I am not a host. But I am a regular traveling guest with feedback and critique to people who do host.

[Elyse67]

I became a guest for Air BNB because I travel a lot for work. I have had my ups and downs with different Air BNB's. The reason I try to choose Air BNB during my work travels is because it is almost usually cheaper than a hotel and with a place to cook decent food without having to eat crap all the time while on a job which is very important to me.

However, I have some things I would like to point out that will not only give any reading hosts what I would like to see improve (if it applies to you), but I am also going to name a very nasty experience with a host that I don't want to have to happen to anyone else.

HOSTS:

-It's great that you have set up your home or any investment property to allow it to be occupied by guests. I am sure a lot appreciate the accommodation! It's just that as far as my experience with different Air BNB's so far there are things that I wish would be improved on.

For one thing, I have seen MANY MANY listings, whose price is way more than what they are worth. Rundown places that are smaller and dirtier than hotel rooms or don't even have places to cook with a full-sized fridge....THESE PLACES GO FOR 80 TO 150 A NIGHT!!! I have stayed in hotels that were barely 30 to 40 and were twice as clean, and had a full-sized fridge and a stove. One place demanded 100 a night from me and a roommate. The person left previously because of a bug infestation. It was worse than we thought. This is on top of no stove, a small fridge (WAY too small for two people who cook...), broken utilities in the shower with low water pressure, a flimsy front door, etc. I Brought this to the host's attention and they agreed to lower the price to 30 a night each. SHE TOLD ME THE PLACE NORMALLY RUNS FOR 150 A NIGHT!! WTF.

Please be reasonable about what you are trying to offer and be realistic. If you want what you are demanding you have to invest in making the property and its amenities worth your price demands. Please don't be unethical and take advantage of people who are trying to find a place at the last minute or who are going to be on long jobs for 10 to 12-hour shifts and jack up the price for what you KNOW the place is not worth. If there is an infestation fix it. Get at least a portable working stove in your "kitchenette" if you do not have one or at least invest in a decent-sized fridge especially if you are going to host multiple guests.

There are the Air BNB's I have stayed in, also the ones where someone shared their own home where either the host (or their family) or other guests just would not shut up when I was trying to sleep. I am speaking to all the hosts in particular who regularly have people stay at their places for construction work and outages and work shift turnarounds.

It would be very much appreciated if hosts as a whole did a much better job of enforcing "quiet time" past a certain hour. For people who work long days starting at 10 pm is not early enough. If your household is not compatible with this please do not take guests who work turnarounds into your home! Especially the ones who work nightshift. The work we do is dangerous and the last thing we need is a serious injury from basically being delirious from not enough sleep because someone would not shut the**bleep** up while we are trying to sleep. Sigh. If there are complaints about other guests being too loud to you PLEASE DO SOMETHING! If they do not listen the second time KICK THEM OUT!

Now. For Air BNB's "refund policy." One I personally deem to be completely unethical for this reason: It is up to the host to whether or not to refund a guest for any funds given for a stay. Literally, almost everyone chooses the non-refund policy. Obviously...

I have had hosts refund me unexpectedly for days I did not end up staying for. However, There were two instances where two hosts refused to refund me and I had to get my bank to pull the funds back into my account. One, I discovered something barely two hours after booking that made me uncomfortable. The woman became hostile and verbally abusive to me and refused to refund me 800 dollars. I got Air BNB involved and they told me the host was "kind enough" ( are you**bleep** kidding me???) to refund me half. I had the bank dispute and pull out the other half.

