Guests with bad intentions

[Jennifer177]

Just wondering how many of you have the experience of guests booking, but then they turn out to be someone different even though they are verified or have bad intentions, ie: want to hold a party, sneak other people in etc. Is this a common occurrence? And other than the obvious, how do you combat it? How do they get by the verification system?

[Helen3]

I have never had this happen in nearly five years of hosting, but then I do vet guests carefully, have CCTV and strong house rules so that if they do I can ask them to leave immediately @Jennifer177 

[Anonymous]

@Jennifer177 There's nothing in the ID verification system that prevents misuse of the property.

There are a few patterns that you find with guests who intend to sneak people in. They gravitate toward remotely hosted Entire Home properties for the obvious reasons, and often reside in the local region. (The latter is somewhat complicated as a red flag because many legit guests are traveling close to home due to the pandemic.

Hosts who don't use Instant Book have a much better chance at weeding out people with foul intentions, as very few of the dodgy guests are skillful enough in their communication to not leave a of clue that something is a little off. Pre booking dialogur gives you the chance to assess whether your expectations are a mutual fit, and to reiterate rules that the guest might not otherwise pay attention to.

Security features like external cameras can help you identify trouble before it comes to a head, but I'm amazed at how many sneaky guests have been undeterred by them. 

[Anthony608]

@Jennifer177- In just over two years of hosting, I have had two pretty serious cases of guests with bad intentions and a few more which which were very questionable.  I also rent to locals (I know, there are some strong opinions about that) and I have had a handful of very sketchy "emergency one night rentals" of local people needing the room on the same day for one night.  I am careful with those, and had declined several but also have given some people a chance.  Most often than not, they either don't show up or come for a few hours and dont spend the night.

Back to the main question, the cases which are the most questionable usually involve people not being honest about who they are.  I have had a few rentals where people show up who were clearly not the person who booked the room and several of these people also tried to bring in extra people.  In the beginning of my hosting experience, I was much nicer and tried to help, but recently I have become much more strict and do not allow unregistered people in the home.  I should add a lot of the people who try this are also problem guests, complaining about things, and many have left unfair reviews.  I have learned to just deal with it when this occurs.

Now, the two most serious cases I have ever had were a group of two men from China, who acted very strangely in the home and were observed looking through my personal papers and belongings, as well as a man who I think paid someone to get into my house for the purposes of scoping it out for a robbery and trying to get a copy of the key.  Rather than explain the rest, I'll let you read the reviews which pretty much spell out what happened:

https://www.airbnb.com/users/show/141237873

https://www.airbnb.com/users/show/278314701

This next one is an "honorable mention".  They were okay guests, but I have never before or since had a guest so flagrantly violate the rules about off limits areas of the house.  One of the guests pretty much set up camp in our family living room, clearly indicated as off limits in the house rules, and I think the guests also tried to force the door open to our basement to try and get access to this area of the house (we keep it locked) maybe just to see what was down there.

https://www.airbnb.com/users/show/104058536

Weird also...my review was the last any of these people had, which makes me wonder if these were fake profiles that the people were using until they received my bad review.