Since the COVID pandemic with all it's travel restrictions, all the out-of-town guests from the last several months had to cancel. These were guests that had booked from six months to a year in advance for a place to stay for a wedding or some other similar benign event. After the calendar opened up, local guests booked, one after the next under false pretenses.
Stating they were coming for a small staycation or little party but really booked to have a large party. Since these guests were local, friends of friends came and quickly got out of hand. My property is an urban townhome with neighbors very close by. The guests were utterly disrespectful of noise levels outside well into the night, even up until 4 am. Smoking cannabis in and out of the house. Breaking bongs and shattering glass right outside the hot tub where other guests were bathing in bare feet. One guest even planned to have 6 strippers, several bartenders, a DJ, and advertized it all on social media. Mind you, this all not only violated house rules of a 10 person limit but also the state of Ohio regulations at the time of limiting gatherings to no more than 10 people.
Yes, I called the police several times. Yes, I had to kick out the unruly guests over the 10 person limit. Yes, I had to go full "Judge Judy" on them but since they had a "get out of jail free card" [Let the reader use discernment] They knew they could freely flaunt any rules without consequence. Not only that, the newly nearly universal normalization of this type of behavior and demand that hosts accept this as the new normal, lest we are seen as intolerant, is squeezing me out. Just recently, Airbnb did a virtual tour of my home since, as they said, "I am a very successful host" and would like to include me in their new "verified listing" program. The focus needs to come off the hosts and be directed toward the "guests".
There needs to be a "verified guest" program. Every guest from March 15 up until just recently has lied to me. Misrepresented their intended purpose for booking and has been disrespectful in the extreme. The pressure to overlook the egregious behavior of certain groups of people is untenable and intolerable. My only recourse so far is to block the ability to book my listing for a full three months in advance. This has naturally cut deeply into my booking rate and may not allow me to cover the overhead of the townhouse. I see no other option other than blocking every date until every guest that is already booked has left then sell the property. That is, unless sanity returns.