Airbnb Host and Investors Forum General Advice 1 2 3 4 5 … 9 Next » A Short Term Rental (STR) Forum Community

[poly633]

I am new to this community and am thinking about renting my lake house as a short term rental on Airbnb. I see so many negative comments about how guests behave and how they try to get refunds, etc. My question is should I expect that most guests are disrespectful and trying to nickel and dime hosts or do are we only reading about the bad guests?

[lpc1255]

The majority are good guests but beware - the few bad ones will make your life miserable and make you question whether or not you want to stay in this business.

[ChrisFromTheOC]

Almost all of my guests have been near perfect. The worst was a missing towel here and there (cost of doing business), and my first set of guests did invite a bunch of people over but they kept the noise to a minimum and cleaned up after themselves. 4.98 overall rating.

[ms012288]

99% of guests are great. It’s all about clear communications and expectations upfront. Reduce your risk by turning off instant book.

[boilerup17]

People are far more likely to post about an terrible situation than to comment about how well things are going for them on the internet.
Having hosted for years, I can say in my experience, it is generally only about 2-5% reservations that cause some form of stress. But, it’s also worth saying that those problematic reservations have helped me build systems in place which have paid dividends in future reservations. Always treat it as a business. Treat your guests well, maintain your property well, and worry only about what you can control, and in general, things will go just fine. Like others have said, turn off instant book and you will have a much better experience.

[1solidplan]

If you read through the posts on this Airbnb host forum, hosting may seem like a nightmare to you. However, in reality all my guests have been great. Literally every single one actually does more than I ask for check out (all I have on my check out info is move any furniture back if a guest moved it, and throw all towels back in the bathrooms if moved). Pretty much all of them also run the dishwasher with zero prompting, many of them strip the bed, and everything looks great. Never had anything broken that wasn't obvious wear and tear. No one takes the umbrellas I leave out for convenience or raids the drawer of extra batteries I supply.

[fanatic]

Most guests are great to work with, but the occasional guest will be awful. Handling that occasional awful guest can be very stressful, but it won't happen very often… in my experience it has only been one out of 20 guests. (5%)

There's a lot more work involved in short-term rentals than long-term, so unless you're going to hire a management company, think of it as a part-time job rather than as "passive income". It can be rewarding, but evaluate your area before you make such a switch. Short-term rentals earn substantially more per rental night than long-term, but the difference can easily be eaten away by nights that go unused, and if it's close you're probably better off choosing your current path, that is more reliable and requires less work. Short-term rentals peaked around pandemic time. Although I started after that and have continued to do well, I hear from hosts regularly that they have fewer bookings each year than the year before. Many areas are saturated with Airbnbs, and local regulations are popping up all over that make it harder or ban it entirely in some places. I don't think I'd recommend this business to most people, most of the time.

If you want to know what sorts of things the bad guests do, all you have to do is peruse the many posts about awful guests on this forum. Keep in mind, though, that hosts don't post on the Airbnb forum about good guests, and guests don't post on the internet about good hosts. Most of the stories you'll see here are true, but not representative of a typical stay.