Terrible, Nightmare AirBNB Guests

Guest Post from one of our satisfied clients, Martin Campbell of Chandler, Arizona.

Your cleaner texts you and says:

The House is trashed! These guests must have had a huge party. I don’t even know where to start. What do I do?

Jannet, My Former Cleaner

Unfortunately, as an AirBNB host you’ve probably been here. You feel angry and violated. This isn’t what you had expected when you signed up to be an AirBNB host. Whenever you traveled using AirBNB you treated the house with care and respect, like it was your friend’s vacation place.

But these guests were different, and they seemed so nice. They always do.

This happened to me twice, and the first time I had to drive down from my main residence in Prescott, Arizona to my vacation home in Chandler, Arizona.

Before moving to Prescott this was my main house after retirement, and since I’m only there about a week per month I decided to try to rent it out on AirBNB. This is the house where I’ve spent so many great golf trips, hosted an unofficial Navy reunion party with my buddies from our days in Norfolk Naval Station and where I still keep many nice furniture pieces and knicknacks that my wife and I have collected traveling over the years.

Upon arriving I met Jannet and found that not only had the guests partied, stained the carpet, left bottles and cans EVERYWHERE and literally stained the sheets on EVERY bed, they also purloined a jumbo pack of toilet paper, three wine glasses, 4 towels (2 pool towels, 2 bath towels) and they also took a vintage Washington Redskins sign I kept in my office and put a dent in my wall!

Who does this kind of thing?

To survey, document and account for all the damage (plus hire people to come fix and clean the carpets) I was there all day and after my 5 hour round trip drive I was back in Prescott very late and very upset and telling my wife maybe this AirBNB thing wasn’t such a great idea.

The next day I called a realtor friend of mine who handled the purchase of my Chandler house and by chance he mentioned April and AirMGMT and said before I throw in the towel maybe I should give her a try.

I called April that day and told her about my experience and she said while when she manages AirBNB properties this is very rare, it does sometimes happen if you don’t ask the right questions, set expectations and create a few safeguards. I told April that I have 4 more bookings and i’d be willing to pay her price (25% more than my cleaner charged) if she could make sure this didn’t happen and if it did completely handle it for me. Unfortunately, bless her heart, I had to let Jannet go. She just didn’t understand AirBNB.

April pointed out that leaving extra supplies out was too tempting for travelers who may find them useful on their trip (paper towels are the most commonly stolen, she said) so we stopped that right away and she began stocking supplies for me. Because she buys in bulk the prices are competitive, high quality and best of all, none of them walk away!

But this article is about AirBNB parties, and wouldn’t you know it that the 4th booking I had prior to hiring AirMGMT was a group of ASU exchange students who said they were just there for a holiday dinner, 4 guests (according to the doorbell camera April recommended there were 8 guests!). While not as bad as the first party, these guests left a huge mess, left the doors open with the AC blasting in Arizona in AUGUST, pool was filled with flowers (no idea) and they stained the carpets and broke or stole a few glasses.

After getting a handle on the situation April texted me some photos she planned to use for an AirBNB resolution, told me what had happened and said everything would be fine and she would replace the glasses with similar ones, skim the pool and call her carpet cleaner to do a quick spot cleaning for $40. She submitted this to AirBNB and within 10 days they sent me $300! Everything was fine and I was in the black for these guests and their messy dinner party! (Of course I gave her a nice tip for how she handled this).

Since then i’ve followed all of AirMGMT’s recommendations, improved my photos, raised prices, screened guests better and allowed April to handle the communications (i’m writing this in 2010 Microsoft Word if that gives you any indication of my tech savvy) and everything has been perfect.

This year i’ll clear $50k profit on my Chandler house and i’m looking at a fishing cabin up in the mountains above Phoenix. I wish AirMGMT serviced that area too! Thanks a million April & AirMGMT!