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Feedback please…I recently hosted a male guest who has excellent reviews and 5 star ratings. He did not break house rules (I dont have too many listed), communicated arrival and departures clearly etc but I felt uncomfortable having him stay as a single female due to a few reasons.
He used explicit and highly immodest talk albiet about a movie he had seen
Asked for a glass to drink Port, a small cask he had brought with him (no house rules about food and drink in bedrooms as there is a desk and chair in the room)
Told me he broke the glass getting up in a hurry to answer the phone and left shards of glass on the floor (while bringing the larger pieces down in a bag)
Left port stains on the bed sheets, he did not mention that when leaving
All other reviews of him said he was really clean and tidy and a great person to have stay. He spoke quite a lot about his lady friends and for eg staying in some nunnery and the mother superior looking at him in his cycling lycra. This man is 72 but his profile pics looks about 20 years ago. These last comments are not entirely relevant but to give you an idea of some of the suggestive talk that I prefer not to hear from people unknown to me.
He said he will be coming back in 5 or 6 months time but I do not want to host him.
Any suggestions?
If you don’t want to host him again, just mark “would not host again” when you do the review.
And as a homeshare host, if a guest wants to engage in conversation which makes you uncomfortable, just extract yourself from the conversation (“Sorry to cut our chat short, but I have some paperwork I need to deal with”) or be upfront and say that sexualized talk between a host and guest is inappropriate and makes you uncomfortable. (Personally I think the Mother Superior checking out his bulge in the lycra is pretty funny, and “explicit language and immodest talk” about a movie wouldn’t bother me in the least, but we’re all different. )
I’m not sure what you found objectionable about #2 and #3. If you allow food and drink in the bedroom, what’s wrong with a guest asking for a glass? Is it the alcohol that you object to?
And you say he cleaned up the large shards of glass, so what was he supposed to do about the tiny ones? Did you offer him some paper towels or a vacuum cleaner to clean up the tiny bits, or offer to do it yourself? I just don’t get what you expected, or found objectionable about the broken glass that you list it as a reason for not wanting to host him again.
I personally would not host him again nor would I host male guests if I was a live in host, living alone. I’m sure his intentions were innocent but some folks forget to think before they speak. Talking explicitly and immodestly is not appropriate. In my book, it’s disrespectful. I would leave a generic review, give him 4 stars for cleanliness and five for following house rules and communication. Then click on “would not host again.”
As a female host living alone, I have hosted almost as many male guests as female guests, if not an equal amount, and they have all been totally respectful.
If I were still young and cute, I might consider it risky to host men in a homeshare, I’ve certainly read young female hosts upset about some male guest coming on to them or prancing through the house after his shower with a towel wrapped around him, but at my age, I’m not concerned with such things. And I wouldn’t have any reticence in saying, “Dude, put some clothes on please, this isn’t a locker room” or “Do you really think that’s appropriate conversation with a female host you just met yesterday?”
“Guest was nice enough, but his language was unacceptable and he left behind wine stained bedding without mentioning it… As a single female I would not host him again.”
I have to say, as a single female live in host, I’ve had a few male guests make me uncomfortable. It doesn’t happen too often but they can really take liberties & cross boundaries. They absolutely take advantage of the fact I’m a single female but they are few & far between. The latest guest to do this walked about naked draped in one of the guests towels which totally baffled me. I don’t know on what planet that is acceptable behaviour. Then when he read the review he hit the roof & sent me a derogatory message saying I shouldn’t host if random peoples quirks annoyed me. I’m sorry, an airbnb guest is not a random person. There are standards & respect to be shown & met.
I wouldn’t advertise “as a single female,” just say wouldn’t host again.
I would’ve been tempted to reply to the nun comment, “Why? It was the the smallest thing she’d ever seen?”
I personally don’t understand the complaints you are making. Uncomfortable with the small talk? Disengage. He wants a glass? Give him one. He breaks something? Provide a dust pan or vacuum. Port stains? I can sort of understand that you’re not happy he didn’t report it as you might want to be extra prompt about addressing it, but really aren’t you going to find the stain regardless of whether he tells you or not?
I think some hosts just want their Airbnb to be completely passive income and that’s just not the nature of this business. People are going to converse and they might even be rude or unpleasant. Things will break and messes will be made. Your job as a host is to manage these things appropriately (aside from leaving a negative review).
If you mean the towel was wrapped around his lower body, as opposed to draped over his shoulder, that honestly wouldn’t bother me at all, unless he was obviously intending it sexually, or to make you uncomfortable. I live in the tropics where people are generally scantily clad anyway. Not a lot of difference between a pair of surf shorts and a towel, IMO.
I read a thread a few years ago from a single female homeshare host asking for advice. She’d had a single male guest, older guy, who she hit it off with right away- they had a lot of the same interests, lively conversation, and ended up playing scrabble together one night. When she said it was getting late and she was going to bed, he made a comment to the effect of maybe they could snuggle up together, to which she said absolutely not. Nothing further like that happened again during his short stay.
She was wondering about the review and whether to message him privately. She did end up messaging him, because she didn’t want him to do this to another female host, and also he was otherwise a nice guy who she felt had no intention to upset her.
She explained how inappropriate it was and how uncomfortable it was for her. He wrote back, apologizing profusely, said his wife of 40 years had died of cancer 5 years previous, he hadn’t dated anyone since, was lonely, and was obviously out of practice in how to relate to women or appropriately let a woman know he found her attractive and when it simply wasn’t appropriate at all. He thanked her for taking the time to let him know, that he really appreciated her educating him, and he felt really ashamed of what he’d done.
