Guests ignoring house rules....

[Ben253]

Hi All! 

It has all been quiet guest wise, with lots of lovely people coming and going with lots of nice things to say and no headaches from my end. Until this week....

I have some guests in, who are here for the week. They arrived Wednesday, and I guess I should have expected them to be a touch demanding when they walked in and left their (heavy) bags at the top of the stairs for me to carry. I actually don't mind doing this and almost always offer to help my guests with luggage. Except these guys wanted me to bring everything down for them like a porter. Ok, fine. 

Anyhow, onto the tour of the house. One of the first things they wanted was 'fresh towels every day'. Hell no... at this point it becomes somewhat obvious that they think they are in a hotel! I explained that this much laundry is economically bad, and that they can have a change of towels after three days (usually I give one set of towels for a week but I thought meet them halfway to keep things sweet) 

I was out last night and stayed with a friend. I arrived home to find the kitchen filthy (food on the floor, dirty pans left on the hob and food waste in the plug hole) along with a note asking me to cover my food in the fridge (?) I have some filled rolls I had made to get me through some fully booked days ahead workwise, and a tortilla espanol... nothing particularly unpleasant and certainly nothing smelly (as someone who works with aroma and fragrance on a daily basis, I am particularly sensitive to bad smells) 

There are a few other niggles; they frequently use the kitchen in my work hours and were just yesterday playing music from a phone whilst I had patients visiting. They slam the bedroom door with such force every single time they use it - waking me up at 5:45am this morning! Despite my house rules stating 'no frying in the house' they keep frying onions WITH THE WINDOWS CLOSED. THIS is the precise reason I have the no frying rule. 

They are only here until Tuesday morning but I am struggling at the halfway mark! Any suggestions on what to do? I don't really want to get Airbnb involved, particularly after putting up with them for the last few days! It is such a shame when guests like this arrive as it has been great for months now! 

[Ben253]

Thankfully this doesn’t happen often with guests such as this, im usually lucky enough to rarely have any problems at all! 

I guess when when I was on the spot during check in I was a bit gobsmacked at the requests! Thankfully all seems quiet this morning and there’s bee no no super early kitchen cookery session.. which worries me more as I’m concerned they’ll start cooking when my patients start arriving later today! (I haven’t reviewed my house rules recently but I’m sure there’s a ‘kitchen is outta bounds during my work hours!’ In there)

i think hosts around  the world will hear the sigh of relief when they leave...!

[Sarah977]

@Ben253  I admit it's much easier to give other hosts advice on how they might have handled something differently than when it's happening to you and you have to think fast on your feet .-)

It almost sounds to me like these guests took some time settling into a home-share situation, it was probably a totally new experience for them, but may be coming around- not cooking up a storm at odd hours, leaving a mess behind, and stopped slamming doors. Or maybe they're just tuckered out from all that frying and slamming.

It's hard when you've had lovely guests so far and suddenly get hit with ones that aren't. I was lucky- I had a couple sticky situations near the beginning of hosting, and like you, wasn't quite sure how to handle, but it worked out, so I sort of got that out of the way and was steeled for similar stuff in the future, but have had nothing but great guests since then.