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

Quite agree. Also expecting you to be out at 9am and yet not allowed in until 4pm is taking the piss, someone is paying for both those nights!

I wouldn't expect to do more than leave washing up done and draining / dishwasher on, beds stripped, toilets clear of anything disgusting and a squeeze of bleach and kitchen surfaces wiped.

Otherwise I'm sorry but if I've paid a cleaning fee, that's it.

This is why I try to book with super hosts on Airbnb.

I am happy to take trash out, wipe surfaces, remove crumbs from floor etc and I would probably strip beds if asked (never have been) but otherwise no...

I do wonder...once covid issues are no longer affecting international travel as much whether these owners will realise they have shot themselves in the foot?

Customers won't return.

I think the covid uk holiday madness of the past 2 years is gone. Add to that the cost of living crisis and bookings will drop dramatically imo.

I think expectations vary country to country tbh. As others have said in France you are pretty much expected to clean like a cleaner, when our kids were young and we regularly did self catering there my last morning was spent doing a full clean. When we arrived in Australia I was pleased to find the expectation for holiday lets was just to leave the house “neat and tidy” and could you put the bins out please. Last time I booked an Airbnb was Bali in April and we arrived to find the villa provided full daily cleaning, sheets and towels changed as often as we wanted and “butlers” who could arrange anything you wanted. That was a surprise.

YANBU

We stayed in an AirB&B in a fairly large group of DH’s family last summer.

Large cleaning fee - then when we got there, a big long list of cleaning requirements including stripping beds and loading bedding and towels into the washing machine, cleaning bathrooms and the kitchen, hoovering, sweeping and mopping everywhere, emptying bins, etc - and a 10am check out.

When we got there, there was a dishwasher full of breakfast stuff still, and we had to make our own beds. Clearly, all they were doing was collecting dirty towels and bedding, and leaving the clean stuff on the beds.

MiL sent them a very firm message - we would either pay the cleaning fee, or do their cleaning for them. Not both. They could either refund the cleaning fee and we’d do it, or keep the cleaning fee and we’d leave the place tidy and empty bins, but there’s no way we’d be completing their list. The owner wasn’t happy, but tough luck. They were taking the piss.

Don't totally wrote off Airbnb, it's down to individual hosts to set their rules.

We have an 11am check out and 2pm check in although we might have to move this to 3pm, as we are struggling with reliability of cleaning hours.

We ask guests that they do not leave washing up for us, but we state clearly that we do not expect them to hoover or scrub the floors either, this is their holiday! We leave plenty of everything, including wood for the fire, breakfast ingredients, an honesty gin bar, cleaning products, bubble bath.

In 4 years of running our place we have only had a handful of guests who have not left the place in excellent condition, and we've only had a handful of complaints. Some people are a little out there with their expectations, mind you.

We've been asked to provide a lunch buffet and serve, we've been left a poor review after a guest was annoyed by a fly coming in through the open kitchen window one summer!

Overall, it's a great experience, we bring people to our hidden gem of a town, we love sharing the beauty of our local area and we've had so many guests bake for us and leave our children little gifts.

They can. I like to check there’s nothing left in bed. Teddies in the past, socks, phone chargers……🤷‍♀️
People can do it or not, as they wish, but it’s not a long job for guests or cleaners.

I guess I just wasn’t brought up to have people clean up my mess behind me

We stayed in a "luxury" holiday let in Cornwall in March. Couldn't get in until 5pm, hot tub wasn't working, and we had a barrage of text messages and phone calls to do with the repair man coming/taking bins out/cleaning before we left. It ended up not being at all relaxing and we had to be out at 9am due to extra cleaning. And the repair man let slip that the hot tub had been reported twice previously and a part was on order, so they knew that the hot tub wasn't working before we arrived. I wrote a stinking letter of complaint and got sent a cheap tea/coffee hamper as an apology. So please avoid any company that claims to be a gem in this part of the country, because they really aren't!

