Need a Pep Talk!

[Zack-and-Jennifer0]

We've been hosting our 3x2 house since October 2016 and lately, the guests have just been terrible, one after another. I'm ready to throw in the towel, literally and figuratively. What would you do if your last half dozen guests were like this (absolutely no exaggerating here):

-Dyed their hair hot pink and gave themselves a haircut in the spare bathroom with the shears from the kitchen. Left pink stained towels and hair everywhere.
-Used gold body glitter in the second bedroom - still finding it a month later.
-Dyed hair blonde in the master shower, staining towels.
-Trashed the house, smoked pot, stole 2 blankets, a toss pillow, and the living room TV.
-ran a credit card imprinting "business" out of the house for a week (this group ended up getting arrested on felony charges and evicted)
-Took a set of Queen sheets and refused to return them. Airbnb reimbursed us for these "as a courtesy" although they said it doesn't align with the host guarantee.
-broke the in-granite soap dispenser on the kitchen sink
-balled up the King sheets and left them sitting on the master bed because they were stained with menstrual blood, along with the mattress cover

We work hard to provide a fully stocked, clean house for each group of guests. We live in a gated community on a golf course and use this house only for STR. We have a 2-night minimum, a cleaning fee, a $500 security deposit, and have updated our rules as these unfortunate circumstances arise. We have disabled instant booking. We require government ID and good reviews. Do we just need to come to terms with the fact that 50% of our guests are going to be atrocious; that we need to replace a dozen towels and at least 3 sets of sheets every 6 months? That's the rate we're going. What would you do? Are we just a "worst case scenario" or have y'all had really, really bad guests too?



[Annette33]

@Zack-and-Jennifer0, sure sounds awful what you experienced the last few months, so clearly, something isn’t working out quite right with the guests you are attracting and allowing onto your property.
*glad to see you are reacting by letting go of IB for now, by refining your rules, etc.. but first comes the pre-vetting of potential guests: Don’t rely on Airbnb or verified info, obviously that can be bypassed by clever people: Do spend some time per messages back and forth getting a good feel for prospective guests, and if they don’t feel quite right - decline! A lot of trouble should get eliminated right there.
* Glad to read that as you’re living right around the corner, and that you’ll make it your business now to personally check in new guests, I bet that will help a lot! It might make those questionable guests behave a bit more responsibly, and more importantly, those 10-15 minutes will give you excellent clues if you need to be on guard. Nothing beats your personal assessment of a guest.
* As other hosts here have mentioned I also find your house rules  too long and rather unorganized, that might just invite people to dismiss them all together. I would take out any of the reactive stuff to what has happened lately, the stuff about the hair dyeing, glitter, etc, and threatening a fine. That sets up an adversarial constellation. Better is to establish a personal, friendly connection during check in and go over some of your rules in person - not too long though! 

Also, saying things like you are not responsible for accidents, etc. will never hold up in a court of law, it’s unenforceable. same for withholding security deposits: as long as it goes through Airbnb, you alone cannot make that decision. Focus on your absolute musts, don’t repeat the smoking rule or say things like, “inspect the property immediately and report..”: makes me think you’re a car rental place, way too anonymous, and as owner you should know that the property is in prime condition. Adding stuff like “we know you’ll be respectful of our property”: obviously not - and it isn’t a rule. You get the idea…..they need to take you seriously! Check other hosts listings and read their rules, you'll get a better feel for what is successful.
* perhaps play around with your listing a bit, like shorten your stays , that might preempt trouble from irresponsible nesters. perhaps also try out a different price structure: start with 2 guests (lock up the other bedrooms and bathroom! ) increase to 4 (a new price after 2, open up the other bedroom,) and finally up to 6 with everything open. You know best how many people are renting your place at one time, and what size of group the trouble makers come in. Looked like some of the trouble makers were actually single guys: now why would they rent a place for 6? >> perhaps ask that question in the vetting you do per messaging. I have read of one host in Florida who had a mansion, a single woman rented it for one night. duhhh!!   trouble on the horizon? Oh yes.. it was a full  blown party.
* Finally, a question to you:
 You just changed your name from Hill Country to Zack and Jennifer?  Another good move out of anonymity ( though I understand why you want to have it).  I cross referenced all the reviews to you gave to guests the last few months, and all reviews you gave are stellar! So I am just wondering bit if those include  the people you are complaining about, or if the “bad guests” never left you reviews and you didn’t either?  I would really like to know that you wrote reviews of those guests and made it clear that they are unacceptable.

