Advice needed re smoking

[Melissa1285]

Looking for a bit of advice, I’ve been hosting Airbnb for a few years and never any major issues. I require a $300 deposit and have a strict no smoking policy. But a month ago I made a rental to a first time Airbnb guest who was very pleasant and polite and communicated effectively during his stay. So much so that we extended his stay one additional night.

That being said, when I arrive back at the apartment the entire home reeked of cigarette smoke. I found incense sticks lit and ashes on my floor in three rooms. Like a normal person I open the windows and waited a couple days to see if I could ventilate it myself- being six months pregnant I am sensitive to smells so during this time I had to make alternative arrangements for my own living. After about a week of home remedies and ventilation I looked into professional cleaning which was well over my security deposit of $300.

I tried to contact the guest and of course no answer so I then contacted Cody at Airbnb and after a week of back-and-forth emails and they promised to escalate my concern to a supervisor I am left with nothing because I do not have evidence of cigarettes smoked in my home. How has this been handled by other renters?

I won’t rent it again knowing I don’t have the support of air B&B.

Regards,

Melissa 

[Trevor243]

@Melissa1285  Any time you rent out a property, whether it's through AirBnB or other OTA or your website or whatever, you will get issues like this. You can set as may rules as you want, but sometimes, people will break your rules. You often won't get any support from OTAs.

Even if it's not breaking the rules, we can still end up with unpleasant smells in properties. The worst is curry - some guests love to cook a curry and the aroma lingers for ages. It gets in all the fabric, the bedding etc. We often have only 5 hours to turn a property round for the next guest - curry smells are a nightmare.

You're in business, so you have to run it like a business - prepare for the worst. Most of the time, everything will be fine, but sometimes it won't.

So it comes down to "how do you clean up after guests and prepare for the next guests" .... we clean, clean, clean .... if it's smelly, we ventilate the entire property for as long as possible, we clean down every surface, we use odour neutraliser sprays (not too much as they can be stronger smells than the original smell), we leave nice, gentle solid gel type air fresheners (not overpowering) .... if necessary, we can clean carpets and upholstery .... if our cleaners go in to a property and discover it's a bad mess, they tell me, I call in extra help immediately .... and as a last resort, if we can't get a property ready in time, we either relocate the guests into other properties we manage, or we apologise to them and do what we can to help them enjoy their stay .....

If we ever have to call in another company to help, that is extra cost .... we know we'll have to do this a few times, whether it's for repairs or cleaning or whatever .... but we factor this into our nightly prices through the year .... an extra £1 or $1 per night is a tiny amount for each guest and they don't know or realise that we're preparing for emergencies .... but it's set aside to cover "emergency cleaning / maintenance etc" .... over the course of a year, it mostly balances out .... and that's what you do when you're in business .... and as you're renting properties out, you're in business .....

[Anonymous]

@Melissa1285  The so-called "Security Deposit" is fictional. Airbnb does not charge or hold an actual deposit during the booking process, and it does not appear to have any influence on the outcome of a claim. I've probably read hundreds of accounts of claims for smoke odor (it's depressingly common), but it's not considered "physical damage" and the most I've ever heard of someone winning from Airbnb is a token flat amount (say, $20 or $50) allocated for extra cleaning.

I don't know what the content of your attempt to contact the guest was, but if you haven't done so already, you can seek compensation with the Resolutions tool at https://airbnb.com/resolutions .  But I would've suggested doing this immediately upon discovering the smoking. Given the amount of time that has passed at this point, prepare for the likelihood that you'll come out of this dispute empty-handed.

[Van-and-Leigh0]

I own and use my own ozone generators. They are the only means to effectively mitigate smoke odor, especially in short odor.  We charge $200 for this service through our construction company, which is a standard fee in the hotel industry. While we have yet to have a guest pay this themselves, since they are obviously of poor character for causing the DAMAGE, airbnb has paid it several times after some persistence on our part.