Christmas and New Year: to host or not to host?

[Rich-and-Yan0]

Hello everyone,

We are new hosts, having only begun in August 2019, and we have a listing in the Algarve in southern Portugal.

As we've stayed in that area quite a bit, including in some Airbnb homes, we've gotten to know a few fellow hosts who live there. And yesterday, one of them advised us not to rent during the Christmas and New Year holidays, i.e. to make the Dec. 24-26 and Dec. 31-Jan.2 not available for booking. They said that this is "a time when a lot of people want to find Airbnb homes just to party in," and they warned us that people from two particular nationalities (which we will not name here) can be especially troublesome during this period. 

We were thus wondering if any of you had ever had such a problem. This will, of course, be our first holiday period as hosts, and obviously we don't want our beautiful home--on which we've just spent a small fortune renovating, decorating and furnishing--to be trashed by drunks.

For the record, I am a Canadian-Brit who has lived in 7 different countries, including in the U.S., and have traveled to over 40. And I have found that in general, Europeans (our main clientele) tend to be harder drinkers than people from other places (Australia aside, haha).

In any case, we would really appreciate any insights and experiences you could share. Thanks a lot.

[Rich-and-Yan0]

@Barry-and-Lera0 Okay, thanks for letting us know. As I was alluding to in my original post, I never found in most cases that Americans drink as hard as people from many other nationalities I've met. This conclusion is based not only on having lived in the US for two years, but having lived in other countries for about 26 years now as well as having travelled extensively around the world and thus having met, and hung out with, people from just about every country you can think of.

Now, having said that, I bet if we were talking about groups of young people travelling to Vegas or NYC, that conclusion would fly right out the window. Anyway, your point about raising the price on New Year's Eve is a wise one. I think we're going to make sure our New Year's price is higher and also take the advice given about and extend our period of stay to a minimum of five days for that holiday. That, with the higher price, should hopefully have the same effect as you've had in scaring the party crowd away.

Thanks a lot!