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Are you not reading any of the other posts?? No one cares about the chore free thing. It’s not important.
What was important is that Margi is entering the listing while her guests are out for the day without telling them that she is going to do that. It’s against TOS and it’s against human decency.
It has nothing to do with chores.
Are you also sneaking around and going into your listing while your guests are out? Is that really what you want to attach yourself to with Margi? Because it’s her sneaking into the listing that hit a nerve.
I’m not sure if you understand that I am not an advocate of chore lists like stripping beds and starting a load of wash, humping bags of garbage down an alleyway to the dumpster, etc. And I believe that hosts should always make any check-out expectations clear in their listing, so guests can pass on booking if they don’t like it.
I expect common courtesy, as you do, which means things like not leaving garbage strewn around the place, not leaving a pile of dirty dishes behind, not leaving wet towels in a mouldering pile on the floor, and wiping up a spill when it happens, not leaving it there to congeal or tracking it all over the house.
I have no chore list nor do I charge a cleaning fee, but I don’t fault hosts who do, as long as the expectations and fee is reasonable.
But I have read far too many posts from entitled guests who think that walking away leaving a mess behind them is acceptable, and that washing their own dirty dishes is “doing the host’s cleaning for them”. So I take market surveys of guests objecting to chore lists with a large grain of salt.
Margi brought it up. She used her chore-free stance to justify it. Then when we all told her it was unacceptable she was defensive about it. That is what the last 10 or so posts are about.
It’s totally fine if you don’t want to read about it but it was that issue that “struck a nerve” as you called it. No nerves were struck about not having chores. To not read those posts and then pop back in and pretend that the discussion is about not having chores is insincere at best.
Personally, I have never given anyone a chore so it’s a non-issue for me and hardly worth a discussion at all.
Besides, hosts who sneak into their listings while they have guests is entirely relevant to why bookings may have dropped off for some hosts because guests publicly post about hosts that do that crap and it makes people not want to stay at Airbnbs.
IMO, bad hosts are a much greater issue than chores when it comes to affecting Airbnb bookings in general.
if its in your description and/or house rules, there is nothing against it. thankfully airbnb lets hosts manage their properties as they see fit and it is up to the host to communicate and cater to their guests according to their own market…
you seem to forget that a lot of airbnbs are still shared living spaces
It’s not a shared living space and the issue is specifically that she doesn’t disclose it anywhere in her listing. And she knows it’s wrong and is doing it anyway.
You should scroll up and inform yourself of the details instead of making assumptions.
Margi is not communicating dick to her guests about entering the unit while they are out. That is the entire point.
I host a homeshare, sharing my kitchen with guests. I never enter the guest’s bedroom or bathroom during their stay. There were only two occasions when I did so- when a guest asked me to remove a spider from her room, and once when there was a sudden thunderstorm and I noticed the guest had left all her windows open. I tried to text her to tell her I was going to close the windows so she didn’t come home to a wet bed, but she was out at the beach and didn’t respond. But at least I courteously told her I was going in and why rather than simply considering it my right to do so. And I didn’t use it as an opportunity to poke around to see how she was treating the space- I was in and out in 30 seconds.
I couldn’t agree with you more. 1000%. The chores and the cleaning fees (especially the outrageous high fees) are symptoms of bad hosting.
This may shock you but I actually don’t have a problem with a host entering my guest premises when I am not there, without prior consent, assuming they have a legit reason of course and they aren’t thieves. As a host I would never do this–I would enter in an emergency, to protect life or property, but not otherwise–but as a guest it’s fine with me.
Why? Because I’ve literally stayed at more hotels than I can possibly remember for work. For years I had a suitcase I didn’t bother to put away, I traveled so much.
And so many times I have sent housekeeping or maintenance up to my room while I’m on my way to work. A time or two housekeeping walked right in while I was napping or working. Annoying for sure, but not something I felt outraged about.
But your point is well taken here.
There are infinite ways of being a bad host, and the guest is the final arbiter, really, of what that is.
