In the time that we've been hosting, I've noted bad guests tend to belong to these categories:
1. last minute/low rate bookings
2. Locals
3. Experienced guests (5 or more reviews)
The first two are easy to spot and we can filter depending on the quality of their communication at the time of booking.
The last group is the most frustrating and tricky. They look like decent people, sound like decent people and have more than a few great reviews.
While there are great guests with numerous reviews, I'm talking about the group that seems to think they are entitled to everything and you need to appease them at all costs. They expect you to provide more than what you outlined in your listing or to bend the rules for them. Some will even outright break the house rules (for example come before the check in time without any notice and expect to be able to use the unit) without any concern. Even if you call them out for it, they act like they did nothing wrong and you're the one who's not providing quality service.
Perhaps in their experience with Airbnb, they've found that they generally cannot be penalized unless they damage property. They've come to see hosts as business owners that need to provide customer service plus put on that "customer is always right" attitude.
Through all the experience with hosting, I've now come to be skeptical when I see a guest with more than 4/5 reviews, which is something I used to be excited about because I thought for sure those were the no-fuss guests.
I'm not sure if these people know how to play their cards just right to not get in trouble, and only manage to get positive reviews (when hosts cancel on them, they don't get reviewed) or if at some point a switch turned on and they realized they are pretty much untouchable as long as they stay legal.
When I cancel on these guests, despite the clear disregard for policies, the guests always get their full refund and their accounts are not flagged or removed so they can just continue on with their behaviour. They may have figured, well if I try to get things my way the host will probably accommodate since I'm the paying customer but if the host gets refuses, they can't touch me anyway. Worse comes to worst they could just create a new account.
So I'm wondering if other hosts have had similar experiences with Airbnb-familiar guests and what you think could be done by Airbnb and/or the community to ensure that guests, not only hosts, are held accountable for their behaviours?