We have been part of the Airbnb Community for some years now, letting whole apartments and now just rooms in our own home. So we are not rookies, or so we thought...
From the get go we agreed we would only host people with five star feedback, but we got a last minute cancellation, which was quickly requested by another Airbnb member. We seriously dropped the ball, as we saw he had been a member for a year or so, but had no reviews yet, so we thought he must be ok. We assumed if there had been issues with this guest in the past, he would have been reported or black listed or that Airbnb would have excluded him.
This doesn't happen, anyone anywhere can join, no questions asked, nobody is excluded. So basically any ol' Dahmer, Shipman, or Bundy is welcome here. Airbnb doesn't even reveal their surname, so their identity is protected. I understand the need for privacy, on both sides, but I think a last name shouldn't be hidden, it allows people to hide who they are, should they want to or in our case need to...
Our new guest said he was a professional, busy working locally, and would be out for most of the time. We accepted his booking, I and all our family and friends (including other guests) wish to god we hadn't. Initially he was very complimentary, he talked a lot, about his business, and family, and checked in, We noted no luggage, weird but not alarming. As usual we are welcoming and always point out house rules on arrival. Where to locate the kitchen, and pointed out the coffee and tea stuff. We also informed the guest we had other people staying, we asked him what time he would like breakfast, and left him to settle in.
BOOM, everyone in the house was aware he starting watching TV loudly, he didn't make any adjustments to his surroundings, and obviously didn't care if he disturbed us or other guests. We had to ask repeatedly for him to turn it down, as it was past midnight, people wanted to sleep. When we woke the following morning he had sent us aggressive messages that the internet was buffering his shows, so he couldn't watch the TV, that it was unacceptable and demanded we fix it. NOW!. He sent the message at 2.30am
Things deteriorated from there, he didn't go to work, he only left his room for deliveries, or takeaways which he ate in his room. The TV was always playing, mainly sports. Other guests commented what was wrong with him? I really had no answers I could give them, by the fourth night of disturbed sleep, I looked at our guest on Google, and saw his name made many appearances in court. What we discovered in just a few seconds would have been invaluable if we had the basic information about our guest like his surname, before accepting this booking.
A long, painful, threatening and dangerous experience later we have learnt a valuable lesson, but there is nothing to stop this individual basically abusing another host, and another...Airbnb have been helpful and attentive to our worries, but in answer to our fears they suggest we leave the individual negative feedback. As they were not offering witness protection we will decline to put ourselves in further danger of retaliation.
We love sharing our home, and providing the best possible experience for our guests. We take the responsibility of hosting very seriously, and to our credit have lots of 5 star reviews resulting in many repeat guests, and have made some wonderful friends world wide. We travel and are guests ourselves, it's an unbeatable opportunity to experience life as a local, but when this rose coloured world goes wrong it can be catastrophic...
We have all read recent Airbnb horror stories, and thought that sort of thing could not happen on our doorstep... Our recent nightmare showed me it can, we were lucky this time, no-one got hurt, it just cost us a lot of money to fix. There are some very predatory guests out there, that can turn from Jekyll to Hyde.
So treat this as a cautionary tale to keep your guard up, be careful who you welcome into your home. Put precautions in place, enjoy being part of the global Airbnb community, but to the big boss of Airbnb, you have a responsibility to improve checks on guests and hosts and protect your community.
We would ask Airbnb to change the current system so that the surname of a potential guest is shown, so that we could at least do a little research ourselves before accepting the booking.
