I am not a creep, weirdo or masher, I treat women with respect. However, my female guests who are traveling alone don't know that. To them I am a stranger and i could present a risk to their safety. This never crossed my mind as I an a nice guy and I would never want a guest to feel threatend by my presence. However, my guest Libby left me a review that really opened my eyes. This is my favorite review becasue it really helped me see a different perspective and it will make me a better host. Id like to share this review with the community.
If you are a male host I urge you to read this review as it is important and will give you a new insight.
Libby wrote:
"Ben’s place was the perfect place for me to stay during a certification course at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh. It was cute and clean, quiet, private, and well-appointed. About a 15-20 minute walk through a residential area to the Hospital. Special shoutout—as a woman traveling by myself I had been a bit nervous about using an AirBnB, but the financials made sense, so I found someone with great reviews that had submitted IDs and everything and decided that was the way to go. When I first arrived I forgot to check-in—tired and a bit overwhelmed by my long drive, and needing to go to the bathroom, I just wanted to get up to the apartment and not move for a few minutes. While I was in the bathroom I heard someone try to enter the apartment after I had dead-bolted it behind me. Not great for my aforementioned nerves. But Ben messaged me a minute or two later to say it had been him, he didn’t realize I had arrived, could he come get his Bluetooth speaker that he had left. I said sure, but he changed his mind and asked me to put it outside the apartment on a table in the hall for him. This was a pretty mundane interaction I guess, from most points of view—and Ben may not even have thought much of it. But as a woman staying alone in a strange city, the idea of being completely alone in an apartment with a man I don’t know made me feel a little unsafe. So in terms of making me feel comfortable, by not coming into the apartment where I was staying alone in a strange city, by keeping his distance, Ben did me a great courtesy. It might say more about my own cautiousness than anything else, but regardless, I truly appreciated that. So thank you, Ben! And for those who think like me in this regard, or whose mothers or partners are urging a certain level of caution, know that I would love to stay at Ben’s again and could do so with confidence."
Honestly I had no idea that I did anythihg special until I got the reveiw. I will now make a point to be very careful when I have a single female traveler. I want all my guests to feel safe and this was a great lesson to me of how to do that.
Thanks for reading
Ben
Pittsburgh, PA
I hope this was helpful to the community it was