How to review family or Couples with Infant or toddlers

[Josefine-And-Mattias0]

Been looking around to find a tread regarding this.

We are okey with hosting infants we get a lot of young couples with an infant maybe 3 out of 10. So the truth is we would lose a lot of business if not accepting infants. I think it’s very wrong that you can’t charge extra as it’s  more work for us. Seen lot of discussions regarding this. Even more work then one additional adult.

Fact is they stay at home and cook at home much more then other gusts.

They use more water and electricity witch is a big cost for us and we have water restrictions.

We provide extras, like travel cot with a sheet, baby bath, high chair and extra towels. They are more high maintenance.

They often late on checkout and check in because of the baby I do understand why.

Then my biggest concern The cleaning up, trash and broken things. This is my biggest problem how do I review this?

Will give yo an example:

Two adults very nice couple  with according to airbnb one  “infant”  Staying in my studio for 3 nights. I proved all the extras. When they leave they are stressed trying to checkout on time ending up leaving 20 minutes late, not a super big problem they did also apologize for late checkout. They are friendly and sweet but baby crying often maybe teething ( would never mention this in a review but just to give you the complete picture) The place is dirty lots of crumbles on kitchen counters and grease on the stove, like someone cooked and didn’t bother to clean. The high chair same thing, dining table same thing full of greasy hands maybe from butter, yoghurt, who knows just guessing here. Hand prints on windows and very dirty floors. Lots of extra trash. It smells from the dipers in bin. I don’t ask for trash to be taken out by my guest but think you should if it contains diapers? The pepper and salt grinder are broken, my guess is the the baby maybe did bang them on the table repeatedly. Not expensive to replace but still annoying I had to leave them for the next guest as I had no time to get new ones as I most often have back to back bookings.

How do I review them? I find it difficult because If I was payed extra for the additional cost and extra work I wouldn’t  mind but as I’m not I feel like I should mention this in the review? Or must I just accept that “infants“  (read toddlers) are messy and give them a nice review.

Thankful for  advice!

[Colleen253]

@Josefine-And-Mattias0 I agree 100% about babies and toddlers costing more than the average guest. We should be able to recoup those costs. But, it's not the families fault that Airbnb doesn't consider their babies as guests. So we shouldn't blame them. If we don't like it, we just shouldn't accommodate them. Families with babies are naturally stressed, rushed and messy. It just comes with the territory. If damage or mess was deliberate or malicious, then review accordingly. Otherwise, be gracious and forgiving. A broken pepper grinder can happen at the hands of an adult guest as easily as a toddlers. 

[Sarah977]

@Josefine-And-Mattias0  I agree with what Colleen has said. And you might consider raising your nightly price or cleaning fee slightly, to take the extra cleaning involved with the families into account. It might seem like it isn't fair to the guests who don't have young ones, but if 100% of your guests pay a nightly fee that is a few dollars more, it probably wouldn't affect your bookings much if at all, and added up could make you less fussed about the cleaning involved with the 30% who have babies. Most hosts take their average expenses, over all guests, into account when pricing. Some guests may leave it spotless, requiring simple cleaning, others may leave it a mess. Some guests may use more utilities than others, some may motor through the internet data, while others hardly use it at all.

And while I generally don't like it when hosts expect their guests to take their trash out to the curb or to an outside bin, I don't see anything wrong with asking guests who are creating garbage full of dirty diapers to please put it out each day. Yes, it should seem like common courtesy, but we sometimes have to be specific with guests. A nicely framed note on the wall by the garbage can, like "Dear parents, if you have diapers in the garbage, kindly take your garbage bags out to the (wherever they should) on a daily basis. Thank you for your co-operation."

[Kelly149]

@Josefine-And-Mattias0 You do not have to host babies for free. If you have a charge for 3rd guest you can apply that charge to any human. 

and either way, they were messy. Baby isn’t in charge, the adults are and they’re the ones being reviewed.