Private entrance or not?

[Christine2685]

Hi, 

I rented an airbnb for 2 weeks. I wanted the entire place and also a private entrance.

First, the airbnb check in info were saying it was the apartment #2 on the 2nd level but the host sent me a message the day before my check in, saying it was the apartment #5 on the first level. When I got there to check in, I had to enter the front door of the building, go up the stairs and find the door #5 to enter the place. 

So clearly this is not a private entrance. The definition of a private entrance would be that the door of the apartment lead directly outside or that I am the only one entering by that door to get to the apartment, right? 

I contacted airbnb and the person told me their definition of 'private entrance' was this: We consider private entrance as the entrance used into the space you will be staying in. If the room you were to stay in had a door that was shared with another person to go into their space in the listing, then it would not be a private entrance.

This doesn't make sense to me at all. If that was the definition of a private entrance, it would be useless to have the private entrance option when you pick entire place. 

I would like your opinion on this, thanks! 🙂 

[Sarah977]

@Christine2685  The Airbnb rep was correct. Obviously an apartment building normally has a common entrance to at least all the apartments that aren't on the ground floor. You didn't rent the entire building- you are renting an apartment which has a private entrance to the unit you have booked.

[Mark116]

@Christine2685  It sounds like what you really wanted then was a private house, or a detached bungalo type of place.  Almost all apartment buildings are going to have a main shared entrance to the building, even most 2+ family houses will also have some type of shared entrance into the building, although some few apartments may have their own separate entrance. 

[Jean-Francois45]

The presence of the private entrance option is puzzling sometimes as it is probably not useful in 99.9% of circumstances (I guess to qualify for this you would assume noone would be able to see you go in or out of the building).

But i can see how this might be a strong preference for that 0.1% of guests, so Airbnb would be right in providing the option, but wrong to not have any clarification next to it (there are many amenity options with this problem).

However, in my opinion you definitely have unrealistic expectations for how 99.9% of apartment properties are built, basically across the world.