Understanding frequently used simple English terms

[Peta7]

Herewith seeking urgent counsel on platform generated terminology and soliciting expert advice for answers to the following question;  “Are we honestly expected to host strangers with obscured profiles, armed with an infamous bogus review system, wrongly booking with intent and expressing their actual intention in writing on the platform as that of wishing to break our listing’s long standing House rules?”

This all after a recent incident as elaborated on below:

Some background; We own a small fast passed Johannesburg BOARDING HOUSE (Private family home as per definition) listed on this platform since 2016, are sited in a student Mecca resulting in being swamped by the  local student fraternity requesting  one night stands and or hourly bookings for orgies, crystal meth parties and the like and doing so at all hours of the day, the last one for yesterday was  received at 3:12 am this morning from a ‘Google guest’.

Reason for posting this article:  For others reference and our own much needed enlightenment, after a recent incident in which it is believed that we were unfairly treated and have been discriminated against by a biased platform trip specialist or agent and believing this to be a common phenomena  experienced by countless hosts and perhaps all due to misinterpretation of simple English terminology?

The Incident: After receiving a booking admittedly made in ignorance and upon the guest’s trip details revealed  too late, in which written message the guest openly expressed his wishes to break our SYSTEM GENERATED  HOUSE RULE stating: “NO PARTY OR EVENTS” did we with great diplomacy advise against listing suitability resulting in the guest being enlightened and  wishing to cancel upon which the host agreed and indicated willingness to waive the strict cancellation policy in place and to refund the guest in full and all parties where content.

In an effort  to assist the guest further, the host first attempted to arrange a refund through the resolution center and due to recent changes to this facility  were unable to do so without cancellation.

Again with only the guest’s welfare in mind and as a last resort did the host reach out to the trip team on the guest’s behalf resulting in a disgustingly  late response advising that the reservation was cancelled on the host’s behalf with all penalties applied. (and this is not the first time)

From the above it is evident to us that the believed to be biased platform agent either acted in a predisposed manner or misapprehended the entire situation and do not comprehend our listing contents for which we are now severely penalized!

This all necessitating the revisiting of our listings as advised by the believed to be prejudice agent and after scrutinizing the content again came to realize the importance of terminology in such instance and the interpretation of simple English language terms in a Global setting and now find ourselves more befuddled than ever before.

We must state that we have recently removed our duplicated platform / listing provisions  and believed our PLATFORM GENERATED House Rule of choice stating: “NO PARTY OR EVENTS”, will suffice to prevent guests booking with intent. We then looked at these widely used SYSTEM GENERATED terms in more detail and the results as follows:

*Extracted from Encarta Dictionary: English USA Edition

• PARTY:

1. Social gathering for fun

a social gathering to which people are invited in order to enjoy themselves and often celebrate something

*Extracted from Thesaurus: English  UK Edition

social gathering

gathering

get-together

festivity

*Extracted from Encarta Dictionary: English USA Edition

• EVENT:

1. Important Incident

 an occurrence, especially one that is particularly significant, interesting, exciting, or unusual               

1. Organized occasion

an organized occasion such as a social function or sports competition

*Extracted from Thesaurus: English  UK Edition

occasion

happening

occurrence

incident

affair

episode

experience

Please note there are many more applications for these widely used words with absolutely no applicable reference to quantities made when defining the term. A party or event could therefore be seen as an arranged occurrence attended by a multiple and or even a single individual with intent.

To elaborate on the said debacle then brings us to our next question mark:

Our BOARDING HOUSE has multiple listings, all bedrooms are listed as PRIVATE instead of SHARED rooms by choice, this selection is again FACILITATED BY THE PLATFORM and we considered these platform terms perplexed and worth scrutinizing. 

We then Googled the expressions and are now even more unsure of ourselves, the agents and our own language ability and even more so by the capability of others to comprehend our listing content as we find:

• Private room vs Shared room

Available choice for listing on most platforms

Interpretation of terms used are based on popular International dictionaries’ as found on the www.

From an available PLATFORM OPTION does our listing indicate a preferred PRIVATE room instead of a SHARED room, so please consider the following:

*Internet extract:

“Private room: Guests have their own private room for sleeping.

Shared room: Guests sleep in a bedroom or a common area that could be shared with others.”

