Guest booking for someone else.

[Anonymous]

I have only bad experiences with people booking for others. 

They always complain about something. There are to many stairs, they do not like the loft bed and want me to make the coach, they want to be social and want me to show them the city, it is not central enough, and so on.

All of this is explicit mensioned in the listing in the room proflie, 4th floor no elevator, loft bed, and so on.

Yesterday I had a couple from germany, where the man booked, but sent his girlfriend in advance, and he came 6 hrs later.

She had obviously NOT read the house rules! I am working from home and often have online conferences daytime, and because of headphones I do not hear guests knocking on my door. So in my house rule AND in the interaction information I write that I do only have possibility to communicate with the AirBnB chat because of working from home, so please contact me only on AirBnB chat and I will respond immiediately. Please do not knock the door, or shout.

She knocked and shouted a lot, many times, because of wanting to borrow umbrella, the key was not working (it was), knocked just to say Have a nice day, and so on. I told her the first time she did that, that she has to use the message chat, but she continued to knock and shout. 

I was in an intence meeting and talking alot, and suddenly she just came in to my office knocking me on my choulder to ask something.

When they left I cried. I can´t stand this!

I will never ever let a person who did not book the room and accepted the house rules, stay here again!

So about this business trips where companies can book for others will not be acceptable for me.

What do you others think about this?

[Pete69]

Airbnb does not support 3rd party bookings. This opens up a whole legal can of worms if you accept 3rd party bookings. You could also be booking a scammer with a stolen credit card, etc. Imagine if you unknowingly booked the Pashanin brothers (who famously squatted at a Palm Springs airbnb stay) as the 3rd parties? So don't do it! Make them have the person, or one of the people who will actually be staying, book the stay. For starters you want to be able to communicate directly with the guest via email, phone, etc.

Sometimes people are just lazy. They don't have time to set up an account. Other times they're trying to hide the actual guest who has bad review(s).

[Helen3]

Firstly @Anonymous 

Why are you accepting third party bookings which are contrary to Airbnb's T&Cs.  If you know it is a third party booking you can ask the guest or Airbnb to cancel. @Anonymous 

I work from home most of the time and have to say I have never had a guest interupt me when I am working.

Do you have a lock on the room you use as your home office? If not, you could have a lock that you could use from the inside so the guests can't get in, while you are on a conference call.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

  @Helen3  @Pete69 

If I understood @Anonymous correctly, this was not third party booking but the guest who booked arrived later, after his girlfriend.

Third party booking would be if the guest who booked doesn't arrive at all. And it happens, deliberately or not,  the guest inform us at the last minute that he can't come but the rest of the group will. And than what? There is no time to cancel, make a new profile, book again...

Third party bookings are a bad idea and more often then not, guests are not happy because they expected something else.

But it happens all the time with regular bookings as well, not always will the rest of the group carefully read the listing description or house rules.

We have our house rules printed in the apartment, but the worst guests never bother to read anything anyway.

[Helen3]

Yes I appreciate in this case it was the girlfriend arriving early, but I was responding to the wider post where @Anonymous  said

I  have only bad experiences with people booking for others. 

They always complain about something. There are to many stairs, they do not like the loft bed and want me to make the coach, they want to be social and want me to show them the city, it is not central enough, and so on.

By Emma's comments I take it that she has accepted third party bookings before and hence my comments.

[Emma713]

Hi, 

Yes in this case the person who booked arrived one day later. The girlfriend did not know anything about the instructions.

But I have had situations when one person book for another, and also when one person book for themselves and their friends family and they come as a group.

There is always grumpyness and bad reviews after that kind of guests.

From now on I will make my largw venue unavailable, and will not accept guest coming without the person who booked the place.

[Emma713]

Yes that is true. And I will not do that again.

🙂