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We host a place outside a little village in the Black Forest, Germany.
Our guests have to pass through the village’s main road to reach our house.
This summer all houses in the village will get fiber-glass high speed internet connections.
The road will be blocked for 8 months due to the construction work.
Everyone who wants to reach my place has to go through an odyssey of gravel/pit roads that don’t even have names. So forget about GPS.
The roads are not too bad. No need to worry about the fancy cars but they are hard to find.
Also there will be no construction noise at my place and once you know the way it’s easy to find.
I’m trying to find a solution how to guide guests to my house:
Give a detailed description and provide a selfmade map and hope they’ll reach us.
Offer them to give me a call once they’re near by, meet them at a spot easy to find and follow my car to guide them.
Problems are:
Many foreigners have no international contracts with their service providers so they can’t call anyone.
Also with many people we have communication problems due to the language, especially French, Italian and Asian people.
Now my fellow hosts: What would you do? Do you have any idea or advice?
Make all this clear in the listing and again when they book. It sounds like you will have to be very picky about who you host this season. I would go with the idea of picking them up at a pre-agreeded upon spot.
If it were me I would probably not host during this time and would use that time to do repairs, improvements, remodeling and take a vacay of my own.
@dirk
While the roads to get from major highway to my cottages are pretty clearly marked, after having a few people get ‘lost’ getting to me, and esp using GPS which routes them a different way which is technically a bit shorter but more confusing for strangers, I took some pix and created a web page that shows them exactly what they will see along the way and where to go. You might want to try something similar that you could email to them along with a web based map screen print with the route marked if possible.
I can’t put a link here but if you go to my “pleasantforestshores” site and the “directionswithphotos” page, you should see it.
Thanks. I’ll put something like this at first in the listing:
“Please notice: Due to construction work at the main road our apartment will be hard to reach from April 2019 till November 2019. Your GPS will not work properly.
We would be happy to guide you to our place either via phone or via email or even personally. Don’t hesitate - we will work it out. Cheers!”
Not a native speaker so wording corrections are appreciated
I also accepted bookings before I knew the road will be blocked.
Looks nice but will not work for me because there are no orientation points like signs or buildings. Just tiny roads and trees. Everything looks the same.
Your English is better than that of the current US President, so don’t worry about it.
Years ago i booked an Austrian B and B and the guide book I used (this was 1998) said when you arrive at the train station call the owner and she will come pick you up at the station. If we could manage back then I’m sure you can do so now. Perhaps a little extra, like a nice bottle of Riesling, will make guests forget any difficulties getting there.
I’ve learned a new word from your president: “tremendous”.
I would be happy to pick up the guests somewhere, but therefore they must communicate.
I had a group of guests got lost last year, they called me, I told them to stop at the next house they see, tell the owner to call me, and finally I could pick them up about 30km away.
If you want to stay at the Black Forest: a Riesling and a Spätburgunder is included in my listing
I’m happy to see the good work he is doing with our allies across the globe.
That will be the trick. On my Austrian trip in 98 we were still using pay phones. Hopefully your guests will all be getting the proper kind of phones so they can communicate. Even on my trip to Krakow/Berlin in 2009 I got a phone shipped to me from Verizon that I could use in Europe.
Sounds perfect. No plans for the Black Forest at this time, I’ll wait until construction is done. LOL>
I have sent google maps links to guests and Airbnb allowed it. Those might specifically be white-listed as a way to give guests directions, but you can always text links to them.
Is it possible to create a custom GPS navigation route and send it to guests? That would be ideal for the guests that have maps service available on their phones.
Another idea would be to make a fast-forward video of the drive that shows the best route, post it as a private video on youtube and send guests a link (text it to them if Airbnb blocks it)
@dirk
It was worth a shot to see if that idea would work for you as it has certainly helped my guests.
If you make a map, in addition to giving distances quite exactly, i would give time to drive at some fixed speed, like “should take 3 minutes at x speed to next turn” which may help also.
Please notice: Due to construction work at the main road your GPS will not be accurate to reach our apartement from April 2019 till November 2019.
We would be happy to guide you to our place either via phone or via email or even personally. Don’t hesitate - we will work it out. Cheers!
You could drive it yourself, using a running or cycling app like Runkeeper or Strava, screenshot the map and upload it to your listing photos, or text it to your guest’s phone
