Holiday home left in a real mess

[BigOldOakTree]

I wonder if I can call on the wise of Mumsnet to help me with a question? I manage a couple of holiday homes and we've had a very busy Christmas. I'm not new to this and know the ups and downs of this business. Our guests in one of the cottages over Christmas were given a complimentary welcome pack on arrival, I'd checked beforehand and they were vegetarian so it was catered for their diet. The cottage was decorated with a real tree and I went to a lot of effort to make it warm and welcoming for them. It is a five star holiday cottage and they paid quite a lot of money to stay, but they did receive a lovely property (in my opinion). It's not my cottage but I take a lot of pride in making it nice.

There are a few basic instructions, nothing too bossy, but the main one is please bag up your rubbish and put it in the outside bins on departure. When I went in to clean it after they'd left I've never seen anything like it in three years. It was utterly disgusting. All of their rubbish was in the house, some bagged, some not. They'd moved furniture around. The bathrooms were not fit for a dog. The kitchen was full of dirty pots and pans, food on the counters. The place was a real mess, not just the things I've written here. I couldn't believe two adults and two teenage children (older teenagers) could make such a mess.

We won't withhold their deposit as it could all be cleaned (even though it took me 7 hours to get it back to how it should be) (3 bedroom, 3 bathroom cottage). This is because it will only lead to a negative review and that is so damaging to the business, but am I being unreasonable to think this is out of order?

I think you're being unreasonable to complain. You have said you would rather spend extra time cleaning instead of not fully refunding the deposit. That is the standard you are setting OP. Think about it. If someone could spend their holiday doing WTF they like and not cleaning up after themselves and there are no consequences then why would they spend their holiday cleaning up after themselves?

Perhaps the mum was sick of cleaning up after her family and decided to take a holiday to let them run riot and enjoy her time off? Or maybe they are all just messy people? Who knows. You can't complain about the extra work if you're choosing not to do the alternative (keep the deposit).

I would just blacklist them. YANBU.

I'm sorry but I don't think ONE negative review (if they even wrote it) would damage the business.

What makes you think they would even write that review? You are imagining a scenario that might not happen.

If they did, you would counteract it with your own comments.

You should have charged them extra for the cleaning. T&Cs are usually clear over what is expected of guests. If not, this is something you and the owner need to address.

We have used holiday rentals for 40 years and often 5* ones.

We leave it as found.

I don't vacuum but we do fill and run the dishwasher, clean the worktops, take any slops off the hob and oven, put all the rubbish out in the right bins, make sure the loos are clean and generally all they need do is make the beds and a quick hoover round.

I'm not sure what you want to hear from your post?
Either you hit this family where is might hurt- in their wallets- or you suck it up.

But you might want to look at the T&Cs so you can throw those at any other families who leave the place a mess.

I'm sorry but you sound a bit inexperienced and naive if you had to ask if it was UR for them to leave the house like that- of course it was!

You have been lucky to have only had this one incident otherwise you would have had some measures in place and used them.

Either you or the owner are being too soft on your guests.

I totally get the bad review wrecking businesses, but I think I would have taken photos and told them the time it took to clean and only partially refunded. They were told the bins should go out. Leaving half eaten food/teabags is disgusting and the bathrooms sound awful.

Well if they still do leave nasty comments you can still show a photo of what the pace looked like.

You should never have given them back their deposit. They were taking the piss.

I'm sorry but I don't think ONE negative review (if they even wrote it) would damage the business.

Oh, it can do. A friend of mine has three holiday cottages on her farm, all been running for a long time, all with excellent reviews, until someone came to stay this year who decided that he didn't care for any of the food in the local Co-Op and the fact that the garage had closed recently and so gave her a score of 1 out of 10 for local amenities. Because a lot of guests don't bother leaving reviews at all, that single score has dropped her 12-month score for that property from comfortably over the criteria for getting a Customers' Choice award with the agency she uses to just under it and because it happened so late in the year, there weren't enough subsequent guests to bring it back up.

So because of that one bad review, she won't get the extra promotion of being a featured Customers' Choice property and because she's not a Customers' Choice property she won't get the pricing boost they automatically apply either. It's going to translate into a reasonably substantial financial hit.

I’m sorry but I don't think ONE negative review (if they even wrote it) would damage the business.

That’s because you don’t know how the business, the review averages and the ranking algorithms, work. It damages your review average, which impacts your ranking, which can mean you get fewer views, and some guests put in a minimum review average as a filter.

Posters keep saying post the photos as evidence. I have already explained that is not actually a thing. You can’t post photos on the main listing sites or the big agencies.

Blacklisting them is stupid idea.

1 They may never want to use the house again.

2 If you blacklist them they will want to know why (assume the bookings are made online or they call you). So they would still (potentially)leave a bad review if they knew they were not able to book again.

A blacklist is only of any merit if ALL holiday agencies/ owners have that list so the people on it cannot book anything, anywhere.

Accpeting this behaviour from renters is mad because one single bad review (IF it happened) is not going to damage your business.

Most people take reviews with a pinch of salt anyway. Many are not genuine, either way.

We recently stayed somewhere that was very noisy and all the reviews over the last 8 years were good- only one person mentioned noise and only 'in passing' which made me think the owner had paid the review site to change/ edit / remove bad reviews.

I think you are overthinking the impact of a negative review. If you have lots of good or excellent reviews and one ranter I always assume the one negative reviewer is either an unreasonable weirdo or had some bad luck and disregard it

We have a holiday home abroad. It’s a rare occurrence to have to enter a pigsty after guests leave.
A couple of times we did withhold the extra hrs cleaning time, thankfully only one time next guests arriving same day. Worst was horrendous, vomit in the beds up the wall in the bedside rugs. sheets pillows, pillowcases, rugs and the duvet had to be thrown out as again stains were still visible after many attempts at treating them.
The whole room had to be painted as the staining would not come of white walls.
According to our lovely cleaner the amount of empty wine and beer bottles was staggering. Two couples and 2 toddlers were our guests on this occasion.
Kept all of their deposit, sent them pictures in our email explaining why!
Never heard a peep from them as they couldn’t argue with the pictures we had shown them.