Note: Our PRIVATE double rooms are fitted with a single queen size bed and sleeps 2 guests, for obvious, pecuniary  and other logical reasons do we therefore, as indicated not concede to the popular practice of room sharing, the substantial difference in tariff for single guests and 2 guests as a couple in place is again an available PLATFORM CHOICE that is preferred and was implemented to suit the market median (1 guest @ rate vs 2 guests @ 1.667 x rate instead of 2 x rate)

Please also do keep in mind our house rule stating: 

*) Private bedrooms listed are not adaptable to Dormitory or Shared rooms.

• This bringing us to our real aspect of concern on how to distinguish between multiple Single guests wishing to share a Private bedroom illicitly or 2 guests aspiring to occupy a Private bedroom together as a Couple which necessitated us to seek definition of the terms Single and Couple:

Internet extraction:

“Synonyms and Antonyms of couple:                                                                                                                    

*) to come together to form a single unit

Synonyms of couple

*) associate, coalesce, combine, conjoin, conjugate, connect, fuse, interfuse, join, link (up), marry, unify, unite

Antonyms of couple

break up, dissever, part, section, separate, sever, split, sunder, unlink”

Defining a single guest is considered self explanatory and ....

A couple in this instance could then be defined as 2 individuals that are together in a meaningful relationship, living together and or traveling together from afar and are therefore able to prove togetherness.

• Scenarios to elaborate on the above:

1. Joe meets Sally at a pub on a Saturday afternoon and after a few pints all become blond and gorgeous, the 2 really get on so they decide to book a room at Campbell’s for an orgy.
2. Bob and Joe recently met on Campus and decide to book a room at Campbell’s on Sunday evening for a smoking party with Crack cocaine and or Crystal meth and with loads of alcohol on the menu
3. Sam and George are 2 acquaintances  residing in Sandton 15 km away who met at a local Night club last weekend and again plan to frequent a Night club in Melville around the corner and in an attempt to save costs book a Private room to share at Campbell’s
   

In all 3 instances will CBH classify these basic strangers as Single guests and not as a Verifiable couple as they are unable to prove togetherness and will label these guests as a Moot Couple or Unverifiable couple that will technically equate into 2 single guests wishing to perform Room sharing in a Private room (Antonym of Shared room) and that is not acceptable as it will equate in losses of a substantial percentage of revenue to the host. (1 guest @ rate vs 2 guests @ 1.667 x rate instead of 2 x rate) besides it leading to possible local law infringements re overcapacity, stringently enforced in our area being a student Mecca.

4. Peter travels with Sue from the UK to explore Johannesburg for a few days before flying down to Cape Town for their annual holiday and decide to book a Private room at Campbell’s 

CBH will view these 2 guests  as a verifiable couple as their traveling together from afar will be deemed sufficient authentication and they will therefore be labelled as a Verifiable couple that will gladly be hosted in our Private double room with discounted rates for couples.

Obviously any 2 individuals that are married, engaged to be married, living together etc will be deemed as a verifiable couple although classification of the married or engaged group may be seen as discriminatory and are therefore avoided.

So in view of this EVENT and as a befuddled PARTY to the entire fiasco do us affected now feel  like a COUPLE of foolish victims unfairly penalized, possibly due to others ignorance and are we therefore asking logical advice on interpretation of all these loosely used terms or perhaps we should apply for a copy of the Administrators Dictionary that apparently supersede all else?

[Anonymous]

@Peta7  You clearly have some kind of problem but I doubt it's a linguistic one.

If you offer a private room with a double bed, its inhabitants could be a married couple, a romantic couple, two friends, two siblings, two relatives, two people who just meet on Tinder or Grindr or at a bar...really, the specifics are none of your business. What is your business is that everyone who enters your property has been identified, accounted for, and properly paid, and that they do not conduct illegal activity or violate your stated House Rules. 

I'm going to stop right there for a second, because in the Request process, if you're not satisfied that the person making the booking is sufficiently acquainted with the other(s) to be accountable for the entire party, you can decline it. And also, in your House Rules you can be as explicit as you want about which behaviors you can't accommodate (e.g. amplified music

I agree that the platform-generated "rules" are too vague to be useful, which is why I encourage hosts to write their own rules as unambiguously as possible. But honestly I have no idea what specific situation you're referring to because your post really goes all over the place. In 1515 words and dictionary digressions, you managed to leave out the part about how the guest "openly expressed his wishes to break" your rules. Did he tell you he was going to host a crystal meth orgy? If so, presuming that crystal meth is not legal in your jurisdiction, that is a police matter. And your policy already forbids unregistered additional guests. (I'm not of the view that renting a room gives you the right to decide what consenting adults do with their own bodies, but if you are opposed to certain types of sexual activity in your home you can simply choose to rent only to one guest at a time).