I will never ever rent one of these holiday homes because they take away housing from local people, and push up both housing rental prices in the local area making it increasingly unaffordable for local families to live there.

They need to be heavily taxed in order to discourage them. Housing is a necessity and should not be treated as an investment so long as we have a housing shortage. I find it mortally repugnant.

I note that some local authorities are increasing the council tax on second homes. The same needs to be applied to holiday let’s.

*morally not mortally

Unless they’ve significantly inflated their percentage, AirBnB take 7%. Booking.com 14%.

Anyway, I too, have noticed the ludicrous changes to demands on guests. I have a number of holiday lets and we have check in from 2pm, and check out at 11am. If it’s not booked the following day, I allow them up to 2pm to check out. I ask for them to be looked after and cared for and to bung any dirty dishes in the dishwasher and switch it on before they go. I don’t ask for beds to be stripped but guests often do it anyway. Apart from one memorable occasion, it’s never been abused by guests.

I think lock down and the increase in UK holidays has sent some landlords giddy.

Very much hope so, but maybe the flight chaos of this summer will compel more people to holiday in the UK again next year?

The self catering accommodation sector was a disgrace last year.

I don't use Air BnBs now as the last time I booked one for a week away, I arrived to find the owners food in the fridge and freezer, nowhere for me to put our food shopping for the week, then they frightened me half to death on the first night by using their keys to get in at 11pm because they'd forgotten to take some clothes with them. They'd also booked a washing machine repair man who they expected me to let in, left a note asking me to pay the window cleaner (no money left tho!), a list of cleaning tasks (their bathroom looked like it hadn't been cleaned EVER) and asked if we could leave a day earlier than I had booked for as they had nowhere else to stay on our last night. I got the impression they just thought they could make some quick cash renting their apartment out, without really thinking through what a holiday let actually is!

We left on the third day. Never again.

@Cheesecakeandwineinasuitcase

The flip side is that without holiday lets, the local economy will suffer - people who stay in the lets also spend money in the local shops & restaurants. There are also plenty of people who let out their second homes that wouldn’t bother if the tax was prohibitive, but wouldn’t necessarily sell them.

I do agree that air bnb is a scourge on many areas, and the housing system is broken, though. I wonder what the solution is.

I hate this. It is bloody miserable getting up early and trying to pack up and clean and hoover a house by 9 or 10am, especially when you have small kids.

I once had the cleaner and the owner arrive as we were leaving and they started telling us off for leaving a mess! I went back in and said what mess? It was spotless. They said because we hadn't emptied the bins in each room. FFS what are the cleaners for then?

Another time the owner rang me at home after the trip to tell me off for leaving a mess, ranted on for a while and I said look we absolutely did not leave a mess, what are you talking about. He actually phoned back a few days later to apologise as he'd got us mixed up with a different group. Which was decent of him but still, put me right off.

It must be hard when people DO leave a mess of course but they could make an effort to be nice to the ones who don't!

maybe the flight chaos of this summer will compel more people to holiday in the UK again next year?

I doubt it, HesterShaw; the media love to make a drama out of a crisis, but IME the "chaos" is nothing like as bad as it's painted, and after the profiteering last year I'm frankly surprised there are so many left who still prefer a UK holiday

I agree.

Recently stayed in an Air BnB for the first time and while the host was nice, he was in touch almost every single day of our stay and insisted on being there to meet us when we arrived, even though we were coming from 5 hours away and weren't sure what time we'd arrive due to traffic etc. It just made the whole thing stressful when there was a keybox we could easily have used.

It wasn't too bad with the cleaning requirements, but he also gave us an unnecessary 'tour' of the house when we arrived - it was a 3 bed terrace - and at one point during our stay messaged to say he was going to drop in while we were out to deliver us an item which we weren't expecting him to provide and had already bought for ourselves. Luckily I saw the message and was able to tell him not to bother, as we really weren't comfortable with him letting himself in while all our belongings were in there.

