Oh dear, the youth of today...

[Huma0]

Ok, don't mean to be a middle aged moaner here, but I hear a lot of hosts on the forums complaining about clueless/entitled younger guests and especially about how young people have no attention span and don't read ANYTHING. I don't think this is strictly true. It is for some of my younger guests, whilst others have been a dream.

Still, this article made me laugh so I thought I would share it. Should make interesting reading, especially for any homeowners in London!

Confused kids dream of £50,000 properties

While I don't expect 11-14 year olds to know much about buying property (I certainly didn't at that age and my parents were in the property business!) I would think that 18-21 year olds should have a better idea. I do like though that a lot of them thought meeting the neighbours was more important than installing WiFi. That's quite sweet!

One thing I do want to add is that the only people I have met in the 18-21 age range who could even dream of affording a property in London (and whose parents weren't ludicrously rich) were self-made, professional Instagrammers. Yep, and they were getting to travel around the world and stay in 5 star hotels for free. So, while we can criticise kids for being obsessed with social media, having a low attention span and being ludicrously narcissistic with their 'selfie' culture, clearly some of them are not so clueless after all!

What do you think?

[Ange2]

@Huma0  I haven't noticed a difference by generation or culture. Great, good, and thankfully less of the bad and ugly seems to run the gamut across all demographics.  Reviews would be the only difference in that younger people seem more inclined to write as if there is a huge audience out there just waiting to devour their 'post' for information, they appear to feel beholden to inform from all viewpoints even when not their experience. Maybe a habit informed by being raised on social media and online commenting. It's a very different approach from older generations who stick with their personal opinion and experience, possibly not interested or used to the concept of online 'relationships' and 'friends' and having a place in the ether. It is quite fascinating.

But, I have noticed that people traveling solo, regardless of age or culture or gender, tend to be overall more respectful and responsible, have read everything, ask questions and respond immediately, I'm not sure why.  Maybe people just make more effort and are more thoughtful and responsible when they are on their own.

[Huma0]

@Ange2

Those are both interesting points. I hadn't noticed a marked difference in the reviews. I do remember one young guest who left a positive, but strangely flowery review, but he was an aspiring writer! Then again, I've had guests, both young and old, leave very detailed reviews and also very short, succinct ones.

You are probably right about the solo traveller part. They tend to be more interractive with the host and, with a few exceptions, have paid more attention to the listing. But, I've hosted lots of couples like that too.

RE the culture thing, I mean to say that there are some things that might be considered normal in one culture but not very polite in another, and misunderstandings can arise if either party aren't aware of them. Sometimes it's maybe a case of culture + age.

For example, I've hosted several pairs of young girls from Korea, but only one older guest (a middle aged guy). He was very interested in learning about other cultures, so we had some quite interesting discussions around this. I learnt quite a bit too! I had no idea that dishwashers were such a rarity in Korea for example. 

However, even though he wasn't doing it himself, he was totally baffled as to why I would object to these young guests blow drying their hair, slamming doors and making other loud noise at 3 am when other people are sleeping. In the UK, it would be considered rude to behave this way, but he couldn't understand why.

I am not saying that certain nationalities make good guests or bad guests, just that there are cultural differences, including how we communicate, e.g. in some countries it's not considered polite to be direct, or to say 'no'. The more the guests and the hosts are aware of these differences, the more smoothly the stay is likely to go!