First Unhappy Guest- Seems a little off

[Natalee8]

Hello! 
We are new hosts on Airbnb and so far we have really enjoyed it! If you follow personality types, I am a 2 on the enneagram and a Blue on the color code, so hospitality is VERY important to me. 
I make sure my guests have everything they might need such as linens, towels, iron and ironing board, toothbrushes, feminine products, shampoo, soap, coffee for the keurig, tea, mugs, glasses and then a lot of extras such as mints, chocolates, soda, a little bottle of wine, oatmeal, snacks, to-go cups and plates. 
Our space is a guest suite that is attached to our house but it also it's own space separated by the garage. Our entire home (including the guest suite) was built less than a year ago so not only is it new but we take cleaning very seriously as we are proud of our home. I clean the space and then will stand there staring at it thinking of how it could be even cleaner 😂.
Our first two guests have commented on how nice, clean and accommodating our space is. Here is the situation with our latest guest..

He arrives his first day and I happen to be out on the side of the main portion of the house watering plants. He comes over and introduces himself and asks if he is in the correct unit. I tell him that he is, welcome him, and let him know if there is anything he needs to please let us know. I also said that I hope enjoys his stay and that we will do our best to be quiet hosts for him. 
Within minutes after entering he messages us and says that the wifi isn't working. In our welcome sheet that is laid out upon arrival there is a QR code for guests to scan for wifi. We also have the instructions on how to connect manually should you not want to scan a code. I immediately respond and ask which way he tried to connect and before I could even hit send he responded with "disregard. It's working". I said  "Oh wonderful. Please let me know if you have any other issues." Later that evening he asked if he could come in for dinner. Unfortunately, we had a family member test positive for covid so I let him know that we were quarantining for the rest of the week in our portion of the home. But I referred him to our guidebook and our favorite places to eat and apologized. 
We then went to take family walk for a bit and when we came back our home smelled of marijuana. Our HVAC shares spaces with the guest suite. I have in our house rules that there is absolutely no smoking allowed anywhere on the premises and that any violation of that rule can result in asking the guest to leave. I have an allergy to any type of smoke so I take it seriously. My husband messages him and very politely mentions that we can smell the marijuana through our HVAC and reminds him of the rule. We smell the smell for over an hour and I eventually have to leave as I start having a reaction. I also take my children with me as I don't want them experiencing it. He doesn't respond so we reach out to Airbnb support for guidance and they message him. After that, he responds to us and tells us that he's not smoking in our space, only outside (which we saw on our cameras). We let him know, again politely, that the house rules state that smoking is not permitted anywhere on the property. I tell him that if he needs to find a place that can better accommodate his stay that we are happy to refund him the remainder of his nights (he booked 4 nights) or we are are happy to keep him as a guest if he can follow the rules that were initially stated upon booking. He says he'll follow the rules.
The rest of the week he messaged us two more times about the internet not working, and again, we responded immediately and as soon as we sent the message his said "disregard. It's working now." We would respond with "I'm so sorry it's acting up for you. As always, let us know if we can assist with anything."

As he checked out today he messaged us a long list of complaints in the form of a review that we are certain he is planning to post.
He said two towels were not enough for 4 nights, though he only used one. The other was hanging on the towel rack  just as I had it nicely folded. The other was in the floor.
He said there were flies in the space when he arrived.
He said the shower was filthy. Again, it's a brand new shower and I scrub that thing down (when it's honestly perfectly clean to begin with), microban it and then squeegee it. 
He said that the TV didn't work. He never let us know that, we would have helped him. But we went in after check out and it's working fine.
He said that he was harassed because of an "odor" that caused the host to have an allergic reaction. Yes... the marijuana he smoked that wasn't allowed.
He said that we had a rule to use toilet spray. Not true, since it's just a small guest suite we provide Toilet Spritz for guests that are staying with others so they can mask their bathroom doors a bit if they choose to 😂. Just trying to be accommodating. It's not stated anywhere it's required to use it?
He said that we were noisy lifting weights and there was no way he could relax or rest. We don't own any type of work out equipment. I wish we did. Ha. But we don't. We try our best to be extremely quiet and be respectful of our guests and we can't think of anything we would have done that caused loud noises. I also provide a sound machine in the room should we have very sensitive sleepers. However, we live on a VERY quiet street and I'm just at a loss figuring out what was noisy to him?
At the end of the day, our renters our renting a space connected to our house and there might be a noise here and there.
He listed that the internet never worked. 
He complained about having to use a code to get in every time. I'm not sure what his complaint about that was about? We have a code entry door through the August company. 
He complained that the hosts are not interested in meeting their guests. 

