People who ask about 'how much cleaning do we need to do?" also tend to be problems. We just had guests at our Florida house who had never used Airbnb before. We went way out of our way for them, and we should have known better.
I don't think they get the whole Airbnb concept. They think it's a mini hotel. The day after they checked in, they asked when we were making up their rooms.
Every day, a new complaint. The mattress in one room was uncomfortable. We had planned on replacing it anyway (we replace mattresses every four years). Their response? Meh.
They complained about having to use a hose to rinse their sandy feet. We happened to have purchased an outdoor shower but had not installed it yet. We put it in place two hours later. Their response? Meh.
They complained about running out of toilet paper. (We supply 24 rolls for a week; we gave them 20 more and later watched them load all this toilet paper into their car when packing up.) .
Meanwhile, before they left, they asked if they could get a "big discount" for next year. We offered them a 10% discount -- during the most valuable week of the year in our area -- and they were clearly disappointed. "We were thinking more like 40%" said one of them. They asked us to rent to them outside of Airbnb so they could save their booking fee, which we said we don't do. Why should we? It's not coming out our pocket, we'll book these popular spring break weeks no matter what. And who knows what to expect from a high maintenance Airbnb unsavvy group like them?
I don't know if it was because we didn't make them a big enough discount for the following year or wouldn't agree to not go through Airbnb or what, but they left the house a complete wreck. They took out the trash and did a bit of laundry. But the microwave was a war zone. Dirty diapers were left in a bag under a bed. Wet towels were everywhere. They had used aloe for their sunburns which left huge purple marks on our linens. The women had taken off their mascara with our white towels; we had makeup and "mascara marks" on 12 brand new white towels -- even though we leave black "makeup" handcloths for this purpose along with makeup removal towelettes.
Worse was our beach gear. We have rented our house for 12 years and we never saw such a mess. We ask guests to "simply hose off beach gear after use so it's ready for the guests." We keep our chairs, umbrellas, etc. in a horizontal storage shed. There must have been 20 pounds of sand in there. They poured entire buckets of wet sand in there. They left entire buckets of wet sand in the beach trolley we provide to take stuff to the beach -- along with a dozen empty beer cans, an empty whiskey bottle and loads of cigarette butts. (We picked up another 70 cigarette butts around the pool.)
We leave a stroller for guests to take to the beach - it was caked in about two pounds of wet sand. The bottom of the stroller had more empty beer cans and a dirty diaper in a bag. The whole stroller smelled like stale beer and had multiple stains. It was disgusting.
Meanwhile, they had rented a stroller and a beach umbrella (not realizing we had both, I think). Those were carefully cleaned and in pristine condition, awaiting pickup by the rental company. So it was just our stuff they trashed.
I had to hire two neighbors to come in an clean on an emergency basis to deal with their mess. One spent hours just dealing with beach stuff, including 90 minutes to sort out the stroller.
I worked all day trying to sort out the house. They had taken all kinds of stuff, from bath wash to pillows. It was hard to sort out as they had also moved a lot of stuff around. Working nonstop, we finished up as the next guests arrived.
Just then, these awful guests called and said cheerfully, "We've agreed that if you'll give us a 25% discount next year, then we'll book your place."
I agree with other comments. People who ask for discounts are problems. And don't go too out of your way for people - no good deed goes unpunished!!
