To think holiday cottage company is taking the p**s

[HettyMeg]

We don't stay in holiday cottages very often so I don't know if we are a bit out of touch. But the one we're staying in has got a list as long as your arm of things we need to do before check out, including strip the beds and place all bedding and towels in a bag for laundry. It also says categorically do not put glass bottles in the bin, but there is no recycling for glass or information about where to recycle so we just need to take them home with us. If you get makeup on a towel you will be made to pay for a new one, which seems OTT to me as they can surely wash out a bit of foundation?!

I prefer not to spend my holidays googling where the glass recycling centre is. I do think anything other than a bit of mild sorting should be disclosed before booking.

Because you are paying a rental fee for the cottage. So it's part of the service. Would you expect to take your rubbish home from a hotel?

And as I said above, not everyone has a car, not everyone can use a tip if they are not registered locally and you often have to make an appointment.

And I disagree with you. 12 miles is a long way. And I don't really see why glass bottles should be treated differently from eg food waste. I don't have a food waste collection where I live, but most areas now do.

Would you expect to take all your food waste home as well?

Completely different if the bottle bank is within walking distance and doesn't require a permit to use.

I love hotels and would rather stay in them than an Airbnb or apartment rental. Just because the cleaning is done for you and facilities onsite. And they often have 24 hour reception in case anything is needed.

I love hotels too but not for a week away in the UK. I don’t want to be with strangers all the time unless I’m in my bedroom.

@C8H10N4O2 I agree with you, an awful lot of cottages are run for “pin” money. Those with onerous recycling rules will no doubt still be using domestic refuse collection, which is rarely able to cope with the volume of rubbish those on holiday produce. The daft thing is a decent sized commercial collection is only around £12-16/week and would lead to far happier guests.

Airbnb has been an amateur’s dream, and many owners really don’t seem to understand they are providing a service that people are paying for.

Slightly off topic but this has reminded me of the time we booked a stopover in the alps.

The landlord asked if we needed bedding and when we said yes he brought us his own stinky sweaty stained duvet he had obviously just been lying under for what smelt like daaaays.
I actually gagged.

A site where we stayed in Cornwall a couple of years ago merrily just burned all the glass and rubbish, disgusting acrid smoke everywhere. So ignorant. We did spend a lot of time googleing where to recycle. Never going back.

Most places I've stayed don't have much of a list of things to do like this but I generally would leave the place clean and needs stopped as a courtesy. However, if I stayed somewhere that has a long list of rules and tasks I would probably do less in the way of cleaning etc as it's part of the costs you are paying.

Completely agree. Especially when it's a long weekend because the amount of cleaning up you do it's just not worth it!!

Had to reread that a couple of times. I first read it that you were happy to be with strangers all the time in your bedroom. 😳

I have an Airbnb and all I ask is that guests lock up , close windows and turn down the heating. This is based on past experience of guests leaving doors and windows open with heating on 30 degrees. I have 4 hours 11-3pm to do the changeover and I use every minute. It’s not just a case of a quick hoover and wipe over kitchen and bathroom as some previous posters have said. I have a strict cleaning protocol to address Covid concerns and it really does get antibac’ed and disinfected just about everywhere. I have dealt with some awful hygiene issues and have learned to not complain as again experience has taught me it isn’t worth it as guests can get aggressive and threaten legal action if I dare to make a claim.

well if you shove all the towels and sheets in a bag, they aren't going to notice any stains😁

It was on a holiday cottages company website. I can't remember which one now, but it wasn't Airbnb as we don't use them.

Let’s hope none of you come and stay in Suffolk then. Most of the councils here don’t do kerbside glass collecting. You are expected to take it with you and get rid of it.

I don't think all this stuff is post Covid. I've been hiring holiday cottages for decades and in most there was the frantic last morning hoover-and-mop frenzy as well as stripping the beds. That's UK and France. Emptying the dishwasher is a new one on me tho.

When staying in holiday cottages - which we do several times a year in the UK - we treat them with respect, as we do our own home. We wouldn't crank up the heating, for example. We take care and would report any breakages. We consider the cleaners, the owners and the next guests. It's a minor nuisance if glass can't go in the recycling, but in those circumstances we bag it up, put it in the car and drop it off when we're passing a bottle bank. We're more than happy to leave the place tidy, take out the rubbish and recycling, wash the dishes, wipe work surfaces and the hob, empty the fridge, strip the beds, rinse out the bath or shower, pile up the towels and make sure there are no nasty surprises in the bathroom (from humans) and garden (from dogs). What we don't expect to do is any actual cleaning, beyond cleaning up any spillages. We're on holiday. The prices of many holiday lets now are very high, especially in the peak seasons, and to expect guests to pay all that and clean is expecting too much.

There seems to be a lot of variation in the way holiday cottages are let and the expectations of owners/agents. It's better when there is an agent in my experience. We have now settled on somewhere where we keep going back. It is is well cleaned, they leave us flowers and wine as a welcome gift, put out loo and kitchen paper and generally make us feel welcome and well looked after. I was asked to strip beds and bag up in covid but not otherwise and not this year any longer. We have stayed in places with weird rules and dusty musty stuff. I now always try and check before booking.