Good luck to you!

[Zack-and-Jennifer0]

@Annette33

I like your idea on the pricing structure. Are you suggesting that we have 3 separate listings, then?  1 bedroom (1-2 guests), 2 bedroom (2-4 guests), and entire house (3-6 guests) listings? We'd have to play around with it a bit, since the second bathroom has the utility closet in it - they wouldn't be able to do laundry if we locked it, and we've had many reservations that lasted 5 nights or more.  Perhaps we could lock the 2nd and 3rd bedroom, but still leave the 2nd bathroom accessible no matter how many people the reservation is for. We want to attract solo business travelers, as we have made all the accommodations to do so.  Zack was a 5-day-a-week business travlerer for over 5 years, so we have our fingers crossed to get someone like him that comes into the area frequently.

Besides meeting everyone in person, there's not much else we can do to vet guests. We already try to look people up on the interwebz and speak to everyone on the phone. You'd be surprised at some of the elaborate stories people tell that tug at your emotions - such as the guy travelling with his wife and child to witness the birth of a new baby. If you had been a fly on the wall during the phone conversations and seen the texts, you'd understand why we thought the guy was totally on the up and up, plus he had the ID, profile photos, and good past reviews to boot.

I've studied many other listings and there are many in our area that are way more detailed with legal language than ours and some that barely list a rule besides no smoking/no pets. It's hard to find the happy medium. I agree that I could still pare down the list, but some things will have to stay, like the hair dye rule.  We had 3 groups in a row use the hair dye and ruin towels, sheets, and the bathroom countertop has a pink stain on it now too.  Despite the evidence being in the trash and/or the shower (glove and bottle of dye), they still denied it.  Lol!

As far as asking people to inspect for damages, that stems from the sink soap dispenser incident. We just remodeled the entire house, right down to fixtures, paint, flooring, etc., so every single thing in it was brand new. We knew it didn't break by itself due to wear and tear or anything like that. Of course, the guest denied breaking it.  We speculate that someone probably tugged on it, thinking it was a sink sprayer and snapped the inner tube. She claimed it was like that when she got there and said she thought we already knew it was broken.  She stayed for a week and it never crossed her mind to mention it.

On the other hand, we had a group of 6 people come up from Mexico to visit our theme parks and the lady texted on the day they checked out and told us that she thought she'd broken the coffee pot and she was happy to pay for it. Before even checking it, we told her not to worry about it (we thought maybe we'd gotten a lemon appliance, you know). As it turned out, the GFCI outlet had tripped and she didn't know to reset it. 

I guess my thinking on this is that if I have something listed in my house rules and you have to agree to those house rules during booking, then isn't that effectively part of our contract or "lease" for that time? I suppose a lawyer would have to answer that. Airbnb will back it up though, as they didn't hesitate the cancel the reservation without a refund for the credit card imprinting guest, even though he still had several days remaining on his reservation. 

As far as reviews go, the pink hair dye/gold glitter got forgotten, the credit card forgery operation's guest had his Airbnb account deactivated, so he no longer appears, the broken sink soap dispenser was through VRBO, as was the "business traveler" that stole the TV. We don't use VRBO anymore - they have a really terrible fee structure. The bloody balled up sheets from the master bedroom king bed are a current issue. We're working through the host guarantee to see if those can get paid for. They're only 6 months old and I treated, soaked, & washed them 3 times and they're a gonner. We haven't exchanged reviews on this one yet. The majority of our business comes from Airbnb and the forum is pretty good, which is why I posted here.

