Poor hygiene from guests

[Fab2]

Aloha Fellow Hosts,

We are hosting our second guest in two weeks with seriously poor hygiene which is causing quite severe cases of body odor and I am curious how others have dealt with this. We are in Hawai'i, in August, which means it's hot as hell and, as is the case in most homes in our state, there is no A/C so sweating is a perpetual state even when just lounging indoors.

Our guests go out hiking/to the beach, caked with sunscreen on, sweat, salt, sand and we are on our second one who simply doesn't shower when they return. The first one spent a week with us and showered only 3 times the entire time, leaving a foul smell in the room, so I'm not ready to have this new guest do the same as we live in the home too. 

We stockpile our guest bathroom with plenty of toilettries, lotions, soaps, toothpaste, mouthwash, aloe, sunscreen, and always extend the use of our washing machine/laundry detergent/softeners as most of our guests have been traveling for a while but our last guest didn't care for any of it alas.

Any recommendations? 

Mahalos for your help on how to best address this new issue.

[Sandra126]

I think this is impossible to deal with. I think it is like a baby wailing, you cannot stop it you can only wait for it to leave.

[Thomas-and-Damian0]

Hmm, that's a tricky one. I think you have just been unlucky so far with your guests. We have a swim spa in our house but in our welcome letter (where provide all the other info) we request that our guests take a shower before entering the spa. In other word we point out that suntan lotion or hair products could damage the filter. It seems to work as all guests use the shower before entering the swim spa. Good luck! 🙂 

[Lyndsey2]

Somewhat like what @Thomas-and-Damian0 said, I would use something in the home that could be damaged by sunscreen or sand as a motivation. Then you could add as a house rule something like, "Bedding can be damaged by salt and sunscreen lotion. Please shower before bed when returning from a trip outdoors." Or, our vaccuum can only handle so much sand! Please rinse off in the shower when you've returned from the beach/hiking/etc." That should get the point across, and even allow you to mention their failure to do so, without it being about the body odor.

[Fab2]

Thanks, all. I'll add something to that effect in the rules along with the fact that we are experiencing the onset of a Hep-A outbreak here on O'ahu and our current guest does not seem fond of washing his hands after using the bathroom either, it seems. In fact, many guests don't so I'll use that as my excuse to highlight proper hygiene as a necessity here.

Why does it feel like we all have common sense but most guests don't, btw???

[Fiona243]

You should count yourself lucky it is only body odour. We had an elderly couple stay with us, they were very sweet, but each evening, the husband spent a long time in the bathroom (the guest bathroom is across the hall from the guest bedroom), and the smells were foul. I even said to my hsband that we must have something wrong with the drains as there was a really bad smell of sewage. I couldn't figure out how it happened each evening, you'd think if somone had food poisoning that surely would only be for a couple of days, not every evening (and only in the evening) for a week.

To cut a long story short, we figured out from the items left in the trash after they left that he had a colostomy bag and was emptying it out each evening in the bathroom! I had to spend almost 5 hours sanitising the bathroom to get rid of the lingering smell of s**t, used 2 bottles of Drano in the sink as a foul smell was coming up from the U-bend, it was the most unpleasant bathroom cleaning I have ever done.

Then, stupidly, when it came for me to do the review I felt sorry for him and so did NOT give him a low rating for cleanliness, because there was actually no visible dirt in the bathroom, he was very tidy, he had obviously made an effort to make sure he had rinsed everything down. It was just that the room stank.

Now I'm kicking myself, because in his review, he's given us 4 stars for cleanliness because we only changed the towels once during the week and did not change the bed linen during the week. I say in the listing that linens are changed weekly, they stayed 1 week, so I only gave them a clean set of towels mid-week. I wish now I'd been more ruthless in my review, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.