Touring my home

[Chris23121]

I keep having people book and then request I meet them at the house for a tour before their stay. Is anyone else facing this request? No one lives at our property so I’d have to leave work and meet over at the house to do this. What do you say?

[Lorina14]

@Chris23121 

I would say all pictures of the property are on the listing. I’ve only had two requests for a tour and one I did do (this was in the very beginning of hosting as I didn’t know any better) but it didn’t turn into a booking. The person wanted to talk about a deal if they would be renting on a regular basis and also asked if I would waive cleaning fees if they cleaned. I said I’m not sure about the standard that you clean a space to and you should book on the Airbnb platform for protection for both you as a guest and me as a host. I think they were trying to avoid the service fees. But it is those fees that allow customer service if an issue arises and the host is not available or reasonable. I’ve since not bothered with these requests and just stated that all the information is on the listing along with all the pictures as well.

[Lorina14]

Do you have any reviews? Perhaps they are competition in your area trying to do market research or they don’t know how Airbnb works. I would not give them tours, this is not like renting a space where you tour it before you decide to apply. They should book based on your write up, pictures, answering any questions they have, your reviews and the feel they get off your listing. And giving tours is time consuming. How many of those tours ended up in successful bookings and stays?

One more thing, they could be scoping your house out for something. Some people could use this as an excuse to get a layout of the house and see if there’s anything valuable present.

[Helen3]

Hello @Chris23121 

it's against Airbnb's T&Cs  to swap contact details with guests before a booking is made so I wonder how you are arranging this as Airbnb normally blocks contact details? 

'I would just explain this to guests making this request .

it is a safety risk for you to share access to your listing with people you know nothing about. 

have these visits resulted in bookings ? Have they tried to negotiate booking with you directly?

a guest should be able to give all the information they need to make a decision on booking by looking at your listing @Chris23121 

[Chris23121]

As I stated in the question, the guests have already BOOKED with me. Now….. they want a tour before they stay. I am asking if this is normal? And if hosts do property tours AFTER a guest has booked, but months before they are do to check in