Hi all,
We are couple in Dublin, Ireland, about to host for our third summer. We share a room in our home, and generally we've been really lucky with our guests and experiences, and its been pretty good for us so far.
Couple of odd balls here and there, and more than I expected of people wanting us to bend our rules. We don't have guest using the kitchen or living space *downstairs is open plan, we heavily advertise this fact, we are flexible if someone needs to use the microwave or store items in the fridge, we have a little table and stools in room along with some snacks we leave their, complimentary with a coffee machine. We even allow laundry use if needed.
Its a small enough house, and nearly 97% of people are perfectly happy with the arrangement, with our cats (also heavily advertised!), but it always bugs me so much when we get requests asking can they cook meals. we have been flexible on occasion, with people wanting to bring toddlers with them (our house is 100% not child friendly and we state that). We have very few rules beside the norms. And in my opinion, anyone of the guests we have "accomodated" on a special requests, NEVER give a 5 star review, ever. House is too far away from city (we state how far and what we are near, even though we are pretty close), no nightlife (we advertise we live in a quiet suburb of dublin, with losts of amenties close by), the room is too small for all their luggage (not sure how thats out fault lol).
Anyways, mostly its been great, we love meeting new people, and mostly people think our house and hosting is great, so its worth all the cleaning and bed changing 🙂