happen to me, people with high end listing stay with me because they got back a day early, can make more money that way whatever.
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