With the new Airbnb changes coming up, it’s caused me to re-assess my expectations of how guests leave the condition of my property. I’m wondering what are reasonable vs. unreasonable expectations. I have two reasons for this: 1) I want to be in line with industry-standard (which is tough considering vacation rentals vary so greatly with their amenities, size, location, etc.) but I believe there is a general standard and expectation. 2) I believe more now than ever that leaving accurate reviews about guests is important, but I don’t want to leave details in the review that may be “too high” of an expectation on my part as a Host.
In my set-up, I have “extras”, such as board games, music records, pack-and-play, and having a pool I have extras such as pool toys, inflatables, goggles, snorkels, sunscreen, and lots of patio furniture.
Up until now, I’ve asked guests to please put the outdoor stuff back where they found it because the Cleaner doesn’t get paid to clean/organize outdoors. I will be changing this at the end of Nov and just start paying my Cleaner more money to put everything up outside (thus raising my cleaning fee to cover this added expense). Up until now, I’ve asked guests (via signage) to put the pieces back into their respective board games and to put the pack-and-play back up if they’ve used it. To me, those sorts of extras the Cleaner isn’t responsible for doing. I’m no longer going to be offering a pack-and-play.
This weekend, I had a Guest check-out who had little kids. I get that when you have littles, sometimes you have to hide or put away certain things so the kids don’t mess with them. In my opinion, the Guest should put those things back before they leave, because the Cleaner doesn’t get paid to redecorate. For example, they left a lamp on the floor behind the end table, they moved my valuable vintage decorative 35mm cameras to a higher shelf (dumped them upside down on another shelf and left it that way), left records out, left parts of board games out, and moved around the furniture in my screened patio. They took my footstool outside to the screened patio and appears they let one of their kids use the stool because it’s sitting next to my box of fire-starters (which are small straw bundles with wax inside of them) leaving little pieces of straw all over the patio there. They also tied up my blind cords in knots (maybe to keep away from their kids), and this was an extra 15 minutes of time to untangle, on top of the extra hour of time it took to deal with the other stuff they didn’t put back. They left the pack-and-play out (even though I have a sign above it asking guests to please put it back when done). When it’s a few things, I just get over it, but when it’s several things it does add quite a bit of extra time.
I’ve had other guests leave stuff floating or sunk in the bottom of the pool, trash left outside, things strung out everywhere, golf club thrown to the bottom of the hill, cig butts, etc. Like I said, if it’s a few things, I just keep my mouth shut about it.
I only have 4 check-out requests and one of them is to please put the TV remotes back where they came from. The last two guests have been families and both times they ignored this request and it took me over 30 minutes to hunt around and find the remote. I’m still looking for a remote from the checkout this weekend.
This last Guest broke the cardinal rule of vacation rentals and went thru my private owners cabinets in the laundry room (where I store all my stuff). I have two big signs right there telling Guests the cabinets are private (in huge letters) and to please stay out of them. This thing in and of itself crossed the line in my book.
What’s sad is this Guest has received many good reviews. Perhaps he didn’t meet up to the norm because he brought extra kids for this booking, perhaps these Hosts never truly saw the condition of the house (because they rely on a Cleaner or other 3rd party to let them know if anything bad happened), perhaps this new media attention about Airbnb’s new lax policies has caused guests to become more lax with how they leave the place….not sure. Or maybe I’m just being unrealistic with my expectations? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I don’t want to give the guy 3 stars and leave a review calling these things out if I’m being unrealistic or unfair. I was thinking about 4 stars but when I saw he went into my private cabinets that knocked down another star in my mind.
How do y’all determine/decide when a line has been crossed of what’s acceptable and what’s not? What is the line?