All that said, offering a very cheap listing in a student mecca means you are going to get all kinds of weird requests. Airbnb should take note that its "Basic Requirement" for 88% Acceptance is actually dangerous for someone in your situation, and I have on many occasions asked them to abolish it. (See here: https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Host-Voice/Stop-penalizing-hosts-who-decline-inappropriate-reque... )  But if you're trying to have the best results you can within a flawed system, the most you can do for now is work with the tools you've already got at your disposal. The ability to set a non-rock-bottom price, the ability to correspond with guests and verify their suitability before accepting a booking, the ability to decline a guest whose needs you can't fulfill, the choice to accept only solo travelers, the ability to set a minimum stay of 3 or more days to discourage parties, the right to evict guests who violate your rules or break the law.

If you don't choose to use the obvious options available to improve your experience, you're wasting your time composing lengthy complaints about nomenclature.

[Peta7]

Hi Andrew,

Good to hear from you.

We thank you for your well written advise, we hear exactly what you say and agree with every word . We have a guest / host with a substantial B&B up north and had a conversation along exactly the same lines this morning.

We realize that we have read into the Private vs Shared room concept what we wanted to and also agree that Parties or Events are such widely used terms it really means nothing, so we also agree that our only way forward is to use the existing platform tools to achieve any meaningful results.

Our situation here is dire with the students in our area, after the Tertiary institutions were opened to all there was a huge population explosion in our suburb sandwiched between the 2 main Johannesburg universities. The on campus and other student accommodations (mostly Shared rooms) disallow visitors  so we are constantly targeted for Indoor picnics, smoking and why not parties, romantic get-together's etc and wish we could share some of the strange requests we have received with you.

We used Google in the old days and our webpage is still somehow active and this we have to end immediately as our phone does not stop (until the early hours of every morning:-)

This being the irony, we do not need the platform to send any more of these guests as we are turning them away in vast numbers, we definitely do need to find the time to sit and rethink all 🙂

Our listings will be revisited soonest and we are considering raising tariffs as suggested and the extra person fee will definitely be looked at to make the listing less attractive to some alternatively, as you say, we could make our rooms single as you advised but that could end up a loose loose situation and will be considered as a last option.

We watered down our House rules 2 weeks ago and as you so rightly said will have to have a look at again substantiating this, not that anybody ever reads them. (97% of recent guests admitted only price and availability is ever considered.:-)

It remains unfathomable that someone residing in Johannesburg wishes to book a room in a Johannesburg Boarding House (of all available places) for a romantic weekend away,  have they never heard of 'class'?

Then the cherry on top....we believe the SA goverment is looking at amending short term rental laws to curb booking platforms, there was a deadline for public opinion mid month so we are eagerly awaiting the implementation thereof.

[Peta7]

In conclusion;

Andrew is right as always, the problem is not linguistic; we were merely grasping at straw.

From Industry norm it appears that although there are some International Hotels still refusing unmarried couples, the vast majority of establishments have abolished Couple policies, like this platform and as advised by Andrew will accept any booking from a Booker that is 18 years or older and will not consider intent as a motive for refusal.

After more careful consideration do we now believe the difference in two strangers booking a room and two strangers being booked into a room together elucidate the distinction of Private room vs Shared room and make this argument speculative.

The provision of ‘No Party and Events’ are widely used terms and should therefore not be seen as adequate and the Additional rules should support this provision by elaboration.

There are existing tools in place to realize an objective without excluding any and reference to these are to be found in the proceeding post from the platform expert host, Andrew, whom is thanked for his as always, well written and received sensible guidance.

Having said all this, it is still believed that a local Johannesburg guest booking a room with intent to spend an hour or a romantic weekend in a Johannesburg BOARDING HOUSE (instead of the  many incredible options for Romantic venues available globally) is seen as being unrefined (one with no class) and we equate this popular practice to arranging a romantic dinner for 2 at the local fish and chips cafe for ‘slap’ chips to be eaten on the pavement and still favor steering clear of such users.