Yes. Whether you do it for fun, or you do it for profit, it’s still a business. It’s regulated that way. It’s taxed that way, and your guests see it as such. I know a lot of people rent out a spare room, or even a couch, and that’s cool.
If you give someone a private space in your home, though, and we use the baseline experience of people staying in hotels, or whole house VRs, when left to their own devices, stuff is going to get broken, stained, or damaged.
Some people are super conscientious, but others don’t have the same regard for places that they stay at. How tidily people live varies a whole lot. When they’re on the go for business, running late to meetings, etc. they cut a few corners. It’s especially true, though, when they’re on vacation, in a place where they’re out to have a good time. Heavy use of anything that adults use to relax usually puts a bit of good judgement on holiday, too. Kids are tactile. Sometimes they bang on stuff in imaginary journeys.
We allow dogs, and birds. Cats, especially as they generally don’t travel well, can do too much damage. Even a well-behaved dog, with a pretty good owner, can leave a lot more work for us. The bottom of the couch, where they rub, gets stained, and/or full of dog hair. Pillow covers, even on decorative couches, have to be washable. We wash them, and then still have to take a pet-hair grade lint roller to them to get some dog hair out. (Jack Russell terriers are particularly tough.).
Our space rents out about 80% of the year, if we’re not having COVID or a century-old house issue. We’re working on compiling better numbers, but we lose at least a table lamp, a couple of floor mats, and a dozen towels a year. We had some breakage to fans with vintage glass lights under them. Pretty, not very defensible. So we found some stylish ones more in keeping with the room theme that don’t have so many breakables.
We have some little wood carvings from Mexico: Alebrije. They used to get damaged, or taken, all of the time. We put a little “Buy Me” card on the table, explaining them, encouraging guests to take one home. The merch sheet in our guest guide, with the prices does the same thing. We’ve never sold one, but we’ve never had one broken again, either. A more fun way of warning people to be careful with delicate stuff!
When you have little kids, you pad corners, and childproof wall sockets. Vacationers/travelers are not a whole lot different. It’s good to look at what you put into their spaces to make it fun, elegant, whatever, but things that you can replace. If you budget appropriately, both you, and your guests, don’t have to clash, and stress, over things.
STUFF HAPPENS. If you’re a host, your place that you share has to be of a good quality, or people won’t write good reviews, which gets you more guests, and/or come back. Airbnb, like any other stay, is experiential. That includes how you handle normal breakage. You can price it up, and stress less, or go to war with your guests. Which is the better experience?
Brian Ross