Problem with a guest

[Nat73]

I recently had a guest sharing my apartment. It was a nightmare!! For 7 days she hid in the room 24/7 and only sneaked out to use the bathroom and the kitchen between 11.30 pm to 4.30 am ( I get up at 5am so Im utterly exhausted) !! She had absolutely no consideration for the noise she made - banging pots and pans etc. She also stained my vintage table with ring marks eventhough I had set a placemat and 2 coasters! She had taps running for up to half an hour in the bathroom and spent up to 1.5 hours in the shower. I tried to approach her but she not respond to my knocks on the door and it seemed she did not understand English. The room absolutely stinks and I have had to strip and air all bedding  - thank god for Glen20 and Febreze.

Since she had paid I felt there was little I could do! How should I have handled this?

[Sarah977]

@Nat73  The fact that someone paid doesn't give them the right to be disrespectful. What they paid for was accomodation, not the freedom to disrupt your life. I've never had a guest like ths, not even close, but I've read enough of these stories here on the forum. 

Some hosts just stick it out, but I wouldn't. I'd sit her down and tell her that this isn't acceptable behavior in someone else's home. That she can either be respectful of the fact that she booked a shared home and act accordingly, or she can cancel the rest of her stay and she'll be refunded the unused nights.

If there's a language barrier, that makes it difficult, but you can always send a message instead and they can use an online translator.

Some people are decidedly odd, some have mental problems, some are socially inept or feel out of their element and shy. Any of those could have been the case with your guest.

And then, again, some are just not nice or respectful people, period.

I'm always sorry when I hear what some hosts have to deal with.

Please make sure to leave an honest review for this guest so other hosts are warned. Mention the late night/early morning banging around and the excessive showering. (I can almost guess what nationality this guest was, because it seems to be a cultural thing that's been reported here many times.) "Not suited to a shared home situation" is a pretty standard line to end with for guests like this.

[Rachel177]

@Nat73 I would suggest updating your house rules & have a printed copy of them in the room/house manual so guests get reminded of them on check in (mine are front page of my house manual, they have to read through them to get to the wifi password).

I had similar issues with guests wanting to cook late at night and banging bedroom & bathroom doors at all hours, which is pretty inconsiderate in shared accommodation. I updated my rules rules to limit the hours that guests can use the kitchen from 7am-9pm and added a quiet time from 11am-7am. This has cut down on the noise etc from guests.