To think this AirBnB review was unfair?

[QuiteDisgruntled]

Recently stayed in a studio apartment with kitchenette (fridge, sink, hob, small worktop). Washing up liquid, paper towel and sponge provided but no other cleaning equipment.

Before leaving we washed breakfast things and left on drainer. Wiped surfaces and table, stacked placemats and scooped up some crumbs from the floor with my hands.

I’ve just read the host’s review which says “OK, but kitchen left messy”. I’ve checked other reviews from the host which are all in the style of “great guest, recommended!” so it’s not as though they’re generally leaving picky or negative reviews.

Honestly I’m baffled - I think how we left the place was perfectly acceptable. Am I missing something?

The rates are certainly not on par with hotels. Me and DH use Airbnb all the time here and abroad. Never had a problem.

We like to have a proper comfortable settee to sit on not have to sit on the bed in a hotel or, if you are lucky a chair which is not usually very comfortable. We like being able to make ourselves a tea or coffee as many times as we like and not be restricted by the hotel deciding how many teabags or coffee sachets in each room.

We also want to eat breakfast at a time we want not when the hotel dictates. With an Airbnb we can choose to have breakfast there or go out and eat it.

If we want to eat in the cottage/apartment/house in the evening we can whether it is cooking a proper meal, sticking a pizza in the oven or getting a takeaway.

We like have space as in a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, a bedroom and not just 1 room. Also most places have a garden or, in the case of an apartment, a balcony.

As we get all that for less than a hotel room (often quite a lot less) we will stick with Airbnb.

Except it doesn't

The easiest way to get around this is not to use AirBnB.

A platform that allows a review on paying guests is bullshit. There are absolute shit pits on the platform and if you let the rest of the world know exactly what a shit pit you just stayed in, you run the risk of the 'host' calling into question your own cleanliness and suitability as a guest. WTAF?

If you use a reputable holiday company, they are not allowed to pass comment on whether you unloaded the dishwasher before you left, or left that last glass drip drying on the draining board. Or made up some other spurious crap to counter your less than glowing review of their less than decent property.

AFAIK with AirBnB you have to pay extra cleaning costs on top, which makes a mockery of the 'per night costs' once factored in. What is the cleaning for if you have to do it yourself? So they can forego the cleaner and pocket the cash instead?

AirBnB is up there with Amazon as a company the world would be better off without.

I never quite understand why people think they're entitled to have cheap housing in areas where they grew up? There is housing, it's just not where you want it. Anything near the sea or area of natural beauty is going to command a premium.

But it isn’t a hotel and often properties are people’s homes. Perfectly reasonable rule, in my opinion.

@hairbearbunches But I have stayed in 20-30 Airbnbs over the last decade and have never stayed anywhere remotely approaching a 'shitpit.' Perhaps I have been lucky but I look very carefully through the reviews before booking and only use hosts who've been on the site for some time. We've stayed in some amazing properties.

To be honest, with the way some people behave these days, I don't really see a problem with guests being reviewed. As far as I can see it's not made public and people can only see them when you try and book their place? Again, perhaps I've been lucky but I've only had positive reviews and don't slave away cleaning for hours when we leave either.

Me too! A hotel all the way. Or I do stay in serviced apartments where there's daily cleaning.

£80 per night for an 11 night stay in a large house in the south of France. No cleaning needed.
We would have struggled to find a hotel at that price in August.

I'm a regular Airbnb guest. I check reviews carefully, usually stay with Super hosts.

I've also often asked for a later checkout and it's always been possible.

How did you find it when you checked in - if there were things on the drainer then fine - if not then you should have put things away and left as you found it?

We absolutely do have a shortage of both housing in general AND affordable housing (e.g. social housing) specifically.

Housing being used for tourism and second home ownership is a HUGE problem in some areas of the UK. That long predates AirBnB, but there’s no denying that particularly in some areas AirBnB specifically has been an issue - I’d say that’s partly due to the fact the digital economy can disrupt markets quickly and the response can be slow. Edinburgh is an example where I think AirBnB specifically has been a catalyst to housing shortages and regulation has taken time to catch up.

In somewhere like Edinburgh with high international tourist demand the sudden arrival of a global marketplace with almost no barriers to participation (anyone can list a property with minimal checks) you can see how there was suddenly a big incentive for landlords to flip long term lets to short term lets.

No-one is going to leave a holiday let completely “as they found it” - beds have been slept in, towels have been used.

Normally I would dry and put away but washing up our coffee cups was the last thing I did before we left, we were a bit rushed and the tea towel was wet from washing up pots and pans earlier. Leaving a few clean items on the drainer hardly seemed like crime of the century.

It’s true every host is different, which is precisely the problem because it makes it impossible to know the standards of cleaning a particular host will expect and whether or not they will publicly chastise guests who ‘fail’ to meet their unpredictable demands (despite guests having paid a hefty cleaning charge in advance)!

@Nenen Reading that host's reviews will give you a very good idea of what to expect also not every host charges a cleaning fee. I think it looks a bit negative and hosts should just wrap everything up in the overall price. Personally I am not too bothered about mess as everything gets cleaned from scratch every time and it's more important that the guest enjoys their stay than worrying about washing up.

