Chinese guests have difficulty finding my street address. What GPS do they use?

[Tina6437]

Hi

I have had many chinese groups this week stay at my place as they travel for lunar new year and half of these have had to be assisted to find the property.  It seems that even though they have a street address they hardly ever find the house.  One group was not even on the correct street.  I started including a photo in my messages to them of the property and the driveway as many said they’d arrived only to be no where in sight! As it is happening regularly with chinese guests I’m wondering if they use a different GPS to google maps that is incorrect. I live 200km away from my air bnb and most of my guests self check in.  Luckily for me my sister was visiting my airbnb location and has been able to assist them this week by going on the street and finding them down the wrong end of the street or sometimes on a neighbouring street.  Any suggestions on what might be causing this confusion would be most appreciated so I can better assist these guests?  I am concerned that I might unfairly receive negative reviews because they struggle to find the property even though its totally findable on Google maps and is on a normal address on a suburban street!

[Pat271]

I host a condo in a spread-out, townhouse-style complex on several streets.  GPS points to the office of the condo complex, which is nowhere near the actual condo.  For this reason, I provide old-style step-by-step instructions for getting to the condo in my Welcome packet, with added verbiage underlined in several places to use the instructions instead of GPS.

I don’t know why your Chinese guests would have a different GPS than everyone else.  If you were curious, or wanted to get it resolved so that GPS could be used, you might want to ask your guests what GPS app they are using, and research it from there.

[Tina6437]

Thanks although I’ve added photos of the driveway and property and step by step instructions on how to access the property I think I’ll try guiding them street by street from the main road to my house.  I’ll do this in my messages to them rather than have them rely on whatever method they use.  It’s hard to ask them what they are using as by the time they arrive have lots of other questions that they struggle to ask with their very limited English. Thanks for your suggestion.

[Dimitar27]

There are at least 6 completely different systems:

GPS (worldwide) , GloNaSS (Russia), Galileo (Europe), Compass (China) and some regional for Japan, India, Pakistan...

[Tina6437]

Thank you i will look further into the Compass GPS.

[Dimitar27]

The real name of the system is BeiDou. "Compass" in Chinese.

[Sarah977]

@Tina6437  What makes you assume that guests are using a GPS system at all?  Mine don't. In fact, many come without having their phones set up to use in a foreign country. 

My place is quite hard to find, so I did up a hand-drawn map that shows guests the way from central ppints in town. I send this to them as a pdf in an email (using the coded email addess Airbb assigns to guests). I tell them in an Airbnb message that I will be doing this, then once I have, I message back asking them to please confirm that they received it.

I think a map is better than written instructions, especially if you are dealing with language barriers.

[Tina6437]

I think you might be right, some seem like they have no idea and just wonder the streets hoping they’ll just. come across the house they booked yikes! Brilliant suggestion you have thank you! I already have a town map I will highlight the route for them and provide it to them as a pic when i’m conversing with them via the app.  

[Tina6437]

I think you might be right, some seem like they have no idea and just wonder the streets hoping they’ll just. come across the house they booked yikes! Brilliant suggestion you have thank you! I already have a town map I will highlight the route for them and provide it to them as a pic when i’m conversing with them via the app.