Your feedback is great, so I'm going to look into how to expand our listing to capture legitimate groups of people. Thank you! ~Jennifer

[Annette33]

@Zack-and-Jennifer0,  you're welcome. a lot is trial and error, and you know your place better than anybody else. I totally sympathize with all that has happened to you and how you want to be proactive. But the distinction of being proactive or actually involuntarily reactive can be a fine line. I had just looked at your listing and rules as if I were a potential guest, not knowing any of your history and details, and it somewhat overwhelmed me.....
I guess my legal background makes me rather analytical, always asking what can be enforced and what are just empty threats. people sense all that subconsciously and instead of gaining leverage you might lose credibility.
I certainly would be intrigued if you played a bit with your listing, re the different models of what to rent out and what to lock up.I just opened the conversation about it, not knowing exactly the exact configuration of your place  and  which bathroom goes with which bedroom.  If you split it up into 2 or 3 different listings, that might be more initial work to set it up that way, but benefit you in the long run. As long as you make it clear in each listing that any interested party can rent the other rooms as well, you are not going to lose groups of 6, especially not when you leave the whole house listing as is, just adjust the price so that the price for 6 shows at all times, then you'd have all bases covered. You just need to be super vigilant when booking requests are coming in and immediately block out the whole house listing lets say, or whatever listing would not be available any more if for exmple you acceot a booking for suite A . Good luck!

[Zack-and-Jennifer0]

@Annette33 @Helga0 @Tim-and-Holly0

We made Superhost today! Woo hoo!

So, based on advice and what we think will work for us, we decided to just use the one listing for now.  We adusted the pricing structure, so it reflects for 1 guest (getting master/bath and spare bath too because laundry is in there) and then each additional guest is $20/per night.  In the end, if we book all 6 guests for the entire house, the rate is bascially the same as it was before. We've just incentivized the smaller groups to come stay and it ends up being a lot more attractive with the lower price for those solo travelers (we hope). As the number of guests increase, so does access to addtional bedrooms. We bought the locks tonight for two other bedrooms. We will reiterate to the solo or "couples" travelers that the other room are not accessible, just so they know. If this turns out to be a total flop, then we'll probably try 1 listing for just the master and up to 2 guests and then a second listing for the whole house and up to 6 guests.

I did condense the rules.  I know they're still kind of longish, but I feel better by having them. If gives me a bit of peace of mind even if there is no legal leg to stand on regarding them.  

We aim to meet each guest in person and are installing an exterior surveillance system as well. So, I'm thinking that's about as good as it's going to get. We live in a very desired part of San Antonio, so we want to keep it that way!

I still plan to take some brighter photos, but it's been rainy and overcast here, so that hasn't happened. I'd prefer natural light, but that's what I had when I took the original photos, so I might just have to use a photo editor to brighten them. Maybe different angles and retracting the blinds would help. It obviously wasn't enough to just have them open and all the lights on.

Thanks everyone for your advice! Have a great weekend and a happy Easter, if you celebrate!

~Jennifer & Zack

[Robin4]

@Zack-and-Jennifer0 

Ok you have had some doom and gloom and everyone feels for you, but now for the 'pep talk' time! As you said you have had a bad run but, what do they say 'No good deed goes un-punished'!! No seriously, look who has just got Superhost!!

Congratulations Jennifer, despite some setbacks you are doing the right thing and will now  be reaping the accolades, and it may be that you won't see another poor quality guest for a long time. Don't let that badge go to your head though, it's easier to loose it than it was to get it. And the down side of having it is, you take a downgrading to heart, you really strive to try and hold those figures and when a few 4 stars come along, you take it hard, much more than you would if you were not superhosts.

All I will say is, don't over think what you are doing. When you want to be as polished as you can be, you start to let a few little extras creap into what you offer, the philosophy being ..."Oh if we just do this or that, it will get us more top reviews"! Nine times out of ten it doesn't, it simply tends to breed a more picky guest...it raises their expectations. There is an old saying....The less a guest expects the more they will be delighted with what they get!

Keep it simply, but do simple well, and you will find your guests will continue to love you and you will continue with that badge alongside your name for a long time.

Congratulations guys.

Cheers.....Rob

There, it took a few edits but I got there in the end!

[Tim-and-Holly0]

@Zack-and-Jennifer0:

I echo @Robin4's sentiments and congratulations!!!