We run a holiday let and ask people to strip beds (so we can see immediately which ones have been used), take out rubbish/recycling and take away uneaten food.

We do around five hours cleaning in our house between stays. It includes cleaning windows, tidying the garden over the summer, clearing the wood burner, re-laying the fire and topping up logs, laying a welcome tray with biscuits and drinks, making minor repairs, topping up hand wash, washing up liquid and other cleaning supplies as well as making beds and doing the usual cleaning, dusting, mopping and vacuuming. I leave it as I would want to find it and we get 5 star reviews for cleanliness but we don't charge an additional cleaning fee.

We have a 10am checkout and 4pm arrival time because we don't know what we'll find. Recently we spent an extra hour just cleaning dog hair off the sofas. If we finish early we message guests to let them know so they can arrive sooner. If we find people have left possessions behind we contact them and offer to post them on free off charge. There's probably far more faffing about then the average holiday let guest ever considers and, yes, sometimes we have towels and bedding covered in makeup and fake tan and its a PITA.

A lot of the people posting on here have no idea of the work that goes into providing a really clean, good quality place to stay.

I have been staying in holiday cottages on and off for over 40 years.

In the early days bedding was not provided nor were bath towels, hand towels or tea towels, you provided your own and made the bed up when you arrived. Very rare to find a dishwasher in those days so washing up breakfast things was the norm - and you were still asked to put the hoover around and make sure all was neat and tidy, worksurfaces wiped down

Electricity was by a meter and you had to put £1 coins in, and this was still definitely the case in the last 20 years at a cottage in South Pool in Devon.

Also camped as well, there was no plastic recycling around Truro apart from milk bottles at Tesco in Truro. We brought all our recycling home with us - 2 weeks worth

It was such a relief not to have to bring our own bedding and towels with us when things started to change. Some of the towels we have been provided with I wouldn't have given to our vets (where all my old towels go) and on one holiday we went out and bought new towels they were so bad.

I like not having to hoard £1 coins for weeks before going away and pack bed linen and then come home and wash it -not much of a holiday when you have to come home and do that as well as the clothes washing

A lot of the people posting on here have no idea of the work that goes into providing a really clean, good quality place to stay.

Absolutely. Amen to that.

We should have guest reviews. There should be a way of warning other holiday home owners of the rancid, skanky morons that leave our lovely houses in such a filthy, disgusting state. I have been known on more than one occasion to wonder, for example, if they actually just sit at the kitchen table and lob their leftovers in the general direction of the bin, rather then get up and put it inside.

Or lick the mirrors. Or spit toothpaste on the floor. Or leave used condoms lying openly in the bin. Pubes in the bath. Shit in the toilets. Dog hair - and paw prints - all over the furniture and linen. Half eaten food in the fridge. Dirty washing up in the sink. Actual mud smeared into the carpets. Dog shit in the garden. Never mind the white towels irretrievably stained with make up, hair dye, fake tan and sun cream. I could go on, and on.

Dread to think what their houses look like if that’s the standard with which they treat someone else’s house.

I expect they have cleaners at home. Probably totally oblivious.

I'd expect to leave the cottage as we found it. Usually I've been told to leave it clean and tidy, with beds stripped into a laundry bag. I've stopped vacuuming and doing a decent clean, and occasionally left mugs to dry on the sink but never had grief for it.

Obviously people shouldn't be leaving the place a mess, but the big difference between cottage renters and cottage owners is that one party is paying and the other party is making money on the transaction ( awaits tales of how it's no longer profitable to own and rent out a second property).

No I don't particularly care how long it takes to get the place clean or what activities that consists of, in the same way the cottage owner will have no interest in the stressful jobs DH and I work in order to be able to afford to rent it.

I don't mind stripping beds and obviously leave the toilet clean and no obvious messes, but yes I'd expect whoever is cleaning it to do just that and I expect to not be carrying my recycling or rubbish around with me.

And I disagree with you. 12 miles is a long way. And I don't really see why glass bottles should be treated differently from eg food waste. I don't have a food waste collection where I live, but most areas now do.

The glass recycling was at Tescos in the nearest town. We went there every day to eat what we consider is the best and cheapest seafood in the UK? We chose to stay on an estate in the Scottish highlands, because in our opinion, it is an area of outstanding natural beauty - and we go there specifically to look for the wildlife. There was no food recycling and we are not talking about food recycling. It’s no hardship to stop off at a major supermarket on the A road, at the end of an evening to get some cash or buy some food or drop off a few bottles!

As for spending time on holiday, Googling recycling facilities - it takes what all of 30 seconds, while waiting for the eggs to cook for breakfast!

Which is what business rates and services are for on a commercial property. If the owner is avoiding paying those they can supply a box and I'll leave the bottles/plastics there for them to deal with.

At the rates charged by most UK holiday lets I don't expect to play hunt the recycling service (by taxi if I don't have a car). Honestly disposal of normal amounts rubbish and recycling, cleaning, the odd lost towel or glass etc should be covered in the prices. If it isn't, then that smacks of amateurism in the holiday provider.