We have it right in our house rules:
* BE ON TIME: We'll expect you to work with us to find a mutually acceptable check-in time and commit to arriving at the agreed upon time.
We also send along this message when they balk at committing:
We have busy lives. Since it's our home, we would like to commit to an arrival time with you. We both have commitments and jobs that often force us to be away from the house. There is no full-time staff, it's just us, so we need to make sure one of us is available to greet you, let you in, and show you around. There is no remote key or keybox and we'd hate to leave you stranded on the porch wanting to check in while we're off running errands. We hope you understand. We'd be happy to put you down for a xxpm check in if that works for you. Then we can set about planning our day around your arrival.
We try to set the expectation that our time is valuable too. Then we provide a broad welcome and walk through of the features and benefits of their room, how to use the alarm system and where to find things. The key is setting the right "guest-pectation" which includes communicating with us when you are going to be late. Maybe it was my Mom's constant worrying, but when the guest is late, I start to worry.... are they okay? And frankly, I don't even know them yet and now I'm worrying? Don't do that to me.
We joke, because when we get an Airbnb message just about check-in time, we immediately bet "how late are they going to be?" but really, it's a sad start to a relationship built on trust. Even if a flight is delayed, you know LONG BEFORE check in that you aren't going to make it on time and didn't bother to communicate it to us. If you sit down to lunch at 1pm and your check in is at 2pm, what are the chances you are going to arrive on time? We think communication is paramount and if you didn't bother, we mark you down for House Rules as well as Communication. If you write us a message, "hey, my flight is still sitting on the tarmack and they are saying we're going to get in 30 minutes late." We see that as a time to renegotiate the check in committment time. That means we get the chance to say, hey, if you're going to be more than an hour late, we have plans and will have to arrange another time to check you in. When there is no communication, we are held hostage. Why should I want to host a person who would treat me like that - like I'm at their beck and call. That's the start of a bad experience. We've ultimately had to agree that anyone who is over an hour late and doesn't communicate will be turned away, we have to for our own sanity.
We've had an issue once where someone reached out and said they got a late start and were looking at being about an hour and a half late. We had tickets to a play that were expensive. We had to be honest, we bought these tickets with the plan you were going to be here at 6. We cannot check you in at 7:30 because we have plans. We can meet you at 10 when the show is over or you can cancel and find another host. Guess what, she found something else to do because she got a late start. She went to dinner, she stopped and saw an exhibit at a museum, she figured it out and only impacted our ability to go out for a nightcap after the show. We were both, mutually, affected - not just us missing the show because she did not plan appropriately.
There is a phrase I love: Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. I think this applies appropriately to check in times and committing to be somewhere when you say you are going to be there.