The Most recent incident was when I booked a trip to Ft Worth in November for a job. About halfway there, which was two hours away from home and two hours from the destination I had a car accident that totaled my vehicle. I contacted my host and sent proof of the accident, including the police report and a picture of my car. I even tried to call her and there was no response. She finally messaged on text and said "so sorry about your accident..." and basically told me to **bleep** off and drop dead when she said "the room will still be here for you if you can find another way here. please contact Air BNB for support" I was two hours away from home and stranded. I paid 664 dollars for that reservation...money she refused to refund me. I then was told by Air BNB that they made the excuse of not sending money back because i "harassed them" which was BS. I could tell from the unresponsiveness to the first message I sent that she never wanted to send a refund in the first place...Basically stole from me for a service not rendered, and for a reason that was not my fault. The money I actually desperately needed to mitigate the financial consequences of the accident.

I understand the non-refund in the case that people are fickle and are inconsiderate of the host trying to lock in the dates for them when they could get other guests...but this was someone taking advantage of me in a crisis., and basically showed that she didn't give two **bleep**s about what happened to me. YOU ARE A **bleep**BAG IF YOU DO THIS TO SOMEONE.

I know everyone that hosts here cares about profit and wants to make something extra. But please also care about the quality of your customer service. Be sure that the place you offer is hospitable for the type of guests you want to host. If it isn't and it isn't too much trouble for you to adapt and you CAN then do so if you want to do business with them. Make sure the utilities work. Make sure the place is decent to sleep in. No infestations or bed bugs, please! Please make sure other guests are considerate and respectful, and no consuming other people's food! (do enforce this please..) Be ethical about refunds. Don't hesitate to stick to your guns if you think someone is just willy-nilly canceling and being inconsiderate to the guests you lose and could have had because of them doing this, but PLEASE DO TAKE CRISIS AND OTHER SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCE INTO CONSIDERATION. Meet someone halfway at least and ask them to show you documentation of the legitimate reason they have to cancel. If it is an actual issue please don't be a **bleep** and refund the money!!!

Please care about your quality of service if you are hosting homes as well as the well-being of your guests. Thank you.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Elyse67 I am with you except for perhaps the car accident. In this situation the host, who may have significant costs, is unlikely to be able to re-let the place at short notice. Why your misfortune should be extended to them is perhaps a little unfair. Could you consider a yearly insurance policy to cover you for these cases or only book places with a flexible cancellation policy.

With respect to price, as a traveller myself I am often horrified by the prices charged in some places. Of course I live in an area with low property prices where you can buy a detached house for £300k which wouldn't buy you a 1 bed flat where my daughter is trying to buy! Of course there is no excuse for bug ridden/dirty places.

[Elyse67]

Yes because the costs of the host were so much more important than my own and the only ones that matter!

I had a hard time buying groceries for a while because of that thanks very much...I don't care what the excuse is this was money kept from me for a service not rendered. Under this type of circumstance, the decent and empathetic thing to do would have been to refund the money. Believe me, when I become a host in the near future I don't care how tight I get I would do the same for others in such outlying circumstances.  The host would have been no better or worse off as a result of giving me back my money, it would have been as if we never had contact...where as for me i was worse off because of the accident. There are also barely any places i have seen (as i mentioned in my OP.....) that have flexible cancellation policies in the areas i have stayed and normally travel for work.

I feel like this is basically saying "let the host profit from that money because she has costs to pay!"

WELL SO DID I. And it was MY money!!! Like you wouldn't get **bleep** if the same thing happened to you. I am sure you would have complete sympathy for your host who was so much in need who basically told you to **bleep** yourself while you were stranded on the side of the road two hours away from home with no car and needing money to get back and finance a new one....

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Elyse67You really need insurance I am afraid.

Interestingly we just had a guest cancel a 30 day stay 2 days into their stay. We could have kept all their money but refunded all bar £200 and also tried to persuade Airbnb to return 90% of their service fee. Logic was they had only blocked our calendar for 4 days so we will hopefully get a replacement booking for some of the 30 days. Key point is we could afford to do this. Perhaps your host couldn't meet her mortgage payments without your booking money......

[Elyse67]

I highly doubt this was the case...besides no matter what the case is this was still money kept for a service that once again was not given due to a legitimate circumstance. It's not right to keep the money for a service that is not going to be given unless someone is being downright inconsiderate or fickle and causes the host or whoever is serving something to lose money, which sounds like this is what your own guest did to you. I would never do this. Thanks so much for putting yourself in my own shoes!

