Help! I have a guest who won’t stop talking and doesn’t respect our Airbnb space!!!!

[Lisa1122]

I need your help and ideas! I have a guest who is extremely talkative AND has no boundaries or sense of social cues!! She’s the worst guest we’ve ever hosted because she makes us uncomfortable in our own home. She doesn’t respect which space is the Airbnb space and which space is not. She constantly talks even calling loudly downstairs repeatedly to chat about trivial things about or to borrow my nail polish ie. even when my husband and I were trying to chill and watch tv after a long day. She arrived yesterday. We met her around 5pm and after a while of this, we went to the mall and to eat to get away for a while but when we got back — same behavior from her. She is here today and one more night. And my husband and I both have today and tomorrow off from work. What do we do?? Help!? What would you do? Any tips? Thank you.

[Andy184]

She could just be austistic?  "extremely talkative AND has no boundaries or sense of social cues" is pretty much the definition of many high functioning autistics.  If so, following @Cathie19 's advice would be a pretty crappy thing to do (and where did "Bringing home a guest that had not been included in the booking" come from, that's not mentioned anywhere else, don't just make stuff up).  You got into AirBNB in a shared environment, at least in part to meet new people.  Guess what, not everyone is the same (and some people have some disabilities).  Enjoy meeting new people, or perhaps this isn't the business for you.

[Cathie19]

Hi @Andy184 . Welcome to the community centre forum. It’s always great to have new ideas and opinions appearing and helping. This is a forum where we can all learn from one another, including me!

Just for clarity, what I wrote is also an opinion, and Lisa will choose to review her guests her way....

With regard to making stuff up, my comment was responding to a later comment made by Lisa. It is not in the initial query, but if you read further along, it is there.

However, you have touched on something I didn’t pick up, and I thank you. @Lisa1122, my recommendation would be to place in your house rules, that no extra guests, other than those booked are allowed on site.  No other visitors on site unless preapproved by owner (or what suits your needs).

Currently, I cannot see anything in your listing (I might be overlooking it) that makes it unacceptable to bring anyone home.  I responded without checking that component, so your guest may have not realised. But you also may have it mentioned in your verbal check in or within your rule/guide book, that is visible in your listing. Make it consistent online and in your folder.

- This would give room to negotiate situations with guests on a case by case basis.

In my commentary, I also considered that @Lisa1122 @is a superhost with more than 100 reviews. She is obviously not new to the game of hosting, and is obviously doing something right, which usually means she is empathetic and has good people skills. I considered this information, into my response. 

So thanks @Andy184 .

🙂

Cathie

[Andy184]

@Cathie19I missed it in the replies I guess, my apologies, after reading this, I did go scroll through and found it. 

@Lisa1122 If it's not listed that you can't bring a friend back, she probably didn't realize it was a bad thing.  If she is autistic, especially high functioning (think Asperger's, like Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theroy), she isn't likely to pick up on social cues well, and if it's not spelled out in the rules, she's not going to think about "but it's someone else's home".  I didn't see it in the listing either, but I couldn't help but notice "How much you want to interact with us is up to you. We will say hi if we see you, but otherwise you can feel free to chat or not — it’s up to you!"  Which, to me, translates as "if you want to chat with us and feel included, by all means go ahead, but if you want to just be left alone, that's fine too".  I can see why she was confused.  You do have a lovely space though, I do go through there occasionally, and wish I could stay, but I have a service dog (and being a shared space, that's a no go with the no pets thing).  Best of luck to you though! 🙂

[Lisa1122]

Thank you @Cathie0!

Your responses have been very helpful!!

[Lisa1122]

@Andy184 We were very accommodating to her. (Also see my response below)

Lisa

[Lisa1122]

Hi @Andy184,

Thanks for your reply! That’s good feedback to edit my listing a bit. I try extremely hard to be respectful of all of my guests, and accommodate those with disabilities (besides the space being upstairs). Even though this guest did not respect all house rules, we were very kind and helpful to her. Service dogs are always welcome. So I will need to edit my description a bit. I did not know how to set appropriate boundaries with her, so spelling out things very clearly may help some. She did break some clearly spelled out rules, but I’ll see what I can do.

[Helen3]

@Lisa1122  I think you were very gracious to @Andy184  despite his harsh comments to you.

There is no evidence that your guest was/is a high functioning autistic.

