To think self-catering places should ditch these Covid era things?

[Rainallnight]

We are staying in a (pricey) self catering cottage for half term.

we are required to strip our beds and put the linen into laundry bags before leaving. I don’t want to do this. I’m on holiday.

And check in wasn’t until 5pm for ‘extra cleaning’.

Two plus years of Covid have taught us hat it’s an airborne virus so opening the windows is the best thing you can do.

These other measures are unnecessary and are now there for the letting companies’ convenience rather than infection control.

It is driving me mad. AIBU?

We left ours yesterday. Put the rubbish and recycling out as requested.
Left the towels in the bath.
Left no pots out but didn't sweep, hoover or mop. We've only been in on a night time and the cleaner will only redo whatever we do.
No bed instructions so didn't strip them.

I was an assistant housekeeper at a hotel so always leave where I stay how I would be happy to find it.

Before Covid I stayed in a holiday let in the Peak District which left 2 pages of instructions for the day we left (10am checkout). We were told to vacuum all the floors, sort all our rubbish into the correct bins (6 different bins!), strip the beds and put the sheets, duvet covers, pillow covers into separate bags, clean out the open fireplace if we’d used it, empty and wash out the fridge and freezer and clean the cooker and oven.

I’m not sure why they needed a cleaner, the owners wanted the guests to do everything! Oh, they also wanted all guests to write a nice review in their review book. I decided to ignore that instruction!

Clean the fridge and oven? That can't be serious, surely?

I forgot the dishwasher. We were told to load all the dishes we’d used, whether clean or not, into the dishwasher, do a full cycle and then unload it all again and leave the dishes on the worktop so the owner could see they were all clean. We didn’t do that because we didn’t have time if we were to be out at 10am (and frankly, I was sick of all the demands by then!)

Yes, I’m serious. The owner was deluded!

Good grief, that's insane. I can't imagine asking guests to do more than they'd do in a typical week at home. People are paying to rent a holiday home, which includes cleaning costs, not free labour for your spring clean.

I'd leave it tidy and any dishes in the dishwasher put away. That's it. I really don't expect to strip beds and hoover.

We are staying in an Airbnb in the Peak District our check in is 5 and check out is 9.
Not too bothered about 5 we can do some exploring in the area. I do think 9 is too early to check out though. We are a family of 5 adults so either we're going to get up really early to shower and clean up or spend at least half of our last nights holiday doing it☹️

If I'm staying with friends I'll strip the bed.
If I'm paying for accommodation I'm not stripping the bed.
9am checkout.... I wouldn't book in the first place. We're up reasonably early but that's ridiculous.
Likewise with 5pm check in. We recently went away and we couldn't get there until late but it was available from either 2 or 3

I've absolutely always left self-catering accommodation clean & tidy, but I also don't think it's my job to do all the owners' work for them if that makes sense? Not at the prices people are expected to pay in the UK anyway....

5pm is very late. 2 or 3pm is/was normal.

And the laundry might not be a huge inconvenience but you're supposed to be on holiday and I prefer not to know what the mattress looks like

It's amazing how the measures that remain are the ones that benefit the company/owner, not the client.

Absolutely agree! The batshit instructions weren’t presented to us until we arrived, or I would never have booked.

Also people will just go abroad where they can afford to.

My review would have said exactly what I thought of those instructions

That really is stupid. When I book a holiday cottage, I want to know it's been professionally cleaned, I don't want to have to rely on what the holidaymakers before us have done.

Stripping beds annoys me too. I spent a couple ££££ on a tiny self catering cottage a couple of weeks ago. We had to leave by 9am and strip the beds. All because of Covid apparently. I also went to a very nice hotel and spent similar ££££ and we did not have to strip the beds or leave at 9am.

Just looked up the check in times for our self catering cottage holiday which is coming up. It's 3pm, so not too bad.

@AmaryIlis I did consider it but all the reviews in the book were unfailingly positive. I thought either I was being unreasonable or maybe the owners stood guard over the front door until the nice review was written! 🙂

We left early in the end, before the owner arrived to check - just in case!

I don't mind stripping beds - we don't do SC much but we did a week in a cottage in Chester last year and only paid £300, so I was happy to speed things up for them a bit. However we needed to arrive at 1pm and were allowed the keys early (should have been 2pm). 5pm would have meant we booked elsewhere.

Sorry, @Pushkinia, I didn't intend to imply you were stupid in not leaving a review - I meant the owners' reliance on holidaymakers to do virtually all the cleaning for them was stupid.

@AmaryIlis No worries, I didn’t think you were calling me stupid!

That’s the most extreme holiday cottage instructions I’ve ever had and can’t quite believe the effrontery of the owners in thinking their demands were reasonable.

I didn’t leave a review because it couldn’t be a good one and I wasn’t completely sure I wasn’t being a moaning Minnie. I’m sure now though!

As another poster has said, vote with your wallet.

I recently booked somewhere that had a 4pm check in, I cancelled, got a refund and rebooked elsewhere that had a 2pm check in. 4pm/5pm is far too late - it's a waste of a day hanging around waiting to get in.

We stayed in an Airbnb cottage last summer for a long weekend Friday to Monday - couldn't check in til 5, had to check out by 10 (late check in supposedly due to "extra cleaning" as if we were still in the early days of Covid). Despite this, we had instructions to clean the kitchen, fill the dishwasher. strip the beds etc).
I did leave the kitchen clean and fill the dishwasher as I would normally do that anyway. But strip the beds? No way - they have given themselves 7 hours to clean and employed cleaners so they can do that bit.

I did wonder if I would get a bad reference for it but I got a great reference so they were just being cheeky.