When they arrived we saw she had her bike in the back seat of their car.
My husband told her she could feel free to keep her bike in the common hallway if she didn't want to leave it in the car.
She said - "oh no no, it's fine in the car, it's just a cheap bike anyway." So it never occurred to me that she might be planning to do anything different. We have guests in that suite on Saturday, I haven't been feeling 100 per cent, so I hadn't gotten around to cleaning it and I was in there today, glanced down and saw two black tire marks running across the white bedspread.
I guess she decided it wasn't fine after all.
We do our homework on guests. We're both former journalists so we do a quick google search and check out another few tools to see who they are. Sometimes we tailor the suite to their apparent tastes, since we like to collect books and art that's easily done and fun.
It wasn't the only lie she told us - not by a long shot.
I wonder if anyone else gets these guests; we get bookings made by women in their late 20's/early 30's as a "surprise" for their (sometimes) reluctant boyfriends. Over the span of our time communicating with them and observing them when we meet and after, it seems pretty apparent that these little surprise weekends are planned in order to prompt a committment.
When the committment doesn't materialize, he goes away happy and usually pretty oblivious, and she leaves a bad, nit-picking review.
We ran into them at our local co-op and I could tell from the way he greeted us and was so happy to see us and she - well, did not, that they were probably in the middle of one of those weekends but I brushed it off and decided to give her a good review with no reservations or warning signs for other hosts. I regret that now. We care a lot about our reviews, I know we shouldn't but we do.
Anyhow, we had one right after them that was so glowing it brought tears to my eyes - I'm still trying out how to craft an equally nice response.
For every crappy, mean-spirited guest there are three or four who are so great they make the whole experience a treat. I hope we make it clear how great they are in our review of them.