Had one guest who dropped wine on a sofa, they told us during their stay. Our cleaners popped over with replacement cover for them. We deliberately bought sofas with exchangeable covers, it came out, love our cleaners, guest was happy she didn’t ruin it. I wouldn’t have charged as this was accidental and we have spares set aside in case stains don’t come out.

When our cleaners go in to prepare for following on guests they -
bin all food opened and unopened, left in fridge freezer and cupboards. Would never risk illness to following on guests, as you just don’t know what is in it. Cleaners are welcome to take what they want but we say to bin it.

So what is the evidence they would leave a bad review?

I do understand algorithms (cheeky so and so assuming I don't!) but I also understand that many people do not read reviews anyway or accept that some are malicious and insincere/ dishonest.

@VeryLittleOwl

That’s one of the things that drives me nuts about the whole review lark. The randomness of them.

As evidenced on here the vast majority of renters don’t have the remotest idea that their reviews are tied into to ranking and performance and this directly to business.

One of my properties dropped a star in a review this summer, so the reviewer said, because the gardener woke him up at 8am on the day they were leaving, by mowing the lawn. He had to be out by 10am anyway.

Maybe a question for those owners here on reviews- why do some of you pay companies to hide/ remove bad reviews?

It works both ways you know. Anyone reading reviews knows that they can be edited in some cases, or bad reviews removed, or fake reviews used.

And don't say it doesn't.

I voted YABU purely because your not claiming against a damage deposit, that's what its there for! I work in the same industry and i absolutely be charging them from this. Take pictures etc and if anyone wants to see then you can show them.
Once negative review will not effect any business. Trust me.

We always leave holiday homes tidy, just as I leave my own home tidy, for the cleaners. We don’t clean but all recycling and rubbish is out, unwanted food cleared, washing up done. It seems ridiculous that if someone doesn’t do that they still get to keep the deposit. At the very least you should be charging them for the extra cleaning hours, so on balance I think YABU to complain but take no action.

I stayed at a holiday home and unknown t me my two year old son had drawn with pen on one if the walls. I was charged my deposit for repainting the wall. If I had posted a negative review, what could I have possibly said? That they were unfair and that my child should be allowed to draw wherever he liked? That they were unreasonable?
I think you could give readers of reviews the benefit of the doubt. A complaint that someone was charged for extra cleaning hours would not stop me from renting a place if the owner/manager replied stating that the house was left in such a mess that it required X amount of extra cleaning time. I owned a holiday let and cleaning was the biggest issue - not from messy holiday makers but poor quality cleaners!
If you are not prepared to charge the deposit if need be why have it in the first place? One bad review (if they even bothered to write one) would not behate several (presumably) positive ones.

@Jingling

I didn’t say you don’t understand algorithms - just not how reviews are tied into ranking algorithms on listing sites. As evidenced by your next comment that a many don’t read reviews. No they don’t, but that’s not relevant as the review average is displayed and affects your ranking and performance nonetheless.

What’s the evidence they’d leave a bad review - well experience of past bad reviews.

Ive stayed in a fair few rented properties and I've found it's actually easier to keep a place spotless in a modern well-run place as everything looks and is new and takes little time to clean up. I wash up, wipe surfaces and obey any "bin rules". I have had owners coming in during our rental to collect recycling out of the kitchen as we hadn't put it out on the prescribed day which I thought was rude.... but obviously it was important to them that it couldn't wait another week or two. I don't strip beds but I'll run a vacuum around if there is one. I don't use Airbnb any more as I had money stolen from my bag by the landlords assistant who accessed the flat during our absence but Airbnb refused to deal with my complaint as I wasn't the lead booker! So they're on my banned list.

When I've stayed self catering it's always stated how the properties are to be left as part of the terms and conditions.

It sounds like the T&C need updating to include that basic cleaning is to be completed such as washing up, counters wiped down, bins emptied.

It works both ways you know. Anyone reading reviews knows that they can be edited in some cases, or bad reviews removed, or fake reviews used.

Depends on the site. On HA and Airbnb the review can only be posted by the guest - and only HA/Airbnb management can remove them. (The won’t remove them unless you can prove that the guest lied).

You could fake a review by having a friend book and pay through the site but that would be an awful lot of faff.

TripAdvisor on the other hand is famous for fake reviews.

@TitianaTitsling Not ALL holiday rentals are through AirBnB. I've used holiday rentals for 40 years and never ever through AirBnB.

I would leave the place tidy but certainly not clean it myself - ie I wouldn’t sweep / mop / vacuum the floors, wouldn’t strip beds etc.

A lot of these places come with large cleaning fees and early checkout times, why would you do it yourself when you’re already paying for it?

@TatianaLarina I never book a place by filtering reviews as they are very subjective for a start.

I find properties by a) location b) no of beds and bathrooms and c) photos d) google street maps to find surrounding streets etc.

I will then glance at reviews but take with a huge pinch of salt.

As I said, we had a terrible experience recently with noise yet no reviews bar one (over 8 years) mentioned it and the house was feet away from a busy 4-lane road. Either we have super sensitive hearing or the reviews were edited. And it wasn't TA.

@Jingling

No shit. I said it depends on the site. I gave Homeaway and Airbnb as examples but, if you read my previous posts I referenced all the major listing sites and the big agencies.