AirBnB/holiday cottage owners 'popping in'

[bringincrazyback]

Wondering what people's thoughts are on this. I'm talking about when the owner pops in on the first day to 'check you're settling in OK' (and, I've always assumed, to check the tenants aren't savages trashing the place 😄)

Also, if you own a holiday property, is it something you tend to do?

Will explain context later (longstanding member btw, not a researcher or anything 😄)

YABU = I like it/do it
YANBU = I don't like it/do it

I much prefer a key box and no interaction. I’m moderately social, I don’t hate people or hate smalltalk.
I don’t like pressure to arrive at a certain time, I don’t like having a lot of messages to respond to about my arrival time, I don’t want passive aggressive comments about not trashing the place. I don’t want to make smalltalk when I’ve been on a long journey and have a load of bags and children and tonight’s dinner and shopping to sort out. I don’t want to be “visitor ready” the whole time I’m there. I’m VERY time poor, those few days of not having anyone make social demands on me are what I’m paying for. If I’m staying in a hostel or a b&b or a “homestay” then fair enough buy I’m not, I’m paying for private use and that’s what I want.
I’ve had 3 stays on farms where the owners are there on site, 2 in the UK and one in Europe. Both the UK ones had lovely hosts who never made me feel uncomfortable or awkward but the one in Europe was a massive pita. constantly criticised my kids, my dh, our food, our car, our activities. Put me right off staying anywhere with a host within a million miles.

I would hate that, would make me paranoid my whole stay.

This. We stayed in a place where there was a list of instructions as to the jobs we needed to do on their behalf. I'm sure they were lovely people but hadn't twigged that the downside of making all that money is that the place is solely occupied by someone else for the duration.

You also get terrible regular landlords, who are more than happy to take people's money in full payment of the market rent in exchange for exclusive private use of the property, but then also somehow see it that they're doing the tenants a massive favour by letting them live here.

What, every day we were there?
Just walking in to ' see if we were ok ' at random times, and we're the deranged ones?
Nope.

We stayed in a nice place with an indoor pool once that was attached to the owners property. I lost count of the amount of times she rocked up just to mention one thing or another. They kept bees and chickens so she turned up to offer honey and eggs on separate occasions. Popped out to say hello when we had sat down outside to eat breakfast one morning, it was so awkward having to make small talk as our fry up was going cold. She let herself into the pool area countless times when we were using it, once to give me a freezer drawer she'd ordered as the one in the house had broken. I hadn't even used the freezer but it was urgent enough that I had to stand there making small talk in my swimming costume! It really spoilt the week and it wasn't cheap. Never again would I stay somewhere joined to the owners property! The freezer drawer definitely could have waited until change over day, it was not urgent enough to hand over when we were swimming fgs.

I've never stayed in an AirBnB, but DP and I have twice rented similar sort of places in Spain.

With one, we had no face-to-face contact with the owners. There was a key safe. They texted me the day we arrived and said to get in touch if there were any problems. The only other contact was the day before we left, when they texted to say no new guests were due for another couple of days, so if we wanted to leave a bit later than the agreed check-out time, that would be fine.

With the other one, the guy met us at the place to give us the keys, show us how the washing machine, TV, etc. worked and point out the folder containing information on both the apartment and the town. He probably didn't need to do anything other than hand over the keys (because the info folder explained all), but he was nice and friendly, so all fine. He'd also put stuff like a bottle of wine, some cheese and chorizo in the fridge for us.

A couple of days later he came round with a huge bag of veg from his allotment. There was so much that we couldn't eat it all before we left. We were very grateful for his generosity, though we did wonder if he would keep popping round. But he didn't - it was just that one visit in the 3 weeks we were there.

A key point is that he rang the doorbell when he came round. But some of the posts above suggest that the property owners just let themselves in to the places being rented. I think that is seriously weird behaviour.

I hate this. You have paid for full use without disturbances from the owner.

That time they plan to take up 'popping over' is part of your well deserved holiday that you've paid and worked hard for.

It's rude to disturb people's holidays. They have NO idea what is going on for people or what they may be doing and it may be most inconvenient.

We stayed in a villa in Greece where the owner popped over and did jobs around the pool while my teens were swimming and messing about. It really posed me off as it was an expensive holiday and a lot of the time we were out so he could have done the jobs then.... the pool time was a significant part of the holiday. I resent paying for something that's then disturbed by a busybody owner!!!!

Plus, I might not want to talk to strangers on my holiday? I have to do that all the time at work so I want a break from being social!! Haha

Exactly. I think chatting in passing is fine too, I'd never be unfriendly (unless they were 😄) and in fact I wouldn't even mind the 'welcome' visit as much if I knew when it was going to be! But regular pop-ins would be awful - like you say, it doesn't make any sense to shell out on supposedly private accommodation if there's a chance a virtual stranger could knock on or even walk through the door at any moment. Some of the experiences people have related on this thread are truly hair-raising!