Something we realized we made a mistake on his even booking him to begin with. He has been a member since February of 2021 with zero reviews. Lesson learned. 

Is he trying to threaten us with a bad review? Hoping we won't review him? What's the best way to go forward with this? We want to be great hosts but we want to make sure we don't get walked all over.

[Lorna170]

@Natalee8  As a new host you will be challenged by guests such as this one who are obviously not a good fit for the AirBnB experience or who have decided to see if they can shame or scare a host into a free stay.

You have two options:  kowtow to this guest’s complaints and refund him hoping for a better review, or hold your ground, letting him review you and then, in return, post a truthful review of his behavior.  In my opinion, if you hold your ground, accepting a bad review and rising above it, you will be better off in the long run and will enjoy a profitable relationship with AirBnB.

Your review of this guest will be read by other potential guests, and they are the ones that you address your review to.  Do not bother nitpicking this guest’s behavior or responding to his “points”.  DO advise other hosts that this is not a good guest.  So your review may be along these lines:  “So and So did not follow our house rules regarding smoking, required constant assistance in using the internet and other standard amenities and is better suited to a hotel and not an AirBnB.  We will not be hosting him again”.   

[Natalee8]

Thank you for this! This is great advice. 

[Huma0]

@Natalee8 I think most hosts will sooner or later get this type of guest. I am sorry you got one so early on in your hosting experience.

When your guest sent you his long list of complaints, was this via the Airbnb messaging service? Also, in what context was it? I mean, did he message saying this is his feedback or was he asking you for something? I am not sure what the purpose is of complaining about things that were never mentioned during the stay and also before leaving a review, other than it being to try to get some sort of refund. Then perhaps he is not angling for a refund and is just an annoying person. Perhaps he is worried you will leave a bad review for him because of the weed smoking, but sending you a long list of complaints is not the best way to go about avoiding that!

If you want to respond to his message (and make sure to do this via the Airbnb messaging system so it's on record in case he causes further problems), you could try something like this:

Dear X, thank you for your message and your feedback. We are sorry you were not totally satisfied with your stay. This is the first time we have ever received any kind of complaint from guests. Nonetheless, we of course do take any complaint seriously. It is a shame, however, that you did not mention X, Y, Z to us (flies, noise etc.) during your stay as we would have done our best to immediately address the problem, e.g. we could have supplied you with additional towels, checked the TV etc. We did actually check the TV after you checked out and it is working fine. Did you read the instructions we left in (such and such) place? The door lock is a standard key pad entry type system you will find in many airbnbs. We certainly would have helped if we knew you were having problems with it.

I am also surprised RE your comments about the WiFi not working the entire time. Although I understand you had some issues with it, but each time you told us to disregard your message because it was working fine again. Otherwise for sure we would have investigated this too. Likewise, I am surprised you felt the shower was dirty as it is new and was cleaned thoroughly right before your stay. Again, we would have happily cleaned it again had you let us know. There was no requirement to use the bathroom spray, nor was any communicated to you. It was left there for your own convenience. 

We do very much enjoy meeting our guests which is why we were happy to personally greet you on arrival but, as I explained, we did need to self isolate during your stay. I am sorry about that, but it was for your own safety and we would have been failing our duty as hosts to have had more interaction with you.

RE the odour, the no smoking rule is clearly stated on the. listing and you therefore agreed to this when you booked, but did not stop even after being reminded. I believe we were very polite in our reminders so I am sorry you took exception to this.

