I have had guests rearrange furniture,and move furniture to other rooms, but my favorite was when a guest came to my door instead and later told me his first thought was "wow. I didn’t realize the house came with a cat!
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We had a guest that decided to eat a salad while taking a bath. Apparently they were a messy eater, there was lettuce everywhere.
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Didn’t you have a garbage disposal in the bathtub?? Do you not watch Seinfeld?
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No garbage disposal in the bathtub, haha. I don’t know that I’ve ever watched an entire episode of Seinfeld.
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We had a similar situation. We have a baseball camp 40 minutes from our place. The guest (early forties, divorcee) rented the cabin for seven days. She arrived the first day, sans baseball children, checked in and then we saw her once during the seven days - she went running and took a shower and then we never saw her until the last day when she was checking out. Perhaps she needed to document that she was staying in a place other than she was really staying? A baseball tryst week? A great guest to have. She left a review and made it sound like she and her children spent the whole week in the cabin. She left one negative comment that the shower water was not hot enough. One week. One visit. One shower. No overnights. No children. Otherwise I love guests like this.
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Got an inquiry yesterday. Guest said she was going to be attending a workshop and her booking just got cancelled by the host.
Asked if my place would be walking distance to the place where the workshop was being held.
It’s in a different town, 13 kilometers away from my town.
You’d think she might have checked a map first?
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Airbnb might have suggested you as an alternative leading her to believe that you were close. AIrbnb channeled a guest to my home for place on Martha’s Vineyard.
One guest was indignant because TV remote control lay on the TV table, not on the bedside table. Another was “terrified” of N. Rockwell picture “Girl with Black Eye” on the wall.
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Several guests completely rearranged my kitchen.
One set of guests ignored my warning about the bears. Of course the bears got into their coolers and dumped the contents in the driveway.
We have pocket doors and more than one guest was baffled by the latches. One “locked” herself in the bedroom. Who locks their bedroom door when travelling with your own family? (Our STR is a house)
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One guest scrubbed my patio furniture and picked up all the sticks in the yard and put them in the wood pile.
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My mother would do something like this, she can’t sit still, she was raised on a farm, and she feels she has to constantly work.
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One guest wanted me to fit occupied/vacant lock to my 100 year old door to the bathroom….
My response was to ask if they knocked on a closed door, because that’s what I understood the usual process with a closed door!
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There is a host who once posted about a guest who took it upon herself to repot all the hosts’ plants. She wasn’t staying for months, she only had a few night booking.
Might have been helpful had half the plants not subsequently died, plus there was a bird’s nest in one of the hanging planters that the host was trying not to disturb, looking forward to seeing the babies hatch.
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I have a wooden bird that sits on a nightstand beside the bed; it’s the only bed in the suite. I’m always finding the bird in weird poses… Sometimes it’s lying on its back with its feet in the air as though it’s sleeping. Sometimes it’s sitting staring into the corner of the wall with its backed turned. Sometimes it’s perched precariously on the edge of the table like it’s going to jump on the bed. Once, someone had placed a little candy wrapper on its head.
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One guest turned our laughing Buddha statue “about face” on the self. It took a lot for me to “keep my Zen on,” but I just turned him around. Has happened only once in our 83 stays.
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@JJD: I thought we were trying NOT to be compared to hotels.
Oh, wait.
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mm, I have real plants in my listings and sometimes guests take it upon themselves to water the plants. I haven’t yet put anything in the messaging about it as it’s not been disastrous yet, I learn to skip a week or more. I am tempted to put a wee sign inside the pot.
this is kinda funny, but I’d be tempted to remove this item as it’s adding time to the turnover process. One of our bedrooms only has one power point in the whole room, so I have a powerboard on one side and then a long cord running under the bed and I’ve put a power cube (with USB slots) on the other nightstand. Every guest unplugs this set up and there’s always some new configuration, so I keep changing it, hoping to find the ‘right’ way that all guests can understand and not mess with it.
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Do You have any idea why this is?
We have the same setup, with a power cube. In the Orientation and manual we have a picture of these, both sides (the plugs are on the opposite side), explaining that this way they don’t need to crawl around the floor to plug in. In the Orientation we always show the opposite side (the front side has USB type ports) and it gets “Oohs and Ahhs.”
But there must be some reason why guests are changing your configuration. I would channel your inner Sherlock to figure this and then figure out how to message guests about it. Is it a label? Something in the post-check-in message that says something about them? Such are the explorations and musings of the short-term-rental Host.
lol, you and the labels!
Actually I have written on the cube (cos I do love my sharpies) our farm name, just to untempt some light-fingered guests who might also think the cube is way cool. it’s literally sitting on the nightstand with the USB bit facing forwards.
I think they don’t see the power board on the floor, but rather just the power point in the wall. So they pull out “whatever” is in there, which also shuts down the 2 lamps. So then they must be in the dark, lol, trying to work out what they’ve done. important point to myself: make triple sure under the bed is always clean! What I need to do is perhaps just write “do not unplug” on that first point.
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Guests in my unit frequently unplug anything that has little power lights that might disturb their sleep – the clock radio, the air purifier, etc.
Also some people worry about exposure to EMF waves particularly near where they sleep.
I have a WiFi extender in a “cage” I made out of a magazine holder (so it would be tough to monkey with), but guests who are concerned about EMF exposure can just unplug it without affecting the WiFi router in the main house.