More Guests Than Stated

[Krista62]

Hello there,

We are looking for ideas/ advice before we make a move.

Our last guest group booked a reservation for 7 people.  Our house rules state that each guest exceeding 6 people, must pay a per night surcharge to a maximum capacity of 8 people.  Our camera  (outside surveilling property and disclosed) caught 10 people outside.  So

1) the group lied about number of guests, 

2) they exceeded the maximum capacity we are comfortable hosting in the space.

What should our next move be (we wrote to airbnb but haven't heard back from them)?   Do we message the guests and show them the photo?  Do we attempt to request the additional funds for the extra guest surcharge?  Is is likely, in your experience, that the guest may just become angered and deny that the guests were indeed spending the night? How does Airbnb support the host with these claims?  Will they likely write us a poor review with no truth/ validity because the?  We really do not want a poor, bogus review to affect our superhost status.

Please advise us.

Thank you!

[Laura2592]

My husband suggested that we provide cats as place holders for the unslept in beds. So if a guest says there are 2 coming we release two cats to sleep in the other bed, thereby making it impossible to occupy by anyone else. They may be 10 lbs each but they can totally take up space 🙂

[Markus429]

I find it even unfair towards guests who do notice and ask for extra guests who may even come up spontaneously. Usually a few message resolve the issue and all is good.

Right now I just had a guest, however, who is being quite aggressive about it, saying that he paid more than enough already - he paid the listed price for 2 persons for 8 nights but admitted to having "a couple of friends" over for at least one night. Since 5 beds are used, I assume he had 3 friends over for at least one night, which is all I want to charge.

I don´t want to give in to the bad review threat he made, because among all my excellent reviews it will be obvious, that this guest is the black sheep.

Will the AirBnB resolution center actually do something if he now doesn´t pay withing the stipulated time frame? After all, they charge quite some money too.

[Colleen253]

@Markus429 Hopefully you kept all

communication on platform so Airbnb will  acknowledge this threat. That will enable you to have the review removed if the guest follows through. Extortion is a violation of the Airbnb review policy. 

House rules need to be EXPLICITLY clear regarding visitors or unregistered guests, for prevention, and to make dealing with violations easier.

The Airbnb resolution center is basically just a facility for money exchange between guest and host. This guest is free to refuse your request. You an get Airbnb involved at the point the guest refuses, but Airbnb CS is pretty useless these days. 

[Jenny349]

Are you quite sure of the facts @Krista62 ?

Were the people you saw on camera extra visitors, or extra overnight guests? Airbnb differentiates between the two categories, apparently.

I’d tread very gingerly here and try and find out exactly went on before making any accusations or asking for money. In the respect, I agree with @Laura2592 and others in that you might be shooting yourself in the foot trying to apply extra charges even though you feel justified in doing so.