It’s a few days before Christmas, and we’re preparing to say goodbye to yet another guest. He’s been staying with us for two weeks while he works in our small town, and he’s returning to his home in Seattle just in time for the holidays to start. We shared a bit of an adventure when the boiler stopped working on the coldest evening of the Canadian winter so far, and we all spent a chilly night with extra duvets and space heaters. Luckily, he had a sense of humor about it, and we all survived. When I get home from work tonight, his truck will be gone, and just like that, he will have passed from our lives.
For me, saying goodbye is always difficult; I tend to avoid farewells. It’s probably not the greatest trait in an Airbnb host. Since starting my hosting career, we’ve had over 300 guests stay in our flat - some for a night or two, some for weeks - so the goodbyes are both frequent and inevitable. I still don’t like them, despite all the practice. It doesn’t necessarily take a long stay for a guest to make a significant impression: you can connect to people in such a short time. Guests come and go, but we remember them. I should focus on the hellos instead of the goodbyes, and the meaningful connections that are made, however brief and fleeting they may be. As hosts, we have the honor of participating in major events in people’s lives – family vacations, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, honeymoons, to name a few – and we have power to make the events even more memorable, and hopefully even more special. A bottle of wine, a word of congratulations, some flowers, a kind gesture, make people realize that we do mark their passage through our lives – that their presence means something to us and that they matter to us. They’re not just a reservation code: they briefly become part of our lives. We make a connection.
Tonight when I get home, a different car will be in the guest parking spot, and there will be someone new to say hello to. Again, we have the opportunity to participate in a major event in our guests’ lives: our new arrivals just had a baby yesterday, and because their house is under renovation, they need a place to stay. A fresh human in our Airbnb: not many life events are more important than that, the very beginning of what I hope is a long and happy story. Soon, they’ll be gone too, taking a little bit of the flat with them back home and leaving a little bit of themselves with us. Maybe when they’re back in their own home, they’ll remember spending Christmas 2018 in our Airbnb, something that’s brought up during the holidays with a smile and a “Remember when…?”. I hope so. I hope that we make the same kind of impression on our guests that they do on us: not always perfect, but mostly positive, and always memorable.
Hello and goodbye to all of my Airbnb guests of 2018: I remember you all, and I’m glad you came.
