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We recently received an inquiry from a would-be guest who asked, since we live downstairs, if for two of their five day stay:
“If we wanted complete privacy for a couple of nights would that be possible?”
Ha ha.
We reminded them that there are no shared spaces inside or outside, and also the rule against parties.
I’ve read posts from home-share hosts where guests had the unmitigated gall to ask the hosts if they could go stay somewhere else so the guests had the entire house to themselves. They want an entire house for the price of a private room with shared facilities. 
Pisses me off when they beg for a late checkout which I accept if place isn’t booked but upsets the cleaning schedule and they leave early. Same with ll early check ins. More and more i simply say I can only confirm the morning of
I got a really marvellous 5* review today, she even called me a “legend” for all the helpful advice I gave them. and then finished with this “Highly recommend and it is worth all the money we spent.”
ugh, she spent $246 to rent a cottage on a 100acre farm in a famous wine region, and bring her dog for one night. (yes we have a pet fee, so take that off). she used our washing machine/dryer (they were van life people, so yeah they could easily park their van here too) and she also got a free sauna cos she was savvy to grab my Instagram fee offer. We are NOT expensive. We should be, given the unique offering we have. I know times are tough, but people seem to forget ALL of us are being squeezed right now.
There is a town in Baja, Mexico, where the locals recently booted out all the vanlifers, who had decided that parking all around their town square, helping themselves to the scarce municipal water, and pooping in the bushes was a great way to vacation in Mexico for free.
yes, this happens A LOT in many beach towns in Australia. Many public toilets also have free showers, and in Qld at least there are free gas BBQs in the parks. Around Sydney all the beach parking is now paid parking, which sucks, but no doubt that’s cos the hippies (the OG vanlifers) ruined it for everyone.
What even does that mean?!? Were they asking you to leave so they could have the whole place?? How bizarre – I’m hoping that this didn’t translate into a stay, but if it did, I hope you’ll have some interesting stories to tell us afterward! lol
No, a stay didn’t result.
I responded:
Yes, per the listing my roommate and I do live on site but in the floor below yours, with you having a separate entrance, separate driveway and no shared spaces inside or outside (the back yard is entirely yours, gated and fenced in).
So you would have complete privacy from us.
FYI: Please note that Airbnb rules do not permit parties (e.g., events that would create a noise disturbance or exceed lesser of: maximum occupancy of six or number of registered guests (unless we agreed otherwise on the registered guests).
What other questions do you have?
They never responded.
Bullet dodged, for sure.
Once had a guest trying to book late and wanted that night for free, When i said no, her reply was, so you would rather stay empty tonight,
There was once a guy who posted on the Airbnb CC- he claimed to be a host, but had no listings attached to his profile and was really cagey about it when someone questioned that.
He posted a link to his blog, which advised guests to do all kinds of things that hosts hate or that indicate the guest is a red flag.
That’s basically exactly the kind of dumb advice he gave. “Send out about 40 inquiries for any area you want to go. Always ask for a discount and if the host says no, point out to the host that it’s better for them to have the place booked at a discount than maybe end up with unbooked nights.”
But your inquirer was even more stupid than that. “Oh yeah, I’d much prefer to have someone dirty the sheets and towels and use the utilities for free than have the place stay empty. Now why didn’t I think of how much sense that makes?”
A few times a year i will get a last minute inquiry to book for a couple with maybe 1 child - our house has 7 bedrooms and space for about 25 people altogether counting sofa beds and open plan loft space, so I always know what’s coming. It will be a follow up question about reducing the minimum stay from 3 nights to 1 with a price reduction as only 3 people, and a request to book off the platform…always a polite no, and I flag up to Airbnb. A few days later their algorithms will warn me not to accept X as they are doing the rounds.
I believe Airbnb has a limit of 25 messages every 24 hours for guests…
I hope these stupid people reach the limit and then the only thing they can do is RTB or IB.
Well, this isn’t a funny inquiry, but it’s a funny exchange due to language issues.
I write late morning of check-in day to the guest in a 7-day reservation for four people, asking if she wants to check-in early, that a free early check-in is available.
She says “Oh no, my husband is leaving me and going back to New York.”
[I’m thinking ‘OMG!’ and ‘this is not an extenuating circumstance.’]
Not sure if this meant she would not be coming after all but trying to stay positive, I write: “I’m sorry. So, are you saying it will just be three of you?”
[I’m thinking a la @house_plants that I should have put in the rules as we do in our VRBO listing that the number of guests does not decrease (we have an additional guest fee of $30/day). Oh well. Chin up.]
She says: “No, it will be four. We won’t need parking because the driver will let us off.”
[Wow, I’m thinking, this is a resilient woman. The vacation goes on, and she’s hired a driver already!]
It turns out that her husband was dropping his family off (wife and three daughters) and then driving back to New York. The ‘driver’ was the husband. Everything was OK.
I’m not sure who was more clueless, the guest or me.
[Though all she had to do to answer my early check-in offer was to say ‘No, thank you.’]. It was TMI, too much information.
Who does that?