Again, we value all guest feedback and will do our best to take in onboard. For example, we will provide more towels in future. However, the WiFi and TV appear to be working fine so I am not sure what we can do about that."

Anyway, you get the gist. Or, you might feel that it's not worth responding to him point by point and just keep it simple, thanking him for his feedback, that you wish he'd mentioned these issues during his stay as you would have tried to resolve them. I think it's worth addressing the point RE the smoking though, so you have this on record. Or, you might feel it's not worth responding at all, but this guest sounds like he needs to feel validated in some way. Personally, I prefer to kill them with kindness while at the same time pointing out (in a sugar coated way) that much of this was the guest's own fault/cluelessness.

Leave an honest, unemotional and professional review. Keep it succinct. I think that @Lorna170 's suggestion is very good. However, I think she meant that future guests will read your RESPONSE to his review, not your review of him.

Moving forward (sorry, this is getting a bit long), you might want to mention on your listing that smoking is prohibited both in the indoor and outdoor areas, as a lot of people will assume you only mean inside. You don't need to give a reason. It's your property. I always check with every guest who wants to book that they understand the smoking policy and agree to it. This doesn't work 100% of the time, but it mostly does.

Also, fill in the section about guest interaction. Is it normal for you to have guests invite themselves into your home for dinner? To me, that's hardly normal when you are renting out a separate unit. You can put in your listing that you allow guests privacy and space but are on hand should they require something, rather than that you will socialise with them.

Most importantly, how do you vet your guests? You mentioned this guest did not have reviews, but that's not really a deciding factor as far as I'm concerned. I've hosted loads of first time guests and most of them have been great. It's the correspondence with the guest that's the most important part of the vetting process and especially getting them to read the listing and house rules and acknowledge them. Don't ever assume that what's obvious to you is obvious to everyone. People can be weird.

[Natalee8]

Thank you so much for this! 
Before I read your response I actually did reply to him with almost exactly what you suggested! So that makes me feel better. 

we haven’t had and didn’t anticipate guests inviting themselves over so that is something we are wanting to navigate for sure. Good idea on specifying it in the guest interaction portion! 

we have now sent a message to every upcoming guest asking if they have read the house rules thoroughly and if they have any questions about them. We are also changing our verbiage from “Premises” to “indoors or outdoors”  be more specific.  
I’ve also set up an automatic message upon booking to start conversation with all guests.

Another complaint he had was that it wasn’t a private space, yet it absolutely is. It’s not detached but it’s 💯 it’s own space that only he had access to during his stay. Yet he was upset about not mingling with us? Frustrating. 
On his last day at 4:30pm we spent about 5 minutes taking a small box out of our garage that had 4 mugs in it. We believe that’s the noise he was complaining about. 4:30 in the afternoon doesn’t seem like an unreasonable hour to hear 5 minutes of noise and surely shouldn’t warrant a complaint about not being private. 
we actually did a test with our children and asked them to run wild all over the house, up and down the stairs, every room, scream like crazy, bang toys just so we could test what maximum sound would be like ( not that that would EVER happen.) and we heard nothing in the guest suite. We paid for extra insulation for that reason. 
I digress. 

thank you for this very helpful feedback! We just hope to be successful and great hosts. 

[Natalee8]

@Huma0  Also, I have family over in the UK!❤️❤️

[Huma0]

@Natalee8 

I'm very glad you felt my suggestions were helpful. Honesty, I don't know what I would have done without this CC. I received so much useful advice from other hosts here and doubt very much that I would still be hosting without that. I probably would have gone crazy by now!!

Your guest sounds like a royal pain in the a*se, as we would say here in the UK. They place is not completely private (even though it is) and yet you did not hang out with him enough? Taking a box of mugs out in the middle of the afternoon might have disturbed him? I am afraid this guy has serious issues.

