I am not a host but I have stayed in over 20 airbnb's (not with this profile!) and am curious about something. I just recently stayed in a very nice self contained airbnb, an older couple lived in the main part of the house and I had my own private bedroom, sitting room/study, kitchen & bathroom, so nothing was shared. In the sitting room there were several bookcases with heaps of lovely books, and in amongst the books were files marked 'bank statements', 'centrelink', 'tax', etc. There was also an unlocked filing cabinet full of personal medical records, legal documents, fines, house deeds, WILLS!!, just about everything you could imagine. I am a terrible snoop so I spent 2 days reading everything in this room. I now know more about these people than I should! Fascinating stuff... centrelink fraud, tax fraud, family disputes. I could not beleive that this couple would leave such personal stuff lying around like that for strangers to see. I know some of you will say don't snoop in people's private things, but I can't help myself, it's in my nature. And I don't care... the stuff was sitting on the bookshelf amongst the books. The filing cabinet had a lock on it but it wasn't locked.
So why would a host leave personal papers lying around like that? Do they assume that no one would be interested in reading their personal things? Why didn't they lock the filing cabinet and put the personal stuff in their part of the house? And they have been doing airbnb for years, so I wonder how many other people have read their stuff? Or am I just some kind of curiosity freak? When I left I could barely look them in the eye given everything I knew about them. Something to think about hosts...