Please can you critique my rules

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Hi Fahed,

Nice place! There is nothing wrong with a tone of house rules being both firm and distinct, especially when dealing with large groups in whole house listings. The short, concise, laser and clearer the better. However, a please and thank you go a long way, too and the rules could be more streamlined:

-No smoking or vaping in or around the house.

-No excessive noise that may disturb neighbours.

-No unregistered guests on or in the property.

-Please park only in the allocated parking space(s).

Permission from host is required before:

○ Having unregistered visitors to the property.

○ Sleeping on sofas (except the sofa bed).

○ Late check-ins/check-outs (which may incur additional fees).

○ Moving furniture or logging out of the television Netflix/Amazon accounts.

Please contact us with any questions, as well as when damage occurs or any problem may arise during your stay, so we can remedy it immediately. Thank you.

I would eliminate the five star hotel reference, as it is already confusing for Airbnb users who don’t understand Air’s star rating system is more like Yelp, than traditional hotels. Also, why start out on a negative? Your place looks great, and at that price point and the Plus status, you are attracting a more upmarket guest anyway. Respect is mutual. Give it, to get it.

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No Problem, if I lived in the UK I could contract to make them for you LOL Pinterest has tons of great tutorials on how to make custom size fitted sheets. After you make your first one, it is super easy. At least for me, :wink:

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Just curious- is Kensington part of the limit of 90 days ruling?

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Yep! Apparantley, it’s the strictest of all the boroughs. They seem to be the only ones with funding needed to enforce and they’re pretty protective of the area. I’m doing my best to get the property taken up as corporate midterm lets and then airbnb to fill in the gaps. I have about 75 days left for 2018 though.

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So how will you manage this and is 90 days worthwhile?

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In a nutshell, I’m aiming for midterm corporate rentals. I still have about 75 days for 2018 and the first 90 days of 2019, so I’m using airbnb to give me time to market it to corporates and relocation agents. Thereafter, I intend on using airbnb to fill up any gaps.

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But aren’t you limited to 90 days on any platform in total renting days?

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90 days is on lettings shorter than 90 days. So, in a 365 day year, you could do 3 x 90 day lettings (ie corporate) and then 90 x 1 day lettings (ie airbnb).

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I may be misunderstanding what you’re saying here, but a way to avoid this would be just don’t give them the door code until they arrive. That way, you (or your mom) still greets them in person, but after that, they can come and go as they please.

But are you saying that Plus won’t allow you to limit check-in hours? People can check in 24/7 rather than between, say 4pm-10pm or something? That would make it trickier.

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Yep. Needs to be 24/7. It’s the one thing putting me off Plus because self check-in makes it difficult to regulate 3rd party bookings, fraudulent bookings etc

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I would say you need a camera then, so that you can see exactly who’s coming in and out.

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Definitely agree! And let’s guess at the number of guests who will actually read the rules anyway. Although many guests won’t read them, they will assess the length of the blurb and if it’s long, will be put off by too many rules - even if they didn’t read them.

Truly, it’s the horror stories that make the news. They are pretty rare though, despite what the internet (including this site) would have you believe. And I would say (controversially, I know) that a lot of those horror stories wouldn’t have happened if hosts did their homework properly, priced their rentals accordingly and (often) didn’t swan off on holiday leaving no co-host (or mum) to look after the guests. Planning for the worst case scenario is a good thing but obsessing about it isn’t.

As a member here said many moons ago, no-one wants to read on the internet about great guests - it’s those rare horror stories that make it into the media (and the first couple of pages of Google search results).

I admit though that I’m a little bit worried about your mum. I appreciate that you’re trying to make things as easy as possible for her but being the on-the-spot host substitute isn’t easy.

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So you are telling people you will accept third party bookings on behalf of someone else if they notify you in advance?

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Yep! I have a Ring Spotlight Cam and one of the rules is not to touch it! :joy:

I agree. I’m doing my best to find the balance between the 2.

Yeah. I wish I was there. That’s why I’m doing my best to prevent the worst in advance whilst simultaneously not being so overbearing that guests are put off.

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I’m saying that 3rd party bookings are not allowed without prior permission which I may or may not give.

As examples…

  1. One guy enquired and, an hour later, a different guy (with no profile photo) contacted me to book, saying that he also owned the first account and that he was a property agent booking for someone else. Pretty confusing stuff, but I felt super uncomfortable and said no.

  2. A Londoner enquired on behalf of his autistic brother and family who were coming for holiday from America. So, as long as their names matched up, I would have been happy to this brother’s act of kindness to his brother. But when I found out that (a) he wanted it for the following night, (b) would be checking in at 1am and (c) would not be there for the check-in himself, I decided not to. He also appears to be an agent.

By big problem with 3rd party bookings is that it appears to open the door to fraud and, if the person who is staying is not an Airbnb user themselves, then the stay won’t be in the spirit of Airbnb and is likely to lead to undesired consequences (I believe).

Any way I can improve the rules wording to make it clearer that 3rd party bookings are okay with prior approval?

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You’ve probably done these things already but I’m going to mention them anyway :slight_smile:

Three things that your mum must have:

  1. A list of friendly and efficient contractors who will come to your rental quickly to make any repairs, Including a general handyman. These people must know in advance that your place is a rental and that keeping guests happy is paramount. They should also know that they should invoice you and not expect immediate payment from your mum. Discuss it with her - who will she call in there’s a plumbing emergency at two in the morning? What if it’s December and the heating system breaks? What if a guest accidentally breaks a window?

  2. Access to an online store account or an account at a local cash & carry. (Online will obviously be easier for her). This way, if she needs any supplies at all, she’ll be able to order them without having to worry about payment etc.

  3. A few gift vouchers. Starbucks are a good idea because they’re everywhere. Guests can use them while they are staying with you or back at home. If there has been any sort of problem then she can give them to those guests as a ‘sorry’ gesture. It works. (Aren’t TGI Fridays everywhere too? Your mum can say ’ thank you for your patience when we had to get a plumber to unblock the toilet. Fahed would like you to enjoy dinner on him’.)

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Awesome suggestions!!! Am noting them down now! Thank you!

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I love third party bookings. Usually an administrative assistant booking for her team/ business travelers.

My best guests, clean, never at the property as they are at some conference, and don’t cook.

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I’d love those too! :smiley:

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By the way, I was reading the Airbnb ToS for the first time and, apparantley, 3rd party bookings are not allowed.

We require Airbnb reservations booked for personal travel to be booked by the person who’s going to stay at the listing.