It just felt very much like we were housesitters/his house guests, rather than that we'd hired out a property to be used in privacy as we wished.

Because my elderly mum can't fly

Many people would love to jet off but its not always that easy

My dh flew from LHR T2 this morning to Frankfurt and the flight before his was cancelled. LHR have cancelled 10% flights today affecting 5000 passengers.

I really don't think that it's being over stated tbh.

Fully agree.

I always check if the owner has listed cleaning requirements in the description, and will not book anywhere that expects excessive cleaning (and I am happy to do a quick hoover, remove dog hair from soft furnishings where it's crept under the blankets I bring with me, leave sides & loos wiped down, strip beds, put laundry & dishwasher on, but some hosts do seem to expect a full deep clean on departure plus a cleaning fee...no).

I've also experienced inaccurate listing details and a lack of concern that you're not getting what you booked, eg free parking on premises turns out to be on-street parking in a road of terraced houses so it's luck each day as to whether you can actually park or not, or a private garden turns out to be shared by the owners who live next door (I raised this with them as soon as I checked in and they declined to refund me so I could go elsewhere because 'we've reserved the property for you and it wouldn't be fair to us'. I contacted Airbnb who refunded me instantly & found somewhere with an actual private garden).

I used to love Airbnb but honestly, the properties now are all expensive and it really is luck of the draw as to whether you get somewhere that's as nice as it looks in the photos online, plus the friendliness of hosts also varies hugely.

We own several air bnb's. We have a very flexible check in and check out. We do not add an additional cleaning fee. Have left signs up to specifically say we want you to enjoy your break. No need to tidy up. Our only request is to not let pets on the beds or sofas.
We offer an enhanced service of getting shopping in for you and restaurant reservations and recommendations.

We once paid a fortune for a place in the Lakes who left no welcome pack apart from one solitary dishwasher tablet and instructions to leave the whole house spotless with NO dishes.
I think the idea, along with paying over £100 cleaning charge, was that we would also buy dishwasher tablets and washing up liquid and cleaning stuff and leave them too...presumably for whomever who was actually paid to clean to take home...
If I'm paying £100. cleaning fees, like fuck am I cleaning AND buying you new dishwasher tabs etc. Get to fuck CF!

We have in laws in Cornwall and visit regularly, there is no room for as at the in laws so we usually balance it by using a rental or premier inn.
The last rental we had took the pee monumentally - we had to be out by 9am and had a list of jobs as long as your arm to do. We also had paid £100 cleaning fee as part of the rental.
We ended up doing the cleaning on day 4 and leaving that night so didn’t stay the full 5 days

You're not wrong OP. When I last tried to book an AirBnb the price shot up with all the extra random fees added. And the list of expected chores was more than I'm expected to do at some housesits I'm paid for! It's ridiculous.

Going back to my holidays with my parents back in the 80s/early 90s - we were expected to:
. Mow the lawns front and back (electric mower and we had to pay for cards for the pre-pay meter) water any plants/trim bushes or you couldn't use the drive
. Clean the bathroom (leaky loo and sink) and separate shower room (just a shower cubicle) although there were never any cleaning products/mop etc provided.
. Hoover thru with a hoover which should have been on Antiques Roadshow, stank of dog and hadn't been emptied since we'd been there the year before (we marked the bag to test out our theory that we were the only ones who ever cleaned the place)
. clean the oven 🤯 even tho it wasn't used - we mostly ate out.
there was only a black and white TV (portable with a coathanger for an aerial) we took all our own bedding/towels and there was no washing machine/hot water other than the shower or a kettle.
The owner got quite arsey when we didn't lift a finger after our final stay and complained we'd left a mess (not hoovered), let the garden "grow wild" and the bin overflow (it was over-full when we got there - we got rid of all our own rubbish each day)
Lazy cow - pay for a fucking cleaner.
🤷‍♀️