There are nothing but houses on our street so there is no landmark to meet them at. Also, if they can’t find my house when they have the address, photos of the house during the day and at night and a picture of the driveway, I’m skeptical of their ability to find a landmark.
7 Likes
Glad to hear, but I’m not sure it’s simple as that. As a platform, Airbnb will prioritize what’s good for the platform, how to keep the business going, ie, the bottom line.
And that means they will not penalize guests unless they’re convinced they’re a danger to the system. And it also means, hosts are somewhat of a second priority to guests (
)
Even though if there are no hosts, there can’t be any guests.
In individual cases, this broad approach might not manifest every time. In any case, as hosts - with a vested interest in the venture, it falls upon us to convince Airbnb of the unsuitability of a guest or guest action.
1 Like
That’s a shame. Maybe meet them at the local pub (kidding).
I don’t know how detrimental it is to your running an Airbnb if you run the risk of strangers knocking at your neighbours’ time and again by mistake, but I’ve been nervous of this leading to my neighbours taking a dim view of ‘business activities’ I am carrying out at my place.
1 Like
So far all of the neighbors have been friendly and guided guests to us, even the guests who got drunk, had their phones die and were wandering around our neighborhood after midnight loudly asking our neighbors where we were. We have a couple of neighbors who are in a perpetual bad mood. I fear what will happen when one of our guests knocks on one their doors, but I don’t know what to do about guests who transpose the numbers of our address. We plan to put in our listing that guests should double check the address and make sure that our house looks like the photos as we are the only house with lots of tropical plants in the front yard, but we all know that guests rarely read the listing.
1 Like
I can picture a moonlit street, owl on lamppost, steaming drunk folk in the middle of the night lugging a bag roaming the streets, sweating, panting, screaming “ElllllennnnN, where the 'Ell are youuuuu??”
If you have a driveway/front yard, maybe you can put up something very very conspicuous, a giant gnome, or a billboard of Chuck Norris with some Chuck Norris jokes on it (to help the guests pass the time) and tell them to get there, message you and wait there to be received!
5 Likes
Strangely enough none of my guest have become lost coming to my house despite the fact that my address has changed three times in the last five years without me moving. Two years ago they change my street number and the name of my town. This of course has messed up GPS info. Some delivery companies can find me, some have issues.
I sent guests a rather long email explaining the three different variations of my address that they may find on GPS, so far so good.
3 Likes
Do you administer an IQ test and get an oath from guests before letting them book??
4 Likes
I was mortified when some recent bad guests went barreling down the driveways of neighbors in a place where that is pretty stupid as you could easily get stuck. They simply didn’t read a word I wrote. I include idiot proof directions with photos, GPS markers and everything else and they still went barreling down neighboring driveways. I always apologize to neighbors as I know what a nuisance that is.
Most of my guests park right where I want them to.
This is my listing. As I mentioned, the landscaping in our front yard is distinct. Unfortunately, the guests who go to the wrong house are going by the address, not the look of the house, and they misread the address. For example, the most recent guest who went to the wrong house read our address as 10756 Tabor Street instead of our correct address which is 10765 Tabor Street. Another guest went to 10675 Tabor Street instead of 10765.
Some people don’t do numbers. I found this when I switched to asking them to look for this particular landmark on a certain street. Works better.
Lots of Ferrero Rocher and Lindt bought and eaten on those days! 
2 Likes
As I said, our street is purely residential so the only landmark to point them to is my house.
Close to 300 guests and I’ve never had a guest go to the wrong house. I wish I could tell you why not. I’m just going to fall back on my “travelers not tourists” explanation. Most of my guests are Americans driving their own cars and so have a lot of practice finding suburban street addresses? I did buy a custom made LED lighted sign that comes on automatically at night. Also my curbs have the numbers painted on them.
I prefer guests message me because when they knock or ring the bell it sets the dogs off. If they tell me when they are arriving I try to keep a watch out. It’s funny how many message me that they are here and I’m standing on the porch waiting for them to get out of the car. They text me then sheepishly look up. LOL.
4 Likes
UPDATE:
I’ve now raised a case with Airbnb about this review.
Here are the points I made:
- She says in the review she called Airbnb who told her to talk to host before cancelling. Airbnb confirmed to me later that night that they had made no contact.
- She says in the review that I denied to refund when the Airbnb person called me to ask. I only told him I was considering it - even sent him a follow-up email reiterating that it wasn’t a yes or no.
- lock - accusing me of being a potential thief
- smell - never been an issue before, no previous guests have mentioned it - vindictive
- airbnb case details - policy violation
- extortion
Results to be made known soon.
4 Likes
Good Job (those guests were assholes and didn’t know who they were messing with)!!!
It’s like we’re the “Don’t Mess With Us” Host Faction!!! 
3 Likes
Adding the pink deer was brilliant!
3 Likes
The most recent guest who went to the wrong house is an American who lives in Buffalo, NY. He was in Los Angeles, CA for a job interview. He had a car.
Are balloons tied on a mailbox an option? Or are there too many guests?
Your home is lovely however I would have trouble with the 5 digits in a row with no commas in an unfamiliar neighborhood. ( getting older short term memory kinda sucks at times).
2 Likes
I was thinking it might be the five digits too… but honestly guests who can’t find your house are just trying to get there without reading.
1 Like
I had no idea that five digits is unusual. I’ve never seen an American address that had a comma. If guests can’t look for the unique for our area landscaping, I don’t think they’ll look for balloons and they might go to another house where a party is being held. Plus our mailbox is a slot in the front of our house.
The best solution would be for them to copy our address from Airbnb and paste it into their navigation system and keep their phones charged, but we all know that won’t happen.
2 Likes