Guest over staying

[Hank144]

Hello 👋 

Question for the group:

Today we have had a guest go over there checkout time, despite our reminders, and hadn’t responded to our messages inquiring about their exit time. We have a guest coming in tomorrow, so we need time to turn it over.  So we went down and talked ton the guests, and apparently the guest on the reservation wasn’t there to check out but his parents were and didn’t know they were supposed to be out today.  We still haven’t heard from our guest, but the parents said they think they will be out later in the day - but not sure how we should go about handling this situation.

We’re new to the Superhost community, as well as only been hosting since March.   We have all of our rules posted in our listing, we have automatic reminders of house rules with links to the full list.  And it’s the first late checkout that we haven’t been requested to accommodate in advance. 

Any insights would be helpful.

[Anonymous]

@Hank144   Ask the parents to take their group's belongings, give your keys back, and leave. If you want to soften that, you can offer them a small grace period to get their stuff together, but remain onsite and make it obvious that you have no choice but to conduct the changeover cleaning process so that nobody has the option of lingering around.

[Hank144]

Thank you @Anonymous .  

Update: They have finally vacated the unit. Unfortunately, the place was not left in good conduction (a shelf was ripped out of the wall (with broken stuff on the floor); the wooden desk top has been defaced with pen and marker; definitely stains on sheets and pillows (which I know is more common than you want lol); and there is some unaccounted kitchen items like Tupperware, cleaning supplies.  

Still doing a full inventory. Do we go for the security deposit or the airbnb insurance? 

[Anonymous]

@Hank144  There's no such thing as a security deposit on Airbnb, so purge that myth from your brain right away:  https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/140/security-deposits

The only way to pursue compensation for damage is to initiate a claim at https://airbnb.com/resolutions . I can tell you straight away, you will lose the entire claim if you complicate it with any piddly little things like missing tupperware or marked linens. It's only worthwhile if you have a straightforward claim for one major item, two at the most, the damage can't be attributed to cumulative wear and tear, and the item is truly no longer usable. 

A collapsed shelf sounds like a weak case, but you're already looking at a bad review for enforcing your checkout time, so you have nothing to lose by trying.

[Amanda660]

@Hank144how long we’re these guests in for? 

[Hank144]

They were in the unit 4 hours beyond their checkout time. 

[Hank144]

Luckily we were able to not have to escalate to  the resolution center, but get what we needed.

[Huma0]

@Hank144 

Those guests sound like a complete pain in the backside. I don't think I would have been as calm as you!

I see they did not leave you a review. Did you leave one for them?