It is just, if not much more likely that the were someone with few social boundaries who like to talk too much 🙂

[Lisa1122]

@Helen3 

You are so right!! Thank you!!! And the latter is definitely true from my experience as a host and social worker:)

[Helen3]

@Andy184 I don't think you can generalise and say high functioning autistics are extremely talkative and have no boundaries. I have worked with this group and they are not. Some are. Some aren't.

One of my best friends son had aspergers as did many of his cousins. I have known him since he is a baby. None (about 15 or so, male and female) were overly chatty, and all were able to function within certain social boundaries.

You can't make these sort of sweeping statements and online diagnosis based on a commont that a guest is overly chatty.

I had assumed that @Lisa1122 had the rule that many of us have ie that only guests who have booked and paid can be on the premises. And I should have checked this first.

However it  is certainly highly inappropriate to invite a pick up into a hosts home and a security risk for them. So even if it isn't in a hosts rules, I think it is perfectly acceptable for a host to say to a guest this isn't acceptable behavour.

I was saddened to see your harsh and unecessary comment that hosting wasn't for @Lisa1122  based on your assumption, for which there is no evidence, that this guest must have been someone who was a high functioning autistic.

[Lisa1122]

@Helen3 

YES!  Thank you! Everything you said is so true!!!! I really appreciate you taking the time to write this.

Sweeping diagnoses of someone who talks a lot and disrespects house rules is not helpful. And there were very significant boundary failures on her part — even ones that were clearly made online and stated to her. She chose not to listen or respect the house rules or what I said. I do have the right to feel comfortable in my own home:)

@Andy184 I was also saddened by your harsh words that maybe I shouldn’t host. For your information, that guest as well as a HIGHLY significant number of guests have rated their experience as 5 star. I love hosting and meeting people. And guests love staying in my space!!

[Andy184]

@Lisa1122 

 I never said anything bad about your accommodations. They look lovely and I'm sure many guests do appreciate them, in fact, I specifically commented that I wish I could stay there (but, as I have a Service Dog, and it's a shared space, that wouldn't work). I simply pointed out that if you open the door to being chatty (as you did in your listing), then encounter someone who isn't the same as you (isn't that the point of the "traditional" Airbnb hosting, after all), and is more chatty than you expected, it's a bit silly to complain about them being chatty.

Nowhere did I say you shouldn’t host, I commented that if you don’t like meeting new and different people, perhaps it wasn’t for you. Not everyone is the same, if I were your guest, you'd find me quite odd too, but that doesn't make me bad (or good, just different), nor does it make you bad (or good, just different). My point still stands, if the point of "traditional" hosting is to meet new and different people and have an experience with them, you need to either be open to people who actually are different than you (in ways you may not have expected). If you aren't, then this experience probably isn't for you (people keep trying to interject emotion into it, when it's simple logic). It’s not a commentary on your place, or you as a person, or anything else other than the experience that Airbnb is “traditionally” supposed to be (and embracing or resisting that). People are different, even just within the US (let alone all over the world). Things you consider a norm won’t be a norm for them and vice versa.

[Andy184]

@Helen3 

First, Autism is a spectrum disorder (ranging from non-verbal, to overly chatty, to no filter whatsoever). Second, just because your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate (bonus points if you can identify where that's from) happened to be Asperger's and have specific symptoms doesn't mean all Aspies fall on the exact same place on the spectrum. Some of us have other issues as well that alter the experience. For example, not only am I an Aspie, but I'm also ADHD, UAD, OCD, and a few other things. Yet, I am still highly functioning (albeit, socially awkward). I mentioned Asperger's specifically as it's what I personally am, but Autism is a very, very wide spectrum and that guest COULD (note, I never diagnosed them, I said they COULD have been, hence the word "if", reading comprehension for the win...) have been a highly functioning Autistic.

As for what is or isn't acceptable, is being speculated upon from a host's perspective, not a guest’s. To a guest, bringing a friend back home is often considered normal (which is why so many do it, and why the need to put it in the rules happened in the first place). Assuming you are correct, and it's not an Autistic (or even if they are and are more highly functioning than myself even), then they may have chosen this host BECAUSE there was not a rule that bringing someone back wasn't allowed (when so many others do have such a rule). Unlike you, I did read over her info, and the part I quoted about chatting, certainly seemed like chatting was ok (if they wanted to). Bottom line, I may not be qualified to "diagnose" someone over the internet (and I'm not, nor did I), but being an Aspie myself, I'm certainly more likely to recognize it than you are.