@ Rebecca
Well, here’s a story for you. I Had guests recently who robbed us, smoked all over our home, ashing cigarettes on practically every surface of our home including our sofa throw rugs and beds, and wore dirty, muddy, salty shoes and boots throughout our home. The guy booking requested a 4 night stay. He was local, and had a new profile with no reviews which promppted us to heavier questioning as to why he would require our home, and what his intentions were. He fed us a story about burst pipes and flooding in his house so he needed somewhere local to stay during clean up and repairs. He said he was coming from another AirBnB, but had to check out as another guest was booked. We felt bad for the guy and accepted him. As soon as I saw his picture, I didn’t like his look, and Stephan agreed with me. He was hard. He was posturing in his selfie with a tough guy, white-dude-wanna-be-gangsta look about him. I didn’t like his eyes. They looked dark to me. It’s a guy I would try to avoid if I encountered him on the street. And trust me, I’m not sheltered. I grew up in Detroit in a rough area.
Because of this feeling, we had our neighbour watch the house for us ( he already does, but we told him how we felt so that he would be extra keen). They didn’t have extra guests over, or make any noise violations so everything appeared ok from the outside. But, When I went in to clean, I was hit with a wall of smoke! I was distracted so much by the horrible smell that I didn’t start to notice our missing items till later. We’re at roughly $2000 worth of theft and damages. They tampered with and disabled one of our locks, and even tried to take our 50” smart tv, but it was mounted to the wall and they couldn’t get it off.
Had I seen his photo up front, I would have denied his request based on my gut. Airbnb makes penalties so severe for cancellations though that we allowed it, and thought asking the neighbours to watch out would be enough. Lesson learned. Surveillance cameras are going up.
I have a lot of concern for those who are home sharing their listing. Shouldn’t host’s have an opportunity to use their gut to decide who they want to trust in their home BEFORE they agree to the booking? Pictures can go a LONG way in providing that gut feeling, I assure you. I didn’t like the look of another of our guests who abused our home by throwing a party, trashing our place, and damaging our furniture. I only accepted her because she had several good reviews. I’ve learned to go with my gut, but AirBnB made that exceedingly difficult for me. I find this policy to be negligent of hosts safety. I think that, not only should we be allowed to see a photo, but it should be a rule that the photo match their picture on their Gov ID. AND that guests can’t change the photo, unless they are submitting a new gov. ID, in which case the new photo must match the new ID. (Like when the ID expires, and a new one is being updated.) this would give me more piece of mind that guests are who they’re representing themselves to be