Filthy guests

[Colleen670]

Hi all. We’re new to hosting, opened our first Airbnb mid-January. We had guests for two nights who left today. They did not follow our check out tasks (we have only three: load dishes into dishwasher, turn off lights, put towels in bathtub) except for turning off lights. They used all cooking pots and pans and lots of dishes and left then piled up in the sinks. They left wet towels on the beds, and the stove was so messy it took our cleaner 30 minutes to get it clean. There are large dirt patches on top of the quilts, various places around the house, and large marks of something blue on a blanket we put at the end of the main bed. I don’t know what the proper protocol is for reviewing them. I don’t want to seem like we’re too picky or turn people off from wanting to stay with us. What should we say? Any advice would be very much appreciated. We get a lot of one-night guests so we don’t charge a cleaning fee. This one is going to cost us 1/3 of our payout. 

[Shelley159]

Hi @Colleen670 

Please don't worry about leaving an honest review. It displays on the guest profile, not on yours. So you won't "turn people off from wanting to stay", because it won't be seen on your profile.

Many hosts say that - if you write something critical - it's best to be quite vague, never insult the guest and rather make broad, polite statements. Also include some positives.

If you do many one-night stays, you're the perfect candidate for a cleaning fee. I'd recommend to reduce your nightly rate and add a cleaning fee instead (you can set it so that the total of the 2 work out to the same rate you've been charging so far). This will help in that the nightly rate will be the same for each night, but the cleaning fee will spread out when guests book 2 nights or more. It makes you more likely to get longer bookings in addition to the one-night stays.

Note that the cleaning fee doesn't have to be in line with the amount you pay your cleaner - it's just a pricing tool that helps you price more accurately for guest changeovers. Also keep in mind that the guest only sees the total price, so from a guest perspective it's completely irrelevant which part of the total is the nightly rate and which is the cleaning fee.

Hopefully your cleaner has plenty of short-term rental experience and knows that they have to think in terms of averages. One guest leaves more work than the average guest, and the next one leaves less. It's not worth it to dwell too long on what a particular guest did "wrong". As long as it's fixable to a reasonable extent before the next guest checks in, one can move on.

[Colleen670]

Thank you so much. This is all great advice and good information. I didn’t realize that the cleaning fee is not a separate line item. I also didn’t know that my review of a guest doesn’t show on my listing. I will follow your advice. Thank you for taking the time to help.