I had a sort of similar experience recently which caused me to lose my Superhost status after a straight run of 5.5 years and 2.5 years of maintaining a 5.0* rating. It's sooooo annoying that one guest can do this, but then I host long term stays so each review really counts. For hosts that do short stays, it still takes a while to recover, but not so long.

The thing with my guest (the one that was just socially inept and couldn't communicate and complained about stuff clearly stated not the listing, which he confirmed he was okay with, but then waited to the review/ratings to voice his complaints) was that I probably should never have accepted him the first place.

Why? Well, because he did not respond to any of my questions in the 24 hours I had to accept/decline him. He clearly hadn't read the full listing and my full house rules because there is an 'Easter Egg" question in there that he hadn't answered. So, I declined.

Then he got back to me pretty soon after that and apologised, saying he didn't realise his notifications were turned off. That is a valid excuse because plenty of guests do not realise that. He answered my questions, had several good reviews and a 5* rating, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and accepted his second request.

This was an error. We try to be good people and that is why we want to give others the benefit of the doubt but I have learnt my lesson. What I should have done is be a bit more thorough than usual (and I am fairly thorough) in questioning him further before accepting that second request. He turned out to be a real oddball, so uncomfortable in his own skin and yet so oblivious to how uncomfortable he made others as well as oblivious to the mess and inconvenience he caused. I did have to speak to him a few times about cleanliness, which is something I don't normally do with guests unless it is really bad. I tried my best to be helpful and friendly, but I could tell this guy had some real issues.

Anyway, long story short, unfortunately hosts cannot rely on Airbnb's systems to vet our guests. We have to do it ourselves. 

I don't want to scare you. Most guests are really lovely and I am sure you will have an amazing Airbnb experience, with the very occasional painful guest but a whole load of wonderful ones. I truly believe that, otherwise I wouldn't be doing this.

[Helen744]

@Natalee8 Natalee some guests like more communication from hosts , some less .Obviously this guest expected more assistance from you on a personal level . It may be as well to suggest that your guest would be better suited 'to a hotel' . He seemed as far as you have stated also to expect dinner with you?Does the guest generally have the use of a kitchen or cooking facilities or did he expect the type of Air bed and breakfast experience that provides some type of meal . It seems that your guests expectations were very unclear . Maybe work a little more on making it clear to guests what exactly you provide and what to expect from a stay at your home. All the best H

[Anonymous]

@Natalee8   Your parenting style sounds really fun. Giving the kids a constructive reason to run wild around the house is just brilliant!

Your guest reminds me of one I had once way back when I still offered breakfast. He was a middle-aged German solo traveler, a bit socially awkward but he didn't seem to be having any problems. I sat out some breakfast items for him each morning before I left for work, he slept in and mostly kept to himself when he wasn't out doing whatever he did in Berlin. But on his departure date, he suddenly sounded really upset, and he went on and on about how disappointed he was that I didn't sit down with him to eat breakfast. I think he had a very specific idea of what the BnB part of Airbnb entailed, which had nothing to do with what I offered. Back then, Airbnb didn't show hosts the individual ratings that guests left, but digging it up now I can see that his was the first one that dragged me down.

That guy wasn't seeking a refund or really any action at all; I think he was just an unhappy person embodying that old expression "misery loves company."  It's plausible that your complainer was in the same vein. You might just have to suck up his eventual review as an exhibit as a guest who was a poor fit to begin with.

For what it's worth, it's almost impossible to fully repair the relationship with a guest after you've had to ask them to stop doing something (e.g. smoking) - even if it's clearly against the rules. That doesn't mean you shouldn't stand your ground on the rules; your family's health obviously takes priority over guests' sense of entitlement. But statistically you can expect at least 10% of your adult guests to be smokers, so it's worthwhile to engage guests on this topic before it can turn into a confrontation. What I suggest is to positively convey in your listing where the nearest place guests can smoke is, even if it's off the grounds of your property. When guests arrive, in their initial tour I physically show them where they have to go if they'd like to have a smoke. (Having some means of butt disposal there is a plus.) Guests are overwhelmingly more receptive to this kind of guidance than "don't do this or that" rules.