I know I am a slow learner, but in reality I never seem to learn my lesson!
I have always said I pick guests pretty well, and on a surface level I do seem to have a good relationship with my guests.
But when I look back on it, a substantial percentage either break something, waste it, or take it with them when they go!
1/.....About 6 weeks ago a guest came to the door looking for a band-aid strip, she had cut her finger. I told her there was a variety of strips in the medicine cabinet. She said she looked there and it was empty, nothing in it! I checked and sure enough, everything had gone, even the scissors and needle and thread. I don't know who was responsible because, they all smiled sweetly and thanked me so much for a lovely stay when they left.
2/..... I have a reasonably good bed, it is electric, and one guest tried to put the head end of the bed up with the massage function going.....burnt out the motor. Guest said it was unfair they were not warned they could not perform multiple functions at the same time. I learned a lesson there!
3/.....I have a quite nice Norwegian tea set! Doing the dusting I noticed one of the cups turned around and when I went to re-adjust it, there was no handle on it. Once again I could not pin it to a specific guest. I could narrow it down to one of three, but you can't just follow up on something like that.....obviously if I queried it, it would not be one of those three....... it would have been 'the hand of God'!
4/.....Recently a guest came up to me and told me my crockery had come to life and attacked her from the cupboard. My fault, my crockery and problem! Unfortunately it was two plates that were broken, not the one claimed, so it made the 4 place set unusable as a whole so I had to replace the whole set!
5/..... My restock cupboard is frequently raided.....soap, juices, even toilet paper until I got around to putting a lock on it.
But, I trust people, they are all nice people! I inadvertently forgot to lock the restock cupboard recently and as luck would have it, amongst the other consumables, I had 24 blocks of chocolate in there....... I put a block out for each new arrival. On the next service my 24 blocks had become 15!!!
I do want to give my guests the best experience I can, and none of these 'events' are worth making a 'song and dance' about to Airbnb or the guest.....it wouldn't get me anywhere and all it would do is make myself look a brittle host.
As much as I claim to have a magic formula to handle situations, the reality is, you guys are right, and I am just making excuses for some sketchy individuals!
Guests or scavengers .....I don't know....but I will still keep accepting them, the good outweighs the bad!
Cheers.......Rob