To think many people have confused their paying holiday rental with house sitting?

[HeleenaHandcart]

Back from a week away and I’m starting to give up on UK holiday homes.

I obviously am happy to respect the property and be generally clean and tidy, but more and more I see higher and higher costs and higher and higher cleaning expectations. As well as earlier and earlier leaving times.

I don’t want to work as an unpaid house keeper before a long drive, nor generally add towards upkeep of the house I’m paying a ton for. I used to strip beds for example, but not with kids and an early leave time as well as wanting it all bagged up it’s a bit much before 9am. Frankly I’m not watering anything either. Now as well more and more places say you must leave by 9am, yet can’t enter until 5/6pm due to ‘cleaning’ but you must clean the place fully. Bins out and a list of chores for you.

Last week I was asked to be in for the washing machine repair man even (I said no). It’s not a bloody holiday- it’s house sitting and paying to be a house-sitter. My particular annoyance is stating ‘all surfaces to be cleaned and wiped, including the bathroom’ and they don’t leave a single cloth or cleaning product in the property. It’s like they also expect you to either purchase or bring a house cleaning kit.

Oh and ‘quirks of the property’, stuff that generally requires extra work to use stuff like ‘each day the windows all must be opened for 10 min’, ‘the shower cubicle has a daily water mark spray’ or ‘the boiler needs x, y…’

Its time to go back to hotel stays

I know nothing about Sykes but can’t help think there was something odd about that report on the One Show.
E.g. They showed a property with no carbon monoxide detector yet there was a wood burner.
Another room had an out of date smoke alarm - both these are easily and cheaply fixed.
Why would a council’s fire department take the risk of giving the Sykes/the owner time to fix and say they could continue renting in the meantime?

It’d be interesting if Sykes responded.

If you're booking direct with the business through their online booking portal it might not be cheaper because if they also use the big OTAs, booking.com, Expedia etc there will be clauses in the contracts stating they can't advertise cheaper rates themselves. If you phone the business, you'll probably be able to get cheaper rates.

The OTAs charge far too much commission. When booking a holiday meant going into a travel agent and someone sitting with you, going through your options and booking your travel and accommodation, the agent charged 10% commission. Now, the OTA provides a portal, but you book everything yourself, millions of holidays are booked online with very few actual humans involved in the process from the agent's end, yet they charge commissions of minimum 15% and it can be up to 30%. Add in VAT, and you can see the accommodation owners aren't making a huge amount but the OTA's are raking it in.

@BellePeppa

because on air bnb the host also leaves reviews on the guest

But so what? I’d imagine by then you’d never want to line AirBnB’s pockets again🤷‍♀️

I suppose some may have the perspective that one dodgy experience doesn’t necessarily mean all future ones. And perhaps you’ve enjoyed stays in other air bnb properties

in short, you don’t want to cut your nose to spite your face

The way people treat short term let's is unspeakable. Even expensive ones filled with yummy mummies and Olympoa and Hector's

This is not unique to Air B and B or any of these types of lets. Hotel staff, cleaners in particular, will tell you that people trash their rooms, including bodily fluids over everything, do drugs, the whole kaboodle, steal stuff, break stuff, it's absolutely a horrible job being a hotel cleaner. I think what happens is that often Air B and B people have only a couple of lets or one and not much experience in the industry, and so think people are nice, decent and clean like they themselves are but they are not. Then they go over the top in terms of 'expectations' to try to prevent the dirt/mess/disgustingness, whereas hotels suck it up as that is par for the course in their business. They do ban guests occasionally but hotels do not review their guests, even the disgusting ones.

I agree @FarFarFarAndAway - it was a comparison between my experience of long term lets (residential) and short-term holiday lets.

I've boycotted air BnB. People are being evicted from they're rented homes because the landlord can make more money through air BnB which is disgusting. Give me a holiday park any day.

I agree with this, and I say too many owners are amateurs.
Like the person complaining about people using too much heating to dry towels. This kind of thing happens. So you either provide more towels, an electrically heated towel rail, or a small tumble dryer.
Nobody wants wet towels.

But anyone who deals with the public knows you get some difficult people. You do not respond to this by having unrealistic rules that put off decent people.

The problem is renting out a house is a business. You have to treat it like a business. But too many people seem to see their holiday homes as if they are having guests to stay, rather than a paying business transaction.
You also have to accept some level of damage e.g. bleeding and bodily fluids on sheets - especially as people can't change sheets and wash them themselves as there is only one set. Broken glasses, scuffs, etc are all perfectly normal wear and tear.