I completely understand if it's not for you but having done this for 8 years I just sometimes feel the need to call out the generic Airbnb thing and the 'contributing to the housing crisis' thing.

In future take photos as you leave

Wrong ! Not all hosts charge a cleaning fee so just choose the properties that don't. As I mentioned later in the thread every single Airbnb host is different and it's just a lazy cliched opinion to lump 'all' Airbnbs together. You do know that many of these Airbnb hosts also list on VRBO, booking.com and with independent holiday letting companies too but apparently those platforms are fine.

I have stayed in over 50 Airbnbs in UK, France, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Sweden and Italy. All been good and some great. Never received a bad review. In fact my reviews have all been very good and often say how tidy and clean we leave their place.

We don't clean for hours either when we leave but we make sure we clean up after ourselves every day if we are staying for more than one night like we would at home.

Having worked as a cleaner for both holiday cottages and a B&B I know just how disgusting far too many people are. I was far too often amazed at just how messy and dirty people could leave a place in such a short time. Some people are just lazy slobs and don't care.

Even on the rare occasion me and DH stay in a hotel we keep the room clean and tidy and usually say there is no need for housekeeping to go into the room to make our bed etc. We are quite capable of making our own bed

Then book through the other platforms. AirBnB is poorly regulated and has allowed every scrubber with a spare room / shed / garage to also offer ‘holiday lets’.

it disrupted the market! Whoop! It’s the holiday equivalent of Uber and Deliveroo. The world was better before they existed. A vanishingly small number of tech bros got mega wealthy of the back of being those disrupters but all they are in reality is middle men. They were a solution in search of a gap in the market that didn’t actually exist.

Missed this comment earlier.

It’s totally unsustainable to have housing markets that are completely dominated by second homes and short term lets. It’s not just about whether only the wealthy can afford to live there, it’s about whether anyone actually really lives there at all. You need a balance between tourism and sustaining an actual community.

I’m so sick of this with air bnbs. They want you to do hours of cleaning and strip beds before you leave.

Currently in a hotel and honestly it’s bliss. Every meal made, room cleaned every day with fresh towels. Beds made. Late check out. Room service.

Airbnb hosts will go out of business if they carry on with this crap. Hotel every time for me now.

I left washed items on the drainer for the first time last week, in our AirBnB, because the cleaning fee was an astronomical - £150 - and there's no way that they are paying their cleaner £50 an hour (it would need about an hour cleaning/turnover at most as it was small). The checkout times were a joke too. Check in at 4pm, check out at 10am but they charged us £900 for a 4 night stay in the dump of a town we stayed in (North Wales). Our fault for not knowing the area but these owners really took the piss. I'm not spending my last day of my holiday getting up at 7am to clean something I've been charged £150 for someone else to clean cream off when I am being told toleave at 10. I haven't left a review because tbh I don't want to be vindictive and a shitty person but if they gave me a bad review I'd be going for it.

They don't want you to do hours of cleaning. That's just a ridiculous statement.

I will strip beds if they ask you to as I don't see it as a big deal but in the many places we have stayed I think only 3 have asked guests to do this.

As I said before, me and DH keep the place clean and tidy as we would at home. If we make any crumbs we will clear them up. We wipe round the kitchen and bathroom sinks every day as we do at home.

I am glad hotels are bliss for you but they are not for me. I don't need someone to clean my room every day and why would a room need to be cleaned every day anyway? Also certainly don't need clean towels every day. Waste of the hotel's water and energy to be giving guests clean towels every single day.

I don't need someone to make the bed every day. How difficult or time consuming is it to plump the pillow, smooth the sheet and straighten the duvet? Even in a hotel we make our bed.

We will stick with having loads of space, a nice living room with a comfy settee, a kitchen so that we can make food and drinks if we want when we want. A garden or balcony, not being told when we can eat breakfast and what we can have to eat. A big big plus is not having other guests that come back late and night and make loads of noise talking at the tops of their voices, slamming doors etc which we always seem to get when we stay in a hotel even pretty expensive ones

That is true.

But I seriously don't rent someone's property for a holiday or a business trip and consider it a privilege to pay for them to critique my cleaning standards!

I'm very clean. I strip beds in hotels before I leave and out towels in the bath. I also tie up bin bags. (I've worked hospitality)

I always stay in same hotel with ds when we travel for him to compete (a few times a year) they always say they change bedding after night 4. We stay 5 nights and I say not to bother (environment!)

Yes, I pay for someone to do this and they would. But I'm absolutely not paying to stay somewhere, do my but to help through choice and then have some jumped up apartment owner publicly comment on my standards of hygeine.

Fuck that

I had this once - after spending money buying decent cleaning things as they'd left so little. It still annoys me years later.

The difference is that Airbnb has - rightly or wrongly - got a reputation for being full of hosts with ridiculously long house rules, high cleaning fees, and who leave stroppy reviews for their guests. Don’t get those with the other providers! I don’t know whether that means the stroppy hosts don’t use the other platforms, or whether they just suck it up on those.

Nope. Just looked where I live on right move, 5 mile radius. 204 houses to buy ranging from 65k to 1.2 mill. I live in the North. In Nice areas and less than nice areas.