Almost no one wants to pay extra for travel insurance when they have never had problems before. I will certainly not book for the whole trip right off the bat anymore..

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Elyse67 I do enjoy different points of view.

If you blocked the hosts calendar for an amount of time they could well have got another booking during this time but are unlikely to get one the day you were due to arrive. Contractually you agreed to pay and the host agreed you can stay so a service was actually provided to you.

A decent host would, at a minimum, agree to refund you any money that they could get from a replacement booking but perhaps this 'negotiation' didn't get off to a good start.

[Fred13]

To me, for the STR model to continue to work, it needs to require every one of its hosts to meet a certain level of awareness and integrity.  The more the years go by, the less I believe members of some societies in general have one or the other or both; or if they ever had either, many have lost it.

The next inevitable step for Airbnb is to make sure its hosts meet a certain standard consistently, and then and only then it could demand the same expectations from its guests, who also oftentimes lack those two standards themselves.

[Elyse67]

The problem is that Air BNB doesn't care which is why i have written a post to hosts directly. Obviously there are a lot of crappy guests which is also why someone should be allowed to screen who they allow into their home.

[Lorna170]

@Elyse67 

Travel insurance.  If you can't arrange for it via your credit card, do not accept a job from a company requiring you to travel unless they will cover your expenses when unforeseen circumstances (like a car accident while on your way to the job site) cause a cancellation of the travel and accommodations.

I do not rent the home that I live in, so I cannot comment on what you have experienced in properties with resident hosts or co-guests.

[Elyse67]

In an ideal world, you would be correct and I would jump at that type of job in a heartbeat. There is literally no contractor however that does this, at least here down south in my type of work. Maybe I would be corrected about this up north. I hope so anyway because work conditions in general south of the mason-dixon line are awful.

Not everyone can foresee catastrophe. I have never had to purchase travel insurance before. How naive of me to rely on the decency of others when there is actually none, so I might consider it for the future if I really have to. In the meantime, I no longer book for the full stay until I arrive safely......

[Mariann4]

Many valid points @Elyse67 . Except the car accident. The host is not your insurance provider. When travelling you need traveller's insurance. When you appear to have an all-year travelling work situation you need an all year traveller's insurance. The host can't take the fall for your accident no matter how random it happened. If something happens to the host's place their home insurance comes to the table. If something happens to your belongings while in a host's home your travel insurance is helping you, not any insurance of the host.

It has nothing to do with the host being greedy or uncompassionate. You take insurance to protect you. Hosts take insurance to protect them. 

I don't know the pricelevel in you country, but here we get a very good yearly travel insurance for about $100 a year. So far it has given me a brand new $600 phone in replacement from one that got pickpocketed from me. If I lose a plane ride due to an unforseen traffic jam, and/or the housing that I booked to stay after the plane, I would get my money back from the insurance provider, not the airline or host/hotel.

We've seen the worst cases of people travelling without insurance, rotting in hospitals abroad, unable to get out or get home.

I can't understand how people dare to travel without insurance...

[Kitty-and-Creek0 · Accepted solution]

@Elyse67 

I see many valid points in your letter. My initial reaction was to suggest you be very careful where you book. Ask lots of questions about the amenities, items and situations that are very important to you. Read the listings thoroughly, examining photos of amenities and even asking about floor plans if you suspect you will be too close to other people for your comfort. Ask prospective hosts about things like the size of the refrigerator and the cooking facilities that you would have access to. Clearly and gently communicate your concerns ahead  of time to prospective hosts. I would urge you to send an inquiry, stating your needs as questions; rather than doing an instant booking, or a booking request. I'd compare this to shopping for healthy nutritious food.  Read the labels and make sure you would be buying what you want and need. Best of luck to you for your work, your stays, your experiences traveling.