Upset guest over me checking if all was well

21

Oh, please don’t stop being friendly to your guests! See, I don’t agree with this leaving guests alone thing if you are living right next to them … maybe if you live on the other side of town from your rental but if you live nearby it just seems to me a bit artificial.

Many guests, especially if they’re from another country really like interaction with the host and I can absolutely understand @Faith’s concern about the person who was left behind from the game. She was showing kindness and concern and basically she got whacked for that - not in any way her fault (and I am also wondering if the sister had her own agenda in saying that to the host …)

I make it clear in my listing that although the apartment is separate, the garden and pool are shared so it’s just not practical to keep myself aloof from guests. If I walk past the terrace and they’re sitting there, I’ll greet them as I walk past and ask how everything is going, and because for most people it’s their first visit here I’ll ask if there’s anything I can help them with. Since very few of them speak Spanish there usually is!

Nearly all our reviews specifically mention how helpful and friendly we are “without being at all intrusive” or words to that effect so we must be doing something right. It’s probably because I’m old but I really dislike text messaging - I know it’s convenient but it seems to me just one more way in which we distance ourself from natural interaction with other people.

Given the above, though, I have to admit that most of our guests are here for a week or more - it would probably be way too stressful to have so much interaction when you’re having a lot of guests who stay for a very short time.

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22

I stayed at an airbnb and was exhausted after an intense day. I was in the house with the hosts and the host knocked on the door and called out to me and woke me out of a sound sleep. I would rather have received a text asking me if everything was okay because I could have ignored it or had my phone off. Though she thought she was doing me a kindness, and I did not hold her good intentions against her in the review, it makes you wonder why she needed to know if I was in the room. It is way to invasive to have a host knock on your door. Stick with texts. I also watched a good hosting video where the concept of hands on or off came up, you do have to size up your guests early and often because they switch between wanting attention to wanting to be left alone. Finally she didn’t go to the game because she didn’t want to take the dogs and she couldn’t leave them alone. Nothing to do with you. Leave it.

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23

I definitely don’t want to be unfriendly to my guests. What I’m referring to is being overly friendly and overly accommodating. Basically if you have that little uncomfortable feeling in the back of your mind then don’t do it. I also kind of mimic whatever their boundaries are and their level of aloofness.

I definitely don’t knock on their door. I always message through the air B&B system and I let them know this right away when they come to the house because I don’t want them thinking I’m avoiding them but I also want them to know that I respect their privacy.