Guest feedback - snoaring

[Darcia0]

I need some advice from other hosts.

I rent out an extra room in my house, which that means I am at home when I have guests.

We recently had guests and one of the guests snoared really loud. So loud we had to sleep with earplugs and still heard the snoaring. So we slept bad, lying awake all night and we would not like other hosts to have the same issue.

My question is: how to give fedback to the guest about this, or should I not menion it?

The guest was very friendly, no other issues. Just loud during the night...

When our own night rest is disturbed, I cannot gice an all positive feedback.

Maybe the guest would better book an entire home instead of just a room.

What are your views on this?

[Darcia0]

@Linda108

I am also torn between the 2 options: public feedback or private message.

The guest was new to Airbnb. I do not want to scare away the guest from using Airbnb.

Yet at the same time, I want other hosts to have a positive experience with their guests.

I still have a few days before the guest review is due. I will have to sleep on it a couple of more nights....

Thanks for your feedback!

[Eileen4]

Darcia, I would mention the snoring. Saying it's sleep apnea is a way of putting it that makes it sound less like blame and more like concern.

I've stayed at about a dozen Airbnb places. Although I occasionally book an entire home, I have usually booked rooms in hosts' homes. I can say for a fact that noise is an issue in those rentals and most of the cheapest rentals on Airbnb have multiple rooms and are busy all the time. A loud snorer could send other guests out of a house and be the cause of bad reviews for a host. As a user of Airbnb, I know this for a fact. 

Is it rude to imply, even politely, that the man has a snoring problem? Possibly. But this is also a business and some of us have mortgages on our properties. I know of at least three women who are dependent on this income (two post-divorce) and rent out bedrooms in homes they could not otherwise afford. They discourage young people and partiers from booking with them precisely because they are worried about other guests being woken in the night. Snoring is not deliberate, but other guests are disturbed just the same.

If we work hard for good reviews it seems a bit of a shame to get some bad ones because we couldn't control the noise level in our places. You don't need to be blameworthy--just honest. 

[Zandra0]

I still find it incredible people are willing to self diagnose a guest (after all where has he said he has it? ) and then write what they *think* he has on his profile in the 'interests' of protecting hosts and other guests.

This is a no-go. I've had one major snorer stay with me; I have thin walls but equally I have earplugs. you don't call people out for something they can't control.

[Eileen4]

It's not "calling out". "Calling out" implies the act was done purposefully with ill intentions. It's being honest about something that will likely disturb other guests. I paid about $100/night to stay in a house in a foreign country recently. It was all hardwood floors and indoor clapboard walls so sound travelled. Luckily, everyone else who stayed there (7 bedrooms) was conscientious about noise, especially at night. If I'd had the bad luck to be next to a heavy snorer, and couldn't sleep, I would probably have asked the guest how long he was staying. If our visits were overlapping, I would have asked to change rooms and, if that wasn't possible, I would have looked for another place. (The place did supply ear plugs, but they don't really help me; I've tried them.) I might then have written a review that honestly said: "The walls are paper-thin there, so sleeping wasn't easy." Yes, guests deserve to know this. 

I am a well-seasoned traveller (about 3 international trips per year) and have used Airbnb a lot. One of the worst things to happen while on vacation is staying in a place where sleeping is difficult or impossible. If a guest of mine used loud snoring as a reason to leave, I wouldn't blame them myself. I stayed in a student residence in London once and there was noise outside until 3 AM--it was partying students coming home--and when I asked another guest about it, she told me to get used to it because it happened every night. I got out my credit card and went elsewhere. (And I did write a review along the lines of, this place is not good for light sleepers.)

The attitude on this thread seems to be that the host should just get over it. What I'm saying is that maybe that's fair, but when it comes to other guests--and this host seems to have more than one rentable bedroom--I don't think it's unfair to protect one's business from bad reviews. Not everyone is a good fit for Airbnb, unfortunately.