Thumb’s up on KenH’s as per usual succint and accurate review language.
Especially if you’ve never been in a dangerous situation or been verbally assaulted, it can be tempting to credit your no-nonsense attitude and assume it’s simple to “Just deal with it and blow them off.”
Maybe this guest just routinely tries his luck as a geriatric f**kboy, but a more disturbing possibility is that he was deliberately testing boundaries, especially if he said he is returning to the area.
Although I’m a single female I no longer host in my part of the house. When I did, I had my own dogs and guest dogs here and felt like anyone with malintent would be a masochist to book my place. However, this thread reminded me of how much I like my androgynous name and photo appearance. Lots of guests who don’t meet me think I’m male and use he/him in their reviews and the ambiguity in those reviews works in my favor.
I don’t even see the point of saying that, because I would have no idea what sort of things the guest said that made the host uncomfortable. Did he say he doesn’t like cats, when she has 3 cats, so she feared he’d kick them when she wasn’t looking? Critique the artwork? Compliment her haircut? Say that Trump supporters are idiots?
If it’s going to be mentioned in the review, I think it needs explanation.
“I felt uncomfortable with the guest’s topics of conversation, which included a lot of sexually explicit words and stories of that nature.”
Honestly, I know this may be an insensitive thing to say, but I am a little bamboozled with all the things that seem to make people “uncomfortable” these days. It seems to me that feeling uncomfortable is the result of not speaking up and telling someone you find their words or behavior to be offensive or inappropriate.
30 years ago at work we had training on male/female interactions and what was acceptable speech and what was not. A few days later I had to make a presentation and I dressed up. A male friend told me I looked “cheerful”. I asked him why he said that - I hoped I looked cheerful every day. He said I looked nice, but he couldn’t say that due to the training.
I told him that I knew the difference between a compliment on how I looked when I dressed up, and a “you look NICE” with a leer and suggestive look. So it’s been going on for years.
Editing @jjd’s review:
"Guest was nice enough, but I was not comfortable with his description of a profane and sexually explicit movie he had seen recently. He also left behind wine-stained bedding without mentioning it. I would not host him again.”
As a single female host, none of what the OP described would bother me, so I wouldn’t need to know any of it. If the guest had been making sexually explicit comments directed at the host, rather than just choosing to relate stories that involved sex, then I would want to know that.
Everyone has different levels of perception and reaction to things like this. I’ve read posts from single female hosts who felt it highly inappropriate that a male guest asked if they’d like to go out for a drink. But I’ve had 2 male guests who invited me out for dinner and drinks and I accepted. (I’ve had female guests do the same) In both cases, they just didn’t want to dine alone and wanted to show appreciation for hosting them, no different from the female guests I went out for a meal with. With the one guy, it was purely that, the other did express some interest in maybe something more when we got home, but was very respectful about it and easily dropped it when I said no.
I would hate for things to get to the point where everyone was afraid of a little harmless flirting.
We really are parsing this, interesting. If a guest told me they broke a wine glass, stains would not be that surprising.
I would not characterize this guest as “nice.”
“Guest followed the rules. Seemed to enjoy joking and talking about explicit stuff, TMI in my opinion.”
I was thinking of adding “Left stained sheets,” but that could certainly be misinterpreted.
Now I’m wondering if he dropped the glass to get the poor host to come into his room!!
Reminds me of a recent visit to my elderly father’s retirement community. I was taking a walk and saw a neighbor in his yard, said hello and that I was so-and-so’s visiting daughter. “Oh, are you the lady looking for a dirty old man?” “No,” I replied flatly, with my best Mom Death Stare. “Nobody has a sense of humor anymore,” he muttered as I walked away.
That’s what I don’t understand either. What part of there being small shards that can’t be picked up by hand relates to not wanting to host a guest again? Was it that he never mentioned that there were still small shards, so the host could have offered clean-up equipment or cleaned it up herself? Was it that he didn’t ask for something to clean it up with? Was it that he broke a glass? If a guest told me they had broken a glass, I would just assume there were more shards that needed to be vacuumed up, even if the guest were to say they think they got it all. I would be concerned about them stepping on a tiny piece in bare feet.
@dpfromva I love the story about the old guy in the retirement community.
I used to live next door to an elderly couple who let a friend and I use the back part of their property behind their shed to grow a veggie garden. One day my friend lay down and fell asleep there for awhile, then woke up and continued working.
Shortly the old man wandered back there. You have to picture him- he was short, pear-shaped and bald with a huge bulbous nose and had a voice that sounded just like Disney’s Goofy.
He said, “I noticed ya sleepin’ back here awhile ago and I was just wonderin’- are ya open for business?”
My friend thought it was hilarious and gave him some comical flippant answer. He turned around and shuffled off, muttering, “Don’t know why all the girls are so wary of me, I can’t even get it up anymore.”
Just last year my oldest daughter, who’s 50 now, told me she was once at their house when we lived there and she was about 8 years old, and he lured her to the bedroom and asked if she wanted to see his penis. I was shocked and asked her why she never told me at the time, and she said because she didn’t find him scary, just pathetic, so she just left and came home.
Thank goodness your daughter got away safely. You wonder how many little girls that awful man was able to abuse. Unbearable to contemplate. Just horrific.
