What little things annoy you in a holiday home?

[Callistone]

We're in a lovely holiday home at the moment, really nice decor, plenty of crockery and cutlery, a food cupboard of cool bags and beach rugs to help yourself too, definitely one to visit again.

However they have provided three dishwasher tablets and no spare bin bags. Hardly the end of the world but for the price of the rental I always get mildly irritated when they are so stingy with something inexpensive like dishwasher tablets. If it was me I'd just have them in stock like washing up liquid.

Anything irritate you?

Oh and I want the place to be spotless. Unlike one we went to a few years ago when ds2 had just started crawling and the carpets were manky and covered in sand and no hoover!
Good blackout curtains.
Plenty of towels
Washing machine
Cafetiere

cakecrumbs we literally spend £100s at Lakeland every few months keeping the cottages up to date and pans scratch free. I think the mistake a lot of holiday cottages make is they assume everyone will treat them like they own them.

Nope.

We realised this a long time ago and have an attic full of pans, matching crockery, (nice) glassware, teaspoons and cafetières.

We also provide pretty much new towels with every stay, cake, wine, fresh flowers, tea coffee etc

Yes we don't make as much profit if you look at it purely on a week by week basis, as what we provide probably knocks another £30 - £50 a week at least off what we 'could' make in profit, but unlike most holiday lets in our area we are booked up most of the year round, we don't need to advertise and at peak times of year could let the properties out three times over just on word of mouth.

We draw the line at unlimited dishwasher tablets though ?

Showers with no shower caddy, shelf, or anywhere to put your soap and shampoo, except on the floor. And how difficult is it to put a hook on the back of the bathroom door?

Only one towel per guest (if provided). Ladies need a body towel and a hair towel (this annoys me in hotels too).

Lack of decent instructions for WiFi/Heating/Aircon/TV etc.

Definitely agree that anyone renting out anything should try and stay there for a week to see how they get on.

A tiny fridge with one freezer compartment in it for a 6 person + cottage! This really annoys me...the milk always has to be sacrificed for the wine!! 🤣

All holiday cottage owners should be obliged to display a certificate to show they have lived in it for at least a weekend

Cheap cutlery

A tiny fridge with one freezer compartment in it

Agree-or worse, no freezer compartment at all (wot no ice cream? on holiday?)

Not enough coat hangers in a wardrobe. (Never enough in hotels either)

Op. It was just that situation that introduced me to the fact that you only need half a dw tablet with each load. I still do this almost 20 years later.
Lidl’s one’s are good for this.

A basket of half-used toiletries.

WHY??!!

It's minging. No thank you.

Cakecrumbs fellow holiday let owner here! I have read the whole thread and glad to say I have passed the Mumsnet test with a score of 99.99% that’s been mentioned. I really thought about all the little details to make our guests feel comfortable and they always say how well equipped our let is. The only thing I haven’t done is provide feather duvets as the holiday cottage company stipulated we should have synthetic duvets and pillows due to people possibly having feather allergies. I will say that we have had approximately three shaver adaptor plugs ‘disappear’ which is quite annoying when you have to keep replacing them. Unfortunately there is no shaver socket in the bathroom. I even Dymo labelled the most recent adaptor with our cottage name but it still went. We still have a few weeks free over the summer if anyone is interested, sleeps 4 in the country!

We take our own (large) mugs. Also take a massive saucepan, as on more than one occasion I've had to use two saucepan to fit enough pasta for 6 hungry adults/teens!
Always pack a couple of spare tea towels too. Once spent two weeks at a beautiful, very family friendly Dutch house. It advertised itself as being well stocked with "toddler crockery". It turned out to be beautiful, CERAMIC, Mickey Mouse toddler crockery. We had 4 small children, two still in high chairs, who weren't used to tiled floors - we had to pay €24 to replace the three they broke. Usually I packed plastic stuff for self-catering holidays, but had been lulled into a false sense of security by the promise of toddler crockery

Nowhere heat-safe other than the cooker top - if I get something out of the oven, I need to put it somewhere, and I may have a pan going on the hob. I've learnt to take a wooden chopping board, which solves both this and the glass chopping board problem.

If you provide non-stick pans, non-metal utensils would be good. One place we stayed had beautiful new non-stick pans, but only metal utensils. The pans weren't going to stay non-stick for long.

Oh, goody, an excuse to share my favourite New Yorker article of all time.

The Only Kitchen Knife In Your AirBnB

www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/the-only-kitchen-knife-in-your-airbnb

Owners absolutely should stay in them themselves first.

I'm in Spain in a villa right now - villa is lovely, but the lack of ANYTHING provided is ridiculous. No salt or pepper, tea, coffee, washing up liquid, spare loo roll, soap, dishwasher tabs, soap powder, bin bags, sponges- or any sort of cleaning supplies at all. So stingy! I can't believe non-one's left anything at all before us, so it's either being binned, or the cleaners are keeping it all. I'll be taking my sponges home with me!

Other annoyances are signs everywhere (I do know how to use a toilet, thanks!), useless hairdryers, one tiny towel each, and annoying throws over the sofas, which I have removed. There is, however, plenty of space and shelves in convenient places for toiletries in the bathroom, which is my usual whinge!

The worst one we had was where the mattress base fell out of the bottom of the bed during the night and the rain came in under the front door, which was in the living room.

Kitchen knives that are always blunt
No mugs are the two things that are most often missing.

We stayed in one cottage, it stank of wet dog, was covered in dog hair, kitchen counters were black with dirt. No towels as advertised.

We had to go and buy cleaning materials and clean before we did anything else. Could not get hold of the owner for ages. No apology about the cleanliness issue but did turn up with odd assortment of clean but tatty towels some so worn they had holes in. also complained to the company I booked it through. No apology no partial refund. The only thing they did was remove the property from their listings.

Another time when I was a child we had terrible journey to caravan park and it was gone ten pm when we got there. The person on reception took us to the caravan with their torch, the front door was swinging on its hinges and the bathroom was flooded. But because they were full and it was so late we had no choice but to stay. We had no car (had taken taxi from coach station), and it was miles from anywhere and there was only two buses a week. The advert said regular bus service. It was horrendous!

Genuine question about the taps running for weeks; would you not do a departure clean/check when the guest leave?

Control over the heating! Last place we stayed was a gorgeous house but we had to contact the owner if we wanted the heating on??!

logs and firefighters if an open fire

I’d quite like a holiday cottage that included firefighters. I’ve always loved a hunk in uniform. 😂

Yes to blunt knives and glass chopping boards!
Also thin curtains.
Quality beds and bedding are really important and often lacking.
However it’s the blunt knives/ glass chopping board combo that instantly transport me back to the Dordogne/Mallorca/ Dublin etc

We regularly stay in cottages, but very few have task lighting in the lounges. I like to embroider in an evening and find its impossible in a lot of places due to poor lighting.

wally
Probably better to say dogs not welcome, we'd have sorted kennels. Or that we'd need to bring a crate. There was nowhere to leave him downstairs because it was open plan (internal door removed). We also had to put up a babygate on the stairs, with great difficulty.

We've hired dog friendly caravans before, they are usually older, cheaper and a bit scruffier compared with the non dog friendly ones. Was easier to relax in them though.

OP asked what little things annoy you and that annoyed me.

Kitchen/ dining utensils being too small, flimsy and lacking in number.

Lack of cupboard space. We normally end up rearranging the utensils to free up space.

Inadequate seating for people staying.

Camping can be easier, at least you know you're dealing with a patch of grass as a starting point