What's The Weirdest Introductory Guest Message You've Received?

Got this today. Made my skin crawl. Thankfully he canceled his request:

“Hello I have business in Key West but you must enjoy life also. Look forward to staying with you.” (name)

First, my home is a full day’s drive from Key West. Second, I’ve been hosting for a couple of years now and don’t use IB because my listing is a private room and bathroom in my home. As a single woman (and a Bengal cat), I like to find out the purpose of their stay and make sure they’re OK with the cat (guest areas shut off from cat and cleaned regularly). I want everyone to enjoy the stay. :slightly_smiling_face: … but not that much! :rofl:

This honestly looked like a singles ad and was pretty creepy and so was his photo. He did have 2 reviews as a guest (also hosts an RV, but no reviews), but they were very neutral. I’m just glad he withdrew his request.

What’s the weirdest intro message you’ve gotten?

I just read this as he is going to Key West and is stopping on his way in your town as part of an enjoyable leisurely drive. If someone wrote something awkward like that to me I would think that English was not their first language.

We live in a society where being a single lady and dealing with creeps are not mutually exclusive so you do what you have to do.

What did you say to him to get him to cancel his request?

Since I have IB I rarely get anything off but since they are separate from me (and have multiple dogs) I don’t worry much about my safety.

The most annoying was the person informing me that they need to park in my garage because they have a lot of valuable stuff in their car. That was a No. There was another guy who insisted after his arrival that he be allowed to park in the garage and he was annoying and some would have probably thought him nosy or rude but he wasn’t creepy, just demanding.

Well, not weird but turned out to be a load of BS. Here is the message

When the group arrived, I talked to them. The guest was a part-time manager at Domino’s pizza. His family was 200 miles away from my listing and he had not budgeted any time to go see them. The group was 3 guys and 2 girls in their early 20’s and they came for the 2-day “Decadence” EDM/rave party over New Year’s. It’s obvious the guest wanted to hide the true purpose of the trip for fear of being declined, but they were good guests.

It’s quite possible that when he planned the trip his family was invited to come see him and they are the ones that couldn’t/wouldn’t budget any time. I’ve thought many times when I went a particular place that people would take time to see me since I came all that way but they didn’t. (nothing wrong with that, apparently other people have lives and budgets too.)

I must be naive. LOL.

Two years ago I had guests for an EDM thing in my town and they were great. I wondered if they would get checked out on time since they came in at 3 am but they did.

I mention these in another thread…

My room is in my house, full size bed, and the listing clearly states 1 or 2 people.
Inquiry for 3.
I responded the room is only large enough for 2.
She responded “We are very little people.”

Declined - insurance only covers 2 people regardless of size!

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I must be missing something because I don’t see anything creepy in his message. I’ve had plenty of odd ones over the years but never anything that’s made my skin crawl :slight_smile:

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It was not through Air but years ago I had a French couple contact me about renting my place and they asked me to send them proof of ownership, either papers to prove I owned my place or mortgage details!! Needless to say I politely declined to do so. France has 67m people so obviously you can’t generalise from a few bookings but any issue I have ever had over the years and thankfully they have been very very few, they have been with French people. It’s most odd.

Wow, yeah. That smells of identity theft or other fraud. I assume this was also before Airbnb even allowed you to show the exact address, so it violated their terms-of-service, too. [Edit: missed the part about it not being through Air]

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They were probably just paranoid and had heard stories of people showing up to a place that didn’t exist or something?

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My guess was also that their first language is not English. I get a lot of awkward introductions, but a recent one asked if we lived in a good area of town and went on to specify that he did not want to stay in a neighborhood where (insert racist descriptor) lived.

Sorry, pal. 'Bye.

Edited to add: Yes, I reported him.

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