First time in the community and I'm perplexed about our current guest registration.
The gentleman has one review, a positive one just for him. He came with his family to stay at our place yesterday. I'm sure he and his wife would be nice guests if it were just for them, but their children were not prepared to be a guest in someone's home. Don't get me wrong, we love having children in the home but we do prefer children whose parents don't allow certain behavior. This family would have been better suited for a hotel stay rather than a private home.
They arrived 2 hours before our noted check-in time, but we assumed that their early afternoon arrival indicated they had plans to visit a local park or some other local activity and wanted to drop off their bags. They announced that we were their intended activity. ?? They proceeded to allow their children to run all over the house with food and drink in hand, spilling crums and liquid all over the floors and mashing his sticky face into the windows. The older child was very afraid of our dog, so we put him in the garage as a courtesy, but our listing indicates that we have both a dog and a cat so we were disapointed that they'd bring a child who is afraid of dogs. We let them do their thing in the spaces rented via AirB&B and graciously allowed their sticky & messy activities to spill over into the rest of the home. We were preoccupied with our own activities throughout the day. The parents didn't seem bothered by the children running throughout the house & yard, or the children giving us orders as the day progressed. We did ignore and redirect the child as he ordered us around, it was already quite awkward by this time.
It appears they left the home in the middle of the night. We heard them up and about at 1 am, and when we awoke at 5 we saw that they had left. The spaces were a big mess with food in the beds and all over the floors, but this was to be expected even in their sudden departure. There was no note or message.
Unfortunately, at the same time the air mattress that was set up for the older child appears to have begun to lose it's seal just prior to their arrival. The mattress is a new replacement and been used for 5 previous guests so I did not suspect that it was failing until these guests arrived and I showed them to their room, but I hoped it wasn't broken and showed them the switch to re-fill the air. After seeing the child jumping on the mattress later in the day and playing with the switch to inflate the bed I asked them not to allow it because that will damage the air mattress. I checked in on them prior to our going to bed and noted that the air mattress was deflated more than before and wanted to see if they had any requests or needs before we turned in for the night. In the morning the air mattress was indeed quite deflated and has certainly failed (I have since refilled the air and see that it does have a slow leak). I do not feel it is right to blame them for this damage, only note that it is unfortunate that it happened at all and may be the cause of their midnight departure.
I did leave them a message via the platform apologizing for the failure of the air bed and noting that they left unexpectedly, apologizing for any other failure on our part.
I am hesitant to leave a poor review for the father's account as I'm sure he would be a pleasant guest on his own, or with his wife, and I will not blame them for the airbed failure, but how do I craft an appropriate review? Do we offer them a refund? I do expect a poor review from them and I'm unsure how to deal with that, if at all. How would my fellow hosts handle such a situation?
Thank you for your input ~
** Update - the guest did reply to my message inquiring about their sudden departure and he said it was because the baby would not sleep, and while the air bed was unfortunate it was not the reason they left. He was polite and appreciative.
While I'm relieved, I'm still unsure how to craft a review of their stay. We have had families stay before and we have never had such an experience.