1. You will have lots of random people staying in your home.
People will book your room, and they could be from anywhere in the world. We have had guests from every continent, and being so close to an international airport we get lots of tourists, mainly needing a place to stay for an early flight. At the end of the day it isn’t like having family or friends stay, they are complete strangers walking around your home.
2. You will clean then you will clean some more.
Cleaning! Sometimes I feel like all we do is clean and change sheets, especially after a long stint of one night stays over a week. It’s not just the room cleaning it’s also keeping the kitchen and bathroom presentable at all times. No leaving the pots and pans out over night or hanging up our clothes in the hall, it all needs to be sorted right away, unless you want a bad rating.
3. You will be asked random questions.
Lots of people from different backgrounds means at some point you will get asked something random like ‘Where can I find lots of cats round here?’.
4. Some people don’t understand how things work.
People will struggle to open doors, become completely confused with a TV remote, stare blankly at power plugs, struggle to open a door and won’t know how to turn a shower off. Oh yeah the list goes on…
5. Not everyone can read a map or follow directions.
Sometimes we get a call an hour after someone was meant to arrive, saying ‘I’m here’ but turns out they have walked on for a few minutes and are standing outside a random house that has no connection to the address. People will knock on random doors or won’t even make it to our road. So expect the occasional run down your road looking for someone who is completely lost. On the very rare occasion they haven’t even made it to the right town…
6. Bathroom in use when you really need it.
Bathroom and toilet occupied in the morning when you really need to get ready for work. If only we had an en-suite.
7. Sometimes things break.
We have had plates just go missing and things getting chipped, even a window hinge breaking. At the end of the day lots of people passing through ends up with something getting broken.
8. Guests like to leave things.
So we have had lots of food that has been left, enough to cook a few meals. We even still have a huge bottle of orange squash that barely gets touched. Phone chargers, adapters, cool boxes, socks, books and other random things. A nice little collection some helpful, some not so helpful.
9. Not everyone reads your listing.
‘Excuse me I thought we were in central London’ so even though our listing says near London, only a 30 minute train to the centre, some people just don’t read it. Expect other things to come up where it clearly states something.
10. You will have happy people and you will have moody people.
Traveling brings out lots of different emotions, whether someone is tired from their flight or super excited about their trip. You will have to learn how to engage with people in the best possible way, well unless you want a lower rating for checking in.
11. Random and delightful chats with the guests.
There will be times when you will be in host mode asking all the normal questions “How was your trip?” “Where are you off to next?” and hearing all the different answers, and then the conversation ends. However sometimes the conversation will turn into something random or very interesting. Suddenly that normal 5 minute getting to know each other and welcome pitch, turns into a whole conversation about cultures, world news and our future plans. It is nice getting to know people and being able to speak about things you love with people from all over the world.
12. Random acts of Kindness and gifts.
Something we never thought we would come across was acts of kindness and gifts from our guests for being hosts. We have been taken out for dinner at a local restaurant, where they insisted on paying for everything. Guests cooking us a lovely meal. We have had many gifts left for us including flowers, chocolates, magnets and Swedish hand towels.
So as you can see most of my points here show some of the hard parts to hosting on airbnb but at the end of the day we still love doing it and if it wasn’t for airbnb we wouldn’t of been able to meet such interesting people from a wide variety of backgrounds. The assumption is younger people use airbnb but that is not the case at all. We have have all ages stay here. I recommend airbnb, the money side is great, to be able to earn money from a room is a benefit but it isn’t all about the money, the interactions make it so interesting and that is what makes airbnb work really well. Every airbnb will be a different experience, we have also had the chance to be on the guest side of things and we have had many different experiences.
So if you have the urge to sign up and host a room or an entire place then please use our referral link to host. BECOME A HOST
Or if you are thinking of using airbnb as a guest please use our referral link. SIGN UP AS A GUEST
Leave a Reply