Guest ising up all the towels on day 2 of 3 days vist.

[Williamina0]

Hello my guests snuck in a person only supposed to be 4 niw 5. They drove across my front lawn to unload the car.

Now they went to the waterfall and went in swimming , it has s sign strictly no swimming. Now the came back to the house with wet clothes and used up all the towels. My cohost has to go over with more towels. Oh did I mention my first guests, brand new listing.🤣

[Mary1523]

Hi there @Williamina0, congrats on your first guests! It's an adventure. (Love your place - one day when i come back to Ontario, I'd love to visit!)

Firstly, don't panic.

You will learn lots as you host guests on how to improve your listing and your house rules as you go along. But what's critical is that you get a great first few reviews - getting a bad one first off is not good, so live and learn. As long as they don't trash the place, give them a great review (assuming their guest profile was over 4.6 - did you look at that when you accepted the guest?) and don't say anything about what you are unhappy about until AFTER they have done their review (if you feel you really have to say something). Put a welcoming face on until they have done their review. They know you are new as well, so ask them kindly for a review.

So here's the thing I have learnt after 8 years of hosting, instead of putting in lots of rules, find other ways to stop them doing things.

1. Do you provide laundry facilities so that they can wash towels themselves? If not, you will need to provide some spare towels. Things happen. It doesn't cost you much if you are washing the towels yourself as opposed to laundromat

2. Waterfall - is it yours? You can't stop them. It's at their own risk otherwise. Maybe in your listing you state the waterfall isn't safe (is that the reason?) and say BYO towels. I ask my guests to BYO tools for my pool, its fine. (because every towel costs me as they are laundered)

3. Driving on lawn. Had same problem myself in my first few bookings - put down some large rocks or mini rope fence, that looks like nice landscaping and stops the car. Problem solved. No rule involved.

4. Extra people. Do you price per cabin or per person? Sometimes that forces a weird behaviour with people but more importantly, in your listing rules, just say, max 4 people due to council by-laws/rules etc. Then if you know the break them, you can penalise in rating for violating house rules. You probably can't say anything for this set of guests as you want the review, but if they give you a bad review, you can always publicly state they had extra people so future guests know there was some issues.

Hang in there, it's all good! Enjoy being in the hosting business!

Kind regs

Mary

[Paula]

Great suggestions from @Mary1523, thank you so much! 👏😊

@Williamina0, have you had a chance to look at her comment? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Best regards,

[Helen3]

Hi @Williamina0 

what did your guest say when you contacted them about the additional visitor staying who wasn't on the booking and driving across your lawn.

your cohost doesn't need to bring over additional towels , the towels you provide are for the listing if guests want to go swimming or to the beach they should bring their own towels. Did they ask you for additional towels? 

unfortunately some bad guests take advantage of new hosts. 

[Greystone0]

Hi @Williamina0,

Congratulations on your listing and first guest! Welcome to the club of guests doing things you don't want them to do ;).

It's part of the package and I agree with previous excellent comments about how to mange. Just move on and work on identifying ways you can communicate within your listing and messaging to avoid in the future.  

We also have folks putting vehicles on our lawn. It was shocking to learn. So we put out some boulders. Then they moved to another spot. More boulders. Then another spot. More boulders. And that was with clear directions on parking cars in our listing, messaging, house rules, etc. The issue is that there is only one guest that is reading your listing up close and receiving reminders etc., the rest of the guests arriving are not paying attention to this detail. It's hard to reach these people. So diligence and patience will go a long way. 

In terms of occupancy, part of our standard messaging includes a recap of the guest reservation. Each message I send includes this type of info:

Reservation details;

check in date & time

check out date & time

Your Occupancy: 8 adults, no children, no dog 

*you reserved our home for 8 adults, if additional guest for day use/overnight use needed please reach out to see what is possible, additional fee may apply. Our max possible by permit is 10. 

If someone showed up with 9 adults, I wouldn't have an issue. But if they showed up with 15 then I would have an issue. Our home isn't set up for this and it is too far beyond our permit occupancy. Perhaps there is a version of this that may support your occupancy rules.

Much success,