Tricky guest - advice appreciated

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Tricky guest - advice appreciated

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...

Top Answer

@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.

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16 Replies 16
Huma0
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

@Anonymous 

 

Agreed. For £36 a night, I would not be offering that spread! 

 

And when I googled the village, it seemed like there were a reasonable amount of eateries.

 

The kitchen access thing I think is often going to be a tricky thing in a homeshare. I've seen a lot of hosts who limit or deny kitchen access having issues with guests. I also have a lot of guests double checking this with me before they book (especially more recently), even though it's in the very first paragraph of my description. 

Dear Fab Folks,

 

Hugely appreciate all your responses and your wisdom.

 

I've decided to stop offering breakfast as an option for future stays.  No I don't have a licence to serve food and heck, I wouldn't want to poison someone with cornflakes.  What the heck I do with the 30 ish boxes in the cupboard, I don't know.  Donate to a food bank probably.

 

This is just a little village on the outer pretty bit of York but we do have a little shop and every kind of eatery is 15 minutes away in the middle of York.  

 

I'm sticking to my guns on no access to kitchen/cooking.

 

Please can someone point me at the bit where I can add that I have a security camera in the house?  I give up and really can't find it.

 

My current guest continues to be a challenge but at least he's getting the idea that freeloading out of my fridge is not an option.  He ordered a takeaway! Yay, this is progress.

 

In other news, I foolishly left an unopened letter on the table down stairs and came down later to find it had been opened.  My cats do not have thumbs so shall I take a wild guess at who was responsible?

 

Is it Friday yet?  I so want it to be Friday.

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