So this is only sort of related to Airbnb, but bear with me. It's a bit of long story.
I had a guest this week at my cottage. They stayed for seven days. They didn't book through Airbnb; they booked through a site that allows me to actually properly hold a security deposit. I had a bad feeling about these guests from the off. I don't know what it was: I just didn't feel good about it. Something about the communication put up red flags for me: they didn't seem very respectful. I even drove by a few times during the week that they stayed to make sure everything looked okay, and it did, so I told myself I was being paranoid.
So they checked out this morning, and I went to clean with my heart in my mouth. It was the dirtiest I've ever seen my cottage, by far, and they did delightful things like leave a dirty diaper in the bathroom garbage... a garbage they had removed the bag from, even though there were lots of fresh bags to use. They were just bad, disrespectful guests, and it took way longer than normal to clean.
The piece de la resistance... they had put either something hot or a stripping chemical on one of the side tables in the sunroom. There are three solid wood tables that all match: a coffee table and two side tables. They were in excellent condition when the guests arrived. The damage isn't minor: it's about 3" wide and 8" long. It's extremely noticable. It looks like s%!t. The table is cherry coloured, and how it has a big blonde stripe straight down the middle.
The good thing about it is that, unlike with Airbnb, I actually get to decide how much to charge them to remedy this! Do I take the opportunity to get a new set of tables? Do I prorate the value of the tables based on their age? I don't know how old they are: they came with the cottage and they looked brand new. I don't think they were super expensive, but they're solid wood and definitely not Ikea. Do I try and refinish that one table? What would YOU do if you actually had the power to control your security deposit? What do you think is fair? Personally, I don't think that the pro-rating that Airbnb seems to use to dole out the host guarantee is very fair. Just because a table is 10 years old doesn't mean that it's 1/10th the price to replace it. I don't want this newfound power to go to my head :-). I want to make a fair proposal. However, I'm also pretty pissed off about the state of the cottage.
This all got me thinking: If you controlled the host guarantee, how would you calculate the payouts? We hear so many stories about what's unfair about the guarantee: if you had the control, what would you do? How would you ensure that people were getting paid a fair amount? Or would you just get rid of it entirely and let people rely on their own insurance?
