I had a guest instant book for a checkin today. We have a st...
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I had a guest instant book for a checkin today. We have a strict 4pm checkin time & they showed up at 2:15 saying they chose ...
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Hello,
« I like hosting because it allows me to meet nice people from all over the world, with different cultures, costumes, traditions… in our house. »
At New Year this year, I decided to embark on a new hosting project, which would involve me developing my hosting experience and abilities by renting an apartment... and adding it as a new listing with Airbnb. I still have this aim, but it's not been as easy as I thought because of internal and external reasons which are linked both to me and to the environment in which I live. I can summarize them as doing renovations and the reality of renting an apartment in Rabat to make a new holiday rental.
This year we have been doing renovations on our house. This has become an internal obstacle to my hosting project, in terms of the time it has taken to do this work. The delays have impacted my idea of transferring my hosting experience, however small, to another apartment or house… The problem was simply that I did not know when exactly the workers could finish the renovations in our house and so didn’t have a clear idea of when I could look for another place.
The manager did not tell us the exact time they would do the work. Or rather, he told us an exact time, but in reality they came at a different time. When you speak with him, for example, he says, I will start at this time, for this price and I need these building materials. For me it was ok and so I told Airbnb that I wanted to block my calendar because we needed to do work to our house and so I blocked it according to the time that we had decided with the manager.
He (or rather they) did not come at the time that we decided with him. He came about 10 days later, which meant that they could not finish at the arranged time, not just because of the 10 day delay, but also because some days he simply did not come, or he needed some more building materials........and so on. I had to consider how I would solve this problem, and because of the work, there was lots of dust and many things had to be cleaned.
I did not wait for them to finish, I decided to solve the problem myself. So I stayed at home, and started to clean the furniture and dye the door which was closed in order to protect the rest of the house from the dust. I did about 80% and a woman and my sisters did the other 20%. So when there were guests I told them that we were doing some work on the stairs and it is normal if they found them (stairs…) like that.
The external reason for the delay of my hosting project was: when I went to rent a house or apartment in Rabat, I faced this reality :
_ Some are not in suitable places for guests.
_ Some are in suitable places ( normal), but they need some renovation work.
_ Some are good but expensive.
_ Some are really good but really expensive.
_ The way the house rental system works here (and has done for a long time) is that about 90 to 95 of apartments or houses are rented unfurnished.
So, as you can see, there are various obstacles to renting any of these houses or apartments.
The past few months have taught me a lot. For example I can see that it is important to factor in that there may be some difficulties when doing renovations. As you know, doing work to improve your home or rented apartment is good, but, from my personal experience, I think a host needs to consider that it is possible that some things may go wrong or it may be delayed and you need to be prepared.
I’ve also learned that renting out an apartment or a house etc. in order to put it on Airbnb also has constraints, such as a lack of viable options, and a host needs to consider this before proceeding.
I am sure that the renovations work and finding somewhere to rent out could have been easier for me if I had better anticipated the potential problems.
Many thanks,
Miloud