@antelopevalley what I find beggars belief though is that in France we have a Manager on site. We have outbuildings where the laundry is done and spares are kept. There are washing machines. The number of people who don't ask for a clean sheet (bedwetting) or for other spills is extraordinary. There are folk out there, and folk who pay upwards of £3k pw who leave their dc in a damp and dirty bed - not many but they exist.

We no longer let out our own house unless they are repeat bookings or people who are recommended/referred to us.

@RosesAndHellebores do you charge for another set of sheets?

No! And and our Housekeeper/manager lives on site. And if there were no other option the Intermarche isn't far away and I would buy a new single sheet for €7.50 rather than let my child sleep in a dirty bed.

It doesn't happen often but it happens. We treat guests very fairly imo and there are no instructions beyond those for recycling and emptying the bins before departure and rinsing sandy towels before putting them in the washing machine. Dishwasher tabs, washing up liquid and liquid cleaner provided.

@RosesAndHellebores

you obviously won’t say “yes, that is why!”

but could it be that your guests felt you were a rather intimidating landlady and were concerned at what your reaction would be?

@Ohthatsexciting I doubt it, particularly as they'd be asking the housekeeper not me and I'm not there except for August and late May . I get all the gossip from the housekeeper.

Ah then it would be an intimidating housekeeper

a comfortable and relaxed guest would ask for replacement sheets

one that is anxious about being told off, may not

I have two holiday homes and expect nothing at all from my guests, except to leave the key in full view. Although it is much nicer if the morning dishes are put in the dishwasher rather than left in the sink. Most do bins and wipe down.
Not all holiday home are like some of the horror stories above, in ours everything works, and is as described, superb new mattresses, and guests have my mobile for any questions, and we even heat the wood fired hot tub for them on request as it needs some topping up for a while to get hot....

Being out at 10am is necessary to do a thorough clean by 4pm, but if l have had no guests moving out that day and we have cleaned ahead of time l let guests know they can arrive early.

Without exception my guests have been a pleasure, but we are not the cheapest close to 2K per week for July and August..however l think for a 5*hotel standard 2 bedroom 2 bathroom home with a garden and hot tub, close to a beach, and beautiful village that represents good value.

@Ohthatsexciting most guests do. A tiny minority don't. Not because of an intimidating housekeeper but because they are grubby.

I don't think our guests could be any better provided for to be honest.

not intimidating to her boss, no. Can’t say I’m surprised by that assertion!

That was me. I'm certainly not an amateur, but when it's 25 degrees outside and there is a washing line to hang towels on I don't see why they should want the central heating on just to dry towels. Do you have your own central heating on at the moment every day to dry your towels?

It's certainly not amateurish to not want to waste the earth's resources to dry towels when mother nature would dry them just fine.

@MOVING do you have pegs?
If yes, maybe it is one of those people on MN who set their heating to 27 degrees.

That was me. I'm certainly not an amateur, but when it's 25 degrees outside and there is a washing line to hang towels on I don't see why they should want the central heating on just to dry towels. Do you have your own central heating on at the moment every day to dry your towels?

I feel like this is often at the heart of the problem - a lot of holiday home owners seem to think their customers should treat the place as if it were their own home and be happy to do anything they'd do at home. But people don't want to live like they do at home, they're on holiday and paying a lot of money for it. So yes, they use energy without pausing to think about the bill, they don't want to wash up or hoover, they don't want to be making or stripping beds.

I haven't used Airbnb, have looked but found prices way too high, plus those cleaning fees. Can't believe they expect guests to clean as well! Grabbing bastards, and they are responsible for the fact that long term rental properties, for people to actually live in, are now rarer than hen's teeth. We are actually homeless at present, having sold our house and unable to find a long term rental. Agree ther should be massive taxes on second homes when so many don't even have one.

@Hardbackwriter I agree. It is a business transaction.
But also sometimes, yes people would do that in their own home. Some people have heating up very high at home anyway. Or they do not clean for the whole week and pay a cleaner weekly to do it.There is the assumption that everyone follows and owners standards.

Yes there are pegs with the washing line.

Well, I didn't say I didn't turn the heating on did I? I did turn it on so they could dry their towels.

My issue is that so many people absolutely do want things because they've paid for them but that's pretty bad for the environment. Having the heating on with the doors and windows open so you can dry two towels that you could have put outside in the blazing sun for 10 minutes is absolutely ridiculous but I can't stop it happening.