Welcome baskets / gifts

There is an ad on Australian tv promoting Airbnb where the hosts leave an enormous welcome basket. I was like, I hope guests don’t see that ad and expect it. Since they really pay for it anyway through their rent what is the point? If there was some local producer for, say, soap or chocolate, maybe makes sense. Though I just leave business cards from my favourite nearby winery. On that note people should not leave free bottles of wine. You don’t know what the relationship your guest has with alcohol and you might help to kick them off the wagon. If gift baskets became a thing all guests expected I could fill it up with some rolls of TP, kitchen paper towel and a small bottle of hand disinfectant, gratis. So it’s a hard no from me.

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Those Airbnb TV ads have been just awful for hosts. All promoting guest entitlement. One showed a family arriving, and then the kid jumping up and down on the bed like it was a trampoline.

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What about the enormous dog on the couch!!!

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I leave a welcome basket with a few bags of pretzels and chips, a couple granola bars, and a couple bags of fruit gummies. I get everything in bulk off Amazon and maybe it comes out to under $5/basket. I am not there to greet my guests so my cleaner restocks the basket each turnover. I think over the holidays I may include a bottle of wine or Prosecco and some chocolates though.

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yeah that one really annoyed me as well. What should have happened is the kid went to jump on the couch and the mother stopped him and went “remember D’Shawn we are in somebody else’s house so we treat their possessions with respect”.

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I used to leave fridge magnets of my business card with a nice picture of the sunset. I figured they’d take them home and someone would see it and maybe book. But nobody did or at least nobody told me they did. When I ran out of the original 100 cards I didn’t replace them.

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