To be honest, they aren’t going to advise you on this sort of thing and in most cases will always push on a voluntary refund.
Are you charging the guests for the additional guests who haven’t paid and the additional cleaning?
I have checked the Airbnb terms of service and standards and there is nothing about entering guests’ rooms. I will continue abiding by common decency with messaging and knocking at reasonable times. However I am not bound by any tenancy law or Airbnb dictate in my own home. Neither is the OP.
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If it is an emergency, landlords of LTR can enter without notice. However, this wasnt an emergency.
Just out of curiousity, I looked into it on the official Air platform and a fellow host had a guest request a refund for this exact situation.
The guest was granted refund and Air had this response to him:
“This [entering the room] is absolutely not something you are allowed to do on our platform. If a guest books your listing as a “private room” they are not expected to share their living quarters, which means this is only for the guest that had booked. By going into this guests listing without her permission, this makes for an uncomfortable and potentially inappropriate situation between you and your guest, and this is something we always would like to avoid”
We are not talking about landlords and LTR! In this case law applies. Not so with guests in your own home.
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Do you mean the discussion forum on the platform? There are very mixed views on that forum as I would expect. There are no actual TOS or Standards on the Airbnb platform about entering a guests room. I would suggest to use common sense and decency and message or knock before going in a guest’s room. Clearly in the case you mentioned the guest felt the host was intrusive. Hey, perhaps snoopy hosts do exist but I would suspect they are rare.
We must not get confused between LTRs etc. and homestays, or get confused between official policy or what is desirable.
Actually for the OP this was an emergency. The guests had broken the rules thereby invalidating their booking. The guests had intruded on her space by actually getting friends to sleep in her master bedroom! If guests are causing serious problems like this the host has every right to assess the situation and compile evidence prior to eviction. Otherwise a guest could set up a crack den and then complain because the host dared to even see it lol.
The last thing an OP in this situation needs is a misguided lecture about how she shouldn’t have even seen the extreme rule breaking in her listing. She needs support to get them out!
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I am not damning the OP… It looks like some very good advice has been given…But what came out of that was the discussion about entering suites or rooms.
And the quote I referenced above was not a subjective opinion on the forum. It was a response from AIRBNB and their representative on their stance of host entering guests quarters. I thought it interesting…And it makes sense that its a privacy issue and a safety issue (on the side of the guest as well, remember.) But I am surprised that the policy isnt in their terms of service. This comes up often enough in disputes I am sure.
And this wasnt an emergency situation. There was no risk of loss or death to life, limb or home. She happened to see people in parts of the house she shouldnt because she entered…She did not enter BECAUSE she thought there was an emergency. There is a big difference.
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She didn’t need an emergency it was her home for goodness sake! She just happens to be elsewhere at the moment. The emergency might well have been it looked like squatters have moved in. As the flat was full of unregistered guests that wasn’t far from the truth.
So Airbnb had an opinion on one case where they felt the host breached the guest’s privacy. Fine. I don’t know the particulars. That doesn’t exactly make for case law. I am sure hosts on here do not need to be told how to respect guests’ privacy. They have their own arrangements for their own listings. Some will go into the room to clean, others will have whole house rentals which are left alone. We don’t need made up, non existent Airbnb regulations which don’t apply to us. We don’t need people who try to make us feel guilty for entering our own property to look after it in the face of seriously dodgy guests. Whose side are you on?
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She didn’t need an emergency it was her home for goodness sake!
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This is the point you brought up. I was simply stating that it wouldn’t constitute an emergency.
In any conceivable legal circumstance, whether LTR or STR, this does not constitute an emergency. An emergency in these terms is a fire, a flood, something requiring urgent attention.
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So Airbnb had an opinion on one case where they felt the host breached the guest’s privacy. Fine. I don’t know the particulars. That doesn’t exactly make for case law. I am sure hosts on here do not need to be told how to respect guests’ privacy. They have their own arrangements for their own listings. Some will go into the room to clean, others will have whole house rentals which are left alone. We don’t need made up, non existent Airbnb regulations which don’t apply to us
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Uhhh…It isnt a made up, non existent regulation. Although this pertains to one anecdotal situation, this is reputedly coming from a representative of the company as their stance on the matter as a whole.
The legal parameters of illegal/legal access to a dwelling may be different for each town, village, city, country around the world. It is the hosts responsibility to ferret out that information.
However, Air as a private corporation can have a stance or perspective on it (and is generally how they will side in a dispute).
It doesnt have to be contained in their Terms of Service. Because again, the legal governing body or acts pertaining to the running of a STR vary widely everywhere. And it is not AIRS responsibility to know your zoning laws.
Their purported stance which I quoted above seems quite emphatic and definitive in that entering a rented dwelling is inappropriate at best and unethical at least. That plainly describes their perspective in general. (that a guest should be given some notice before entering their space). It didnt appear to be vague or dependent upon other variables or decided on an individual case by case basis in their wording. If you need clarification on their perspective or to justify what you do in your own rental, you would have to contact them.
Blockquote[quote=“Jess1, post:28, topic:26180”]
We don’t need people who try to make us feel guilty for entering our own property to look after it in the face of seriously dodgy guests. Whose side are you on?
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Maybe you are feeling guilty for good reason. Who knows? I am not on any side…Merely participating in a dialogue. I think maybe you have recognized something uncomfortable in yourself if you are this defensive…If I had to pick, it would be on the side of fairness and the truth…I am merely offering and gaining info and putting forth my opinion. Its what you do in a forum. Again, you have to be the own judge of your situation.
It does seem to me that if someone has booked a private room, the host shouldn’t go in there unless it’s an emergency. If someone has booked an entire house, the host shouldn’t go in there either. In the OPs case the guest booked a room and took the entire house. If I booked a room I would expect the host to be in the rest of the house. Without seeing the exact listing and the wording and terms under which it was booked it’s hard to say 100%. I side with the OP in this case but hosts would be well advised to stay out of the guest’s space while they are checked in. Airbnb is not going to back you up.
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I agree. This seems like a unique situation. I dont think it was wrong of her necessarily in this instance…with a particular setup.
In this case the guest had visitors strewn all over the living area and the host’s master bedroom. Why on earth are people even suggesting the OP went in guests private space!
I have no reason to feel guilty or uncomfortable whatsoever. This isn’t even about me. I do wonder however why you feel the need to try to make the OP feel awkward about entering her own space. There are no Airbnb regulations on this issue. As I said before each host is capable of knowing what is right in their listing.
If you just read 2 responses above, I say in this situation, I don’t consider the OP to be at fault.
However, I dont think it ethical for hosts to generally enter without advance notice or permission.
Bizarrely to me I had a guest asking if I had put his laundry in his room the other day. No, I said, it’s in the hall. Obviously some cultures and families are more open. At the end of the day it’s a relationship and about respecting how someone feels.