Tricky guest - advice appreciated

[Anne11978]

Hello awesome hosts - I need a little help or maybe some gin.

New to hosting here in the UK.  My listing is for a room in my home and sole use of a pretty nice bathroom.  I supply breakfast essentials like cereal, pastries, fruit, yoghurt, milk, juice, cold meats.  I think it's pretty clear in my listing that there are no kitchen facilities available for cooking in the evenings.

I have a guest staying at the moment.  He seems to be living on the breakfast contents of my fridge.  When he arrived  I told him to help himself to any/all of the above for breakfast and showed him where plates/cutlery are and how the toaster works.

He complained that the fruit salad in the fridge was 'sour' - it wasn't but I told him not to eat it if he didn't like it.  He appears at different times of the day to drink a pint of milk or grab another banana/pastry of whatever he wants to graze on.  Last night he appeared as I was going to bed and asked for a pan so he could cook fried eggs (from the fridge obviously.)  I told him no as use of the kitchen facilities were not included in his stay.  I would also have worried if I'd given in that he would set the house on fire using the induction hob - he's already broken the window locks in his room.  I explained that it was only breakfast that was provided and that he would have to make other arrangements for other meals.  He expressed his displeasure at my refusal by stomping to his room and slamming doors.

I don't know what to do.  I'm now feeling very uncomfortable in my own home.  I have tried to help this lad (he seems very young) and have shown him the best routes into town, encouraged him to get out and about, shown him how to hook up to the wifi etc.

Friday can't come soon enough.  Words of wisdom appreciated.  Link to my listing included because I'm not sure if I have made all of the above clear.

https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/698178203285344766?guests=1&adults=1&s=67&unique_share_id=18ede1e8-5e...

[Gwen386]

Welcome @Anne11978 to hosting. You’re off to a great start. 

I recommend rewording “Guests are unable to use kitchen” to “The kitchen is off limits to guests.” 

Also, if you feel uncomfortable, you can shorten his stay. 

[Anne11978]

@Gwen386 - Thanks so much for this - great idea and I will do that now.  Apologies for dim question but how do I shorten his stay?  Presumably this involves a refund too?

[Gwen386]

You’re welcome @Anne11978 Not a dim question at all. I am pinging a fellow host @Huma0 who is an expert on responding to airbnb-related questions.

[Huma0]

Thanks @Gwen386 

@Anne11978 I am not surprised you need some gin! Some people are really cheeky. I think your listing is clear but yes, it helps to stress that the kitchen is off limits. Perhaps, just to be extra safe, you could reiterate this to guests in a message before they book. 

RE shortening the stay, you will need to speak to the guest about it and explain to him that it's not working out, that you think he should find a listing that better suits his needs and that you will refund the unspent nights. Be polite but firm.

Go to your reservations page and next to the guest's reservation, click on the three dots and select change or cancel. You'll get a new page where you can enter a new check out date. The system will automatically recalculate the price and then you can send the request. The guest needs to accept the request, so be sure to tell him when you have sent it.

If the guest refuses to leave, I'm afraid you'd need to get Airbnb involved. This can be a bit hit and miss depending on whether you get a helpful rep or not, so it's always best if you can sort it out yourself. 

[Huma0]

@Gwen386 

PS, obviously you risk getting a bad review from the guest, which was not great when you start out hosting, but that can't be helped really. The guy is already angry you didn't let him cook (your eggs) so I doubt he'd leave a glowing review anyway. 

Or, he might not write a review at all, especially if he fears a bad one from you. I have often found that badly behaved guests don't leave reviews, but you just never know.

[Gwen386]

Thanks @Huma0 

[Huma0]

@Gwen386 

Sorry, that last post was supposed to be tagged @Anne11978 🙂

[Sudsrung0]

@Anne11978 

Do you need a licence to supply food in England?

[Huma0]

@Sudsrung0 

I'm not sure about this as I have read conflicting things and it's not that easy to find some clear official source of information. To be fair, I haven't looked that hard, because I have no intention of offering breakfast, so I imagine that information is out there somewhere...

I have read that if you even provide a very basic breakfast that doesn't involve cooking, that still counts as a B&B, which means you have to be registered with and undergo inspections by the food hygiene agency and registered with your local council, and that might have tax implications, as well as a whole bunch of other health and safety regulations.

On the other hand, I have read that Airbnbs/similar STRs are not considered to be professional B&Bs and therefore those regulations do not apply.

@Mike-And-Jane0 are usually the experts on this kind of stuff.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Huma0 Sorry but I have never researched this as we only offer 'entire place' listings.

[Huma0]

@Mike-And-Jane0 

Okay thank you. No problem. You just seem well versed in STR laws here so I thought you might know!

[Anonymous]

@Anne11978  when I started out offering a guestroom, I thought it would be important to offer breakfast. I was wrong. It was a lot of extra effort and expense but it didn't pay off in added value. Plenty of budget travelers will be happy to use whatever food is made available to them, but they're not willing to spend more on a listing that offers breakfast than a comparable one that doesn't.

If you don't want guests using your kitchen, it would be best in the future to ditch the breakfast altogether so that they have no reason to go in there in the first place. You want independent guests who get out of the house for their meals and activities, so in addition to nixing the breakfast you might want to check what the purpose of guests' visit to your area is before accepting requests. 

[Huma0]

@Anonymous 

I am not sure... I agree with everything you've said here, except that I think it's easier to not offer breakfast if you DO allow kitchen access and it also depends on your location and what the options are there. Although I am sure there are options there, I think that @Anne11978 is in a village, so there are not going to be as many choices as London or Berlin.

Even here, with plenty of cafes within stumbling distance of the house, I found that most guest do not want to eat out three times a day. It's really expensive to do that in the UK! In contrast, the supermarkets are quite good value. With tourists, I found that breakfast was the meal they were most likely to want to eat at the listing. That was fine because they could quickly throw something together themselves, but it becomes tricky if you don't allow kitchen access at all. I can just see the guests trying to persuade @Anne11978 to make an exception for them.

I've also stayed in places that were very remote and it would have been a real pain in the backside if breakfast wasn't included.

Whether the breakfast adds value to @Anne11978 's listing might well depend on what her competition is doing and charging, but of course the nightly price needs to absorb that cost (both in terms of the food and her time). 

The listing states that breakfast is served in the dining room and that the kitchen is not for guest use, so this particular guest had no business rummaging around in the fridge anyway. He was just freeloading. Perhaps he wouldn't even have wanted to fry eggs if the eggs weren't free! Hopefully, guests like him won't be a frequent occurrence.

Out of hundreds of guests I've only hosted one couple who were cheeky in this way. They would could a full on breakfast using my food, eggs, avocados, the lot and even commented in their review about how well stocked the kitchen was! I am not sure how they got confused on that point, but they were definitely an exception. 

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

@Huma0   Good points, and admittedly I was confused because I interpreted @Anne11978 's comment to mean that the guest was invited to help himself to use things in the kitchen even though it's off-limits:

"When he arrived  I told him to help himself to any/all of the above for breakfast and showed him where plates/cutlery are and how the toaster works."

If breakfast items were indeed set out in the dining area during limited hours, or stocked in a separate mini-fridge for the guests, the boundaries would be quite a bit clearer. But that's a lot of extra daily work that hardly seems worthwhile for only a £36 per night room rate. 

I don't know what the range of food options in the village is like, but York is just next door so it doesn't quite fit this American's idea of "remote." I think if you want to attract the true shoestring-budget travelers, offering kitchen use is more essential than breakfast, whereas if avoiding freeloaders is a goal, you want to stick with the guests who can factor dining out for all their meals into the budget.