@Cynthia0
There's been some very good comments on here about your concern, and if I'm able to extract just one comment from each, it would be;-
- ".....it turned out young guests are better and happier guests then the others....."
- ".....you can ask your guest if he have read carefully and accept all your house rules. May be he can tell you something about his plans so you can organize everything better?"
- "Tell them your expectations and let them know what they can expect from you. Communication is key"
- "....just being young and having no reviews is not necessarily evidence they will be bad guests"
- "Regardless of whether they have reviews or not, I like to make my own conclusions about potential guests. so I make a point of communicating with potential guests to get a feel for them. Being a good fit with my home, the way we do things here and managing expectations is important for us"
- and I'm sure that we can all learn from others' experience; I certainly have, from reading their comments.
As to @Mark0's comment that "No one who is under 18 is supposed to be able to book on airbnb, but airbnb doesn't do much to ensure this", I did have an enquiry recently where I was contacted by one of four 17yr old girls , saying that they were looking for somewhere to stay and relax after taking their exams, and she then said that "it was ok with her Mum, who would be making the booking on their behalf"
If @Cynthia0's question related to under-18yr olds, then as with the enquiry that 'hit' us, whilst I know of many youngsters who are very responsible and could be trusted to look after everything and everywhere they stay and/or what they do, the fact remains, that until they are actually 18 years of age, "children" - for that is what they are classified as under that age - are not legally (in the UK at least) able to make a booking for themselves.
"But" I hear everyone saying, "their mother had said that she would book for them on her account", which indeed was the case, but even if she did that, the law requires (as does Airbnb) that the person who makes the booking is also required to stay at the holiday accommodation with the "children"; all of which was pointed out to the girls, whose mother then took over the conversation, saying that other places they had contacted didn't have a problem with allowing the 17year olds to stay.
So if what she said is/was correct/true, the onus is on the Host rather than on Airbnb to monitor who is going to stay at your property, and this takes us back to the five comments I highlighted above, as well as to the one main comment throughout, and that is that, "Communication is key".
Let's face it, we were all young once. Maybe we were or weren't as responsible at age 18 as we should have been, but unless someone gave us a chance, they wouldn't have discovered what we were like, and for today's youngsters (by which I mean those aged between 18 and say 25) the same situation still exists, so it is only after communicating back and fore with your Guest(s), as well as ensuring that they have read, and will comply with your House Rules, that Hosts' can make informed (as well as 'gut') conclusions.
In my own case I did all of my 'homework' on the subject, and might even have 'given in' to the four girls' request to stay if the Mum of one of them had also stayed with them, but she didn't offer to do so, on top of which, I checked with my Insurance Company as to whether I would still be covered should anything be damaged etc. Whilst most surpringly they advised that I would be, I decided that having advised all the plusses and minuses to the Mum, rather than my clicking the "Decline" button, I would leave the decision up to her. Perhaps unsurprisingly therefore, apart from a comment of "Thanks", with the addition that she/they "were grateful for all of my research", I've neither had a booking for that enquiry, nor heard anything since.
