Please critique my house rules

Please ensure you have read and are happy with our house rules We would be grateful if you could confirm this prior to booking our property.

This is a quiet place for reading, surfing the net, and sleeping; We prefer guests who are out and about during the day

Please do not smoke or vape anywhere on the property

Please, no shoes in the house or your room.

Please do not take food or drink into your room

Only confirmed guests are allowed on our property. ‘Visitors’, deliveries, and 3rd party bookings are not allowed. No parties, no pets.

You have access to your room, the kitchen area, and the bathroom assigned to your room only. We share the public areas; please be considerate of sleeping guests.

I really like the bulleted points made by @iGMS; it makes for easier reading.

Rolf – PLEASE stop begging your guests! These are RULES not ‘pretty please’ requests. Here’s my revision:

  1. BEFORE BOOKING: Confirm that you have read and agree to conform to our house rules.

  2. This is a quiet place for reading, surfing the net, and sleeping. We prefer guests who are out and about during the day.

  3. NO SMOKING OR VAPING ANYWHERE ON THE PROPERTY!

  4. NO SHOES IN THE HOUSE or your room.

  5. NO FOOD OR DRINK IN YOUR ROOM.

  6. CONFIRMED GUESTS ONLY. NO visitors, deliveries, or 3rd party bookings. NO exceptions!

  7. NO PARTIES. NO PETS.

  8. You have access to your room, the kitchen, and the bathroom assigned to your room ONLY. BE CONSIDERATE of sleeping guests.

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There are exceptions to this rule as I have contacted Airbnb and we are permitted to cancel or decline any guest who books or shows up with any type of animal (service & emotional support included) on property due to allergies.

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I would put " no smoking on the property" . Instead of outside .
The part with wearing outside shoes is a bit confusing. And had to read it couple times to understand what you mean
Also about personalities is also very vag.
This part I would remove .
But the rest looks good, I have same rules

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This part is redundant since guests have to click “ACCEPT” to proceed. You can eliminate this.

Another way to say this is “Please enjoy your meals sitting at a table instead of eating in bed. You can use the kitchen table, dining room table or breakfast nook.” People will be eating and drinking in the room so be prepared.

When you put half quotes around ‘visitors’ it makes it sound like you’re insinuating that the visitors your guests might receive aren’t really visitors. Is that really what you intend to insinuate? I don’t think you do so I’d remove those.
Your requirement about everybody reading and agreeing to abide by the house rules is impossible to enforce unless you print the house rules and have each guest sign. When additional guests are added to a reservation, the guest making the reservation is the only one that agree.
Your requirement about deliveries might be seen as troublesome by guests who want to order some food like a pizza. I’m not sure if thats what you intended to say but by now we get the point that you’re strict so I would expect someone to take that literally.

The part about parties and animals can be excluded entirely. Thats covered by the rules above your custom rules. Same with breaking the law, thats already against the law.

About the ‘immature or insensitive’ guests, they don’t know they are that way and will book anyway. What I’ve found works better is painting a picture of the type of guest who is ideal “This room is ideal for 1-4 responsible adults who want to travel on a budget.”

You can let guests know what they do and do not have access to by including or excluding the amenities in the listing description and listing photos. I’ve found that guests tend to be really respectful and don’t invade other guest’s rooms for example.

The more I think about this the more I am on the side of less rules, when I book a hotel at most I initial something about no smoking and go to my room. Do hosts really need to control everything that happens, visitors will visit, sometimes to have sex and go is that the hosts concern? I am going to come up with a really condensed set of rules something like this:

Please be a decent human, clean up after yourself and don’t smoke in my house.

Thanks

RR

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You have NO idea how terribly naive this position is!!

No you cannot. One customer rep will tell you that. Then a guest will complain, and you will be delisted for discrimination.

The official position is that you are expected to accept service animals and emotional support animals. The reality is more that they expect you to let the guest decide whether your place is right for them. The allergy argument sounds good but not the reality of many.

Don’t you read what everyone says about relying on the word of an individual CS???

Actually it wasn’t a CS support person who indicated the account it was upgraded to a supervisor because the request came thru for a next day arrival.

How do you know what the local weather/fire danger conditions are in the OP’s area? There are many places in the West that often have high fire danger when NO smoking is allowed anywhere outside. Plus smokers tend to leave their damned butts everywhere! My neighbors on both sides are non-smokers, and don’t want smoke drifting into their yard.

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Are hosts required to accept assistance animals?

Generally, yes, unless there is a threat to health or safety (see below). At Airbnb, we acknowledge that assistance animals are not the same as pets and serve a crucial function for their owner. As stated in our Nondiscrimination Policy, hosts are expected to reasonably accommodate reservations where an assistance animal may be present, even if their listing/house rules state “no pets”.

What if I have a health or safety concern related to assistance animals?

It’s important to be aware of the fact that the assistance animal, whether a service animal or emotional support animal, plays an important role in your guest’s ability to travel. However, if your listing includes a shared space and an assistance animal would create a health or safety hazard to you or others (e.g. allergies and pets who are unable to share space with other animals due to a safety concern), we will not require you to host the guests with the assistance animal. Please be clear and polite when communicating with guests about this. We also suggest you include information regarding any allergies or any safety concerns regarding your pets in a shared space in your listing description in order to better inform prospective guests.

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Uh… no. Rules need to be definite, with NO room for fudging or argument. That’s why we have them. And for AirBnB purposes of enforcement they must be called “rules”.

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Sorry, but you are wrong. You are allowed to reject guests with animals other than the service animals that Federal law requires you to accept as long as it’s a shared space.

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here are the rules as of now, with all the comments above factored in. If you have comments, please comment on THIS:

Please ensure you have read and are happy with our house rules. We would be grateful if you could confirm this prior to booking our property

• This is a quiet place for reading, surfing the net, and sleeping. We prefer guests who are out and about during the day

• Please do not smoke or vape anywhere on the property

• Please, no shoes in the house or your room

• Please do not take food or drink into your room

• Only confirmed guests are allowed on our property. ‘Visitors’, deliveries, and 3rd party bookings are not allowed. No parties, no pets

• You have access to your room, the kitchen area, and the bathroom assigned to your room only. We share the public areas; please be considerate of sleeping guests

Actually, @Klatchers in a shared space you can even reject bookings with legal service animals in certain cases, as indicated in the post @Cindy_Turner_Dodd has above with a copy paste from the ToS.

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We’re all going to have to agree to disagree here, Ken, I think. Some of us think that removing/not removing shoes is a capital offence, others think that saying “I wonder if you’d possibly mind removing/not removing your shoes perghaps, if that’s ok with you?” is a touch aggressive. It’s all down to our individual personality and therefore hosting style.

What is not clear is if this makes any difference to our enjoyment of hosting or our guests’ behaviour!

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These are so much better and sound very reasonable. A couple of things to suggest (still!) Take “visitors” out of quotes - visitors are visitors are visitors, surely?

Also, I’m not sure what the last para means: you state the rooms that guests have access to (only) but then you mention “public areas” which, presumably the guest also has access to? I’m a bit confused by it so perhaps guests may be also.

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How would you rephrase that? I wanted to explain that only the kitchen as a ‘public’ or ‘shared’ area, and my living room (for example) is off limits to guests.

Say that explicitly. “Living Room is off limits to guests.” If you can’t say it here how are you possibly going to be able to say it to their face while they are sitting in your living room and you are very upset and the guest, quite rightly, feels they are doing nothing wrong?

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People have been delisted and warned by Airbnb in spite of the above quotes. HomeAway family has no provision like that at all. (just read it this morning).