Well, Margi isn’t sneaking in and getting those dishes for free. She’s charging guests quite a bit to have their privacy invaded. I honestly don’t care at all about chores or cleaning fees, or anything else for that matter, as long as it is disclosed in the listing. That is one of the only actual rules that we all have to follow. It is the one and only expectation that I have as a guest.
It doesn’t shock me. It’s just not relevant. We all have our own preferences and tolerances but that doesn’t have anything to do with the TOS that we have all agreed to abide by. Guests have specific expectations based on what Airbnb promises them and anytime a host screws those up it affects all hosts in a negative way.
@JJD, does TOS in the above stand for Terms of Service?
I just read the AirBnB Terms of Service and I cannot find where it says what @Margi1 does is a violation.
Legally, at least in states like New York, a short term rental is a license to occupy, not a leasehold. Consequently the licensee does not have the same rights as a tenant.
I don’t want to ask you to do work but honestly I can’t find anything in the TOS about it.
You’re clearly outraged by @Margi1 's behavior but as I have said, I am not. If her entry is not a violation of local law or of AirBnB rules the worst you could call it is rude.
You have been hosting for a whole year and should know these basic policies. WTAF. Sneaking into your Airbnb unit while it is rented to a guest will get your listing removed faster than you can say no cleaning fee
But here you go. I googled it for you. It only took a second, I don’t mind.
Let’s just call it a PSA in support of all of the hosts who know what they’re doing and are tired of having their businesses affected by hosts who don’t:
Well thank you! It’s in the section called Our Community Policies, not Terms of Service.
If you’ve been a host for a long time, you may not realize that AirBnB tells you amazingly little when you sign up to be a host. Their website is a behemoth.
Guests have the right to expect privacy, especially when a place is advertised as an entire place.
Even if a host isn’t “sneaking in” to check on how the guest’s are treating the place, or micro-managing by entering to turn off lights or fans, etc., and enter with the intention of doing something nice, it’s not okay.
I once read a post from an upset guest whose hosts, who lived in a separate dwelling on the property, came into the guest cabin when they were out, to decorate the place for Halloween, even moving some of her personal things around to do so. She was shocked when she came home. She felt that her privacy in the advertised private cabin she had booked had been violated, which it certainly was.
I’m sure the hosts naively thought they were doing something the guest would appreciate, but they should have just left a carved pumpkin on the doorstep if they felt the need to decorate for the holiday.
As you can see from Airbnb policy, entering for anything other than a true emergency situation, without permission, is not allowed. There are hosts who have a policy where they go in once a week on long-term bookings, to do a quick clean and linen change, as a way of making sure they don’t encounter some horror show of filth and damages after a guest has been there for a month or two, and that’s fine as long as the arrangement has been clear to the guest and they have booked on agreeing to that. And there are places, particularly in tropical countries where labor is inexpensive that might have full-time staff and daily cleaning, which is also fine as long as the guest understands that. But a host simply feeling free to enter the guest space whenever they choose is most definitely a breach of policy and disrespectful to boot.
And regardless of whether a host thinks they have a right to enter without express permission in anything other than an emergency, or local law, Airbnb will instantly suspend a host’s listings (all of them) for a report of privacy violation.
They are part of the TOS. You just linked to the TOS an hour ago. Did you not bother reading them? Here’s the part that tells you that other terms and policies are part of the TOS.
This isn’t about how to give a weekly discount, these are basic community policies. We are agreeing to abide by them every time we log into the system.
My human anatomy book was a behemoth but I still had to learn it all so that I could get my job.
True, they want to make it easy as pie for new hosts to sign up. And new guests to book. But just because you aren’t told something isn’t an excuse for not bothering to spend time researching yourself. I’ve read posts from new hosts who don’t even know how they get paid, or that an inquiry is not the same as a request and all sorts of other basic hosting info. They simply didn’t bother to spend any time reading all the readily available info for hosts on the Airbnb site.
I do thank you again for pointing out where those policies are listed on the website.
Even after a year and 3 months I don’t know where to find the link on the website to update my review of a guest prior to publication. The only way I can find the link is by using Google.
In the old days websites had something called a “site map” but that’s gone out of